Night and Day ......................................................................................................................................................1

Virginia Woolf .........................................................................................................................................1

It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine

Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt

over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and

played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight. But although she was silent, she was

evidently mistress of a situation which was familiar enough to her, and inclined to let it take its way for the

six hundredth time, perhaps, without bringing into play any of her unoccupied faculties. A single glance was

enough to show that Mrs. Hilbery was so rich in the gifts which make teaparties of elderly distinguished

people successful, that she scarcely needed any help from her daughter, provided that the tiresome business

Considering that the little party had been seated round the teatable for less than twenty minutes, the

animation observable on their faces, and the amount of sound they were producing collectively, were very

creditable to the hostess. It suddenly came into Katharine's mind that if some one opened the door at this

moment he would think that they were enjoying themselves; he would think, "What an extremely nice house

to come into!" and instinctively she laughed, and said something to increase the noise, for the credit of the

house presumably, since she herself had not been feeling exhilarated. At the very same moment, rather to her

amusement, the door was flung open, and a young man entered the room. Katharine, as she shook hands with

him, asked him, in her own mind, "Now, do you think we're enjoying ourselves enormously?" . . . "Mr.

Denham, mother," she said aloud, for she saw that her mother had forgotten his name.

That fact was perceptible to Mr. Denham also, and increased the awkwardness which inevitably attends the

entrance of a stranger into a room full of people much at their ease, and all launched upon sentences. At the

same time, it seemed to Mr. Denham as if a thousand softly padded doors had closed between him and the

street outside. A fine mist, the etherealized essence of the fog, hung visibly in the wide and rather empty

space of the drawingroom, all silver where the candles were grouped on the teatable, and ruddy again in

the firelight. With the omnibuses and cabs still running in his head, and his body still tingling with his quick

walk along the streets and in and out of traffic and footpassengers, this drawingroom seemed very remote

and still; and the faces of the elderly people were mellowed, at some distance from each other, and had a

bloom on them owing to the fact that the air in the drawingroom was thickened by blue grains of mist. Mr.

Denham had come in as Mr. Fortescue, the eminent novelist, reached the middle of a very long sentence. He

kept this suspended while the newcomer sat down, and Mrs. Hilbery deftly joined the severed parts by

"Now, what would you do if you were married to an engineer, and had to live in Manchester, Mr. Denham?"

"Surely she could learn Persian," broke in a thin, elderly gentleman. "Is there no retired schoolmaster or man

"A cousin of ours has married and gone to live in Manchester," Katharine explained. Mr. Denham muttered

something, which was indeed all that was required of him, and the novelist went on where he had left off.

Privately, Mr. Denham cursed himself very sharply for having exchanged the freedom of the street for this

sophisticated drawing room, where, among other disagreeables, he certainly would not appear at his best.

He glanced round him, and saw that, save for Katharine, they were all over forty, the only consolation being

that Mr. Fortescue was a considerable celebrity, so that tomorrow one might be glad to have met him.

Katharine stirred her tea, and seemed to speculate, so Denham thought, upon the duty of filling somebody

else's cup, but she was really wondering how she was going to keep this strange young man in harmony with

the rest. She observed that he was compressing his teacup, so that there was danger lest the thin china might

cave inwards. She could see that he was nervous; one would expect a bony young man with his face slightly

reddened by the wind, and his hair not altogether smooth, to be nervous in such a party. Further, he probably

disliked this kind of thing, and had come out of curiosity, or because her father had invited himanyhow, he

"I should think there would be no one to talk to in Manchester," she replied at random. Mr. Fortescue had

been observing her for a moment or two, as novelists are inclined to observe, and at this remark he smiled,

"In spite of a slight tendency to exaggeration, Katharine decidedly hits the mark," he said, and lying back in

his chair, with his opaque contemplative eyes fixed on the ceiling, and the tips of his fingers pressed together,

he depicted, first the horrors of the streets of Manchester, and then the bare, immense moors on the outskirts

of the town, and then the scrubby little house in which the girl would live, and then the professors and the

miserable young students devoted to the more strenuous works of our younger dramatists, who would visit

her, and how her appearance would change by degrees, and how she would fly to London, and how Katharine

would have to lead her about, as one leads an eager dog on a chain, past rows of clamorous butchers' shops,

"Oh, Mr. Fortescue," exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, as he finished, "I had just written to say how I envied her! I

was thinking of the big gardens and the dear old ladies in mittens, who read nothing but the "Spectator," and

snuff the candles. Have they ALL disappeared? I told her she would find the nice things of London without

"There is the University," said the thin gentleman, who had previously insisted upon the existence of people

"I know there are moors there, because I read about them in a book the other day," said Katharine.

"I am grieved and amazed at the ignorance of my family," Mr. Hilbery remarked. He was an elderly man,

with a pair of oval, hazel eyes which were rather bright for his time of life, and relieved the heaviness of his

face. He played constantly with a little green stone attached to his watchchain, thus displaying long and very

sensitive fingers, and had a habit of moving his head hither and thither very quickly without altering the

position of his large and rather corpulent body, so that he seemed to be providing himself incessantly with

food for amusement and reflection with the least possible expenditure of energy. One might suppose that he

had passed the time of life when his ambitions were personal, or that he had gratified them as far as he was

likely to do, and now employed his considerable acuteness rather to observe and reflect than to attain any

Katharine, so Denham decided, while Mr. Fortescue built up another rounded structure of words, had a

likeness to each of her parents, but these elements were rather oddly blended. She had the quick, impulsive

movements of her mother, the lips parting often to speak, and closing again; and the dark oval eyes of her

father brimming with light upon a basis of sadness, or, since she was too young to have acquired a sorrowful

point of view, one might say that the basis was not sadness so much as a spirit given to contemplation and

selfcontrol. Judging by her hair, her coloring, and the shape of her features, she was striking, if not actually

beautiful. Decision and composure stamped her, a combination of qualities that produced a very marked

character, and one that was not calculated to put a young man, who scarcely knew her, at his ease. For the

rest, she was tall; her dress was of some quiet color, with old yellowtinted lace for ornament, to which the

spark of an ancient jewel gave its one red gleam. Denham noticed that, although silent, she kept sufficient

control of the situation to answer immediately her mother appealed to her for help, and yet it was obvious to

him that she attended only with the surface skin of her mind. It struck him that her position at the teatable,

among all these elderly people, was not without its difficulties, and he checked his inclination to find her, or

her attitude, generally antipathetic to him. The talk had passed over Manchester, after dealing with it very

"Would it be the Battle of Trafalgar or the Spanish Armada, Katharine?" her mother demanded.

"Trafalgar, of course! How stupid of me! Another cup of tea, with a thin slice of lemon in it, and then, dear

Mr. Fortescue, please explain my absurd little puzzle. One can't help believing gentlemen with Roman noses,

Mr. Hilbery here interposed so far as Denham was concerned, and talked a great deal of sense about the

solicitors' profession, and the changes which he had seen in his lifetime. Indeed, Denham properly fell to his

lot, owing to the fact that an article by Denham upon some legal matter, published by Mr. Hilbery in his

Review, had brought them acquainted. But when a moment later Mrs. Sutton Bailey was announced, he

turned to her, and Mr. Denham found himself sitting silent, rejecting possible things to say, beside Katharine,

who was silent too. Being much about the same age and both under thirty, they were prohibited from the use

of a great many convenient phrases which launch conversation into smooth waters. They were further

silenced by Katharine's rather malicious determination not to help this young man, in whose upright and

resolute bearing she detected something hostile to her surroundings, by any of the usual feminine amenities.

They therefore sat silent, Denham controlling his desire to say something abrupt and explosive, which should

shock her into life. But Mrs. Hilbery was immediately sensitive to any silence in the drawingroom, as of a

dumb note in a sonorous scale, and leaning across the table she observed, in the curiously tentative detached

manner which always gave her phrases the likeness of butterflies flaunting from one sunny spot to another,

"D'you know, Mr. Denham, you remind me so much of dear Mr. Ruskin. . . . Is it his tie, Katharine, or his

hair, or the way he sits in his chair? Do tell me, Mr. Denham, are you an admirer of Ruskin? Some one, the

other day, said to me, 'Oh, no, we don't read Ruskin, Mrs. Hilbery.' What DO you read, I wonder?for you

can't spend all your time going up in aeroplanes and burrowing into the bowels of the earth."

She looked benevolently at Denham, who said nothing articulate, and then at Katharine, who smiled but said

nothing either, upon which Mrs. Hilbery seemed possessed by a brilliant idea, and exclaimed:

"I'm sure Mr. Denham would like to see our things, Katharine. I'm sure he's not like that dreadful young man,

Mr. Ponting, who told me that he considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After all, what IS

the present? Half of it's the past, and the better half, too, I should say," she added, turning to Mr. Fortescue.

Denham rose, half meaning to go, and thinking that he had seen all that there was to see, but Katharine rose at

the same moment, and saying, "Perhaps you would like to see the pictures," led the way across the

The smaller room was something like a chapel in a cathedral, or a grotto in a cave, for the booming sound of

the traffic in the distance suggested the soft surge of waters, and the oval mirrors, with their silver surface,

were like deep pools trembling beneath starlight. But the comparison to a religious temple of some kind was

As Katharine touched different spots, lights sprang here and there, and revealed a square mass of

redandgold books, and then a long skirt in blueandwhite paint lustrous behind glass, and then a

mahogany writingtable, with its orderly equipment, and, finally, a picture above the table, to which special

illumination was accorded. When Katharine had touched these last lights, she stood back, as much as to say,

"There!" Denham found himself looked down upon by the eyes of the great poet, Richard Alardyce, and

suffered a little shock which would have led him, had he been wearing a hat, to remove it. The eyes looked at

him out of the mellow pinks and yellows of the paint with divine friendliness, which embraced him, and

passed on to contemplate the entire world. The paint had so faded that very little but the beautiful large eyes

Katharine waited as though for him to receive a full impression, and then she said:

"This is his writingtable. He used this pen," and she lifted a quill pen and laid it down again. The

writingtable was splashed with old ink, and the pen disheveled in service. There lay the gigantic gold

rimmed spectacles, ready to his hand, and beneath the table was a pair of large, worn slippers, one of which

"I think my grandfather must have been at least twice as large as any one is nowadays. This," she went on, as

if she knew what she had to say by heart, "is the original manuscript of the 'Ode to Winter.' The early poems

While Mr. Denham examined the manuscript, she glanced up at her grandfather, and, for the thousandth time,

fell into a pleasant dreamy state in which she seemed to be the companion of those giant men, of their own

lineage, at any rate, and the insignificant present moment was put to shame. That magnificent ghostly head on

the canvas, surely, never beheld all the trivialities of a Sunday afternoon, and it did not seem to matter what

"This is a copy of the first edition of the poems," she continued, without considering the fact that Mr.

Denham was still occupied with the manuscript, "which contains several poems that have not been reprinted,

as well as corrections." She paused for a minute, and then went on, as if these spaces had all been calculated.

"That lady in blue is my greatgrandmother, by Millington. Here is my uncle's walkingstickhe was Sir

Richard Warburton, you know, and rode with Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow. And then, let me seeoh,

that's the original Alardyce, 1697, the founder of the family fortunes, with his wife. Some one gave us this

bowl the other day because it has their crest and initials. We think it must have been given them to celebrate

Here she stopped for a moment, wondering why it was that Mr. Denham said nothing. Her feeling that he was

antagonistic to her, which had lapsed while she thought of her family possessions, returned so keenly that she

stopped in the middle of her catalog and looked at him. Her mother, wishing to connect him reputably with

the great dead, had compared him with Mr. Ruskin; and the comparison was in Katharine's mind, and led her

to be more critical of the young man than was fair, for a young man paying a call in a tailcoat is in a

different element altogether from a head seized at its climax of expressiveness, gazing immutably from

behind a sheet of glass, which was all that remained to her of Mr. Ruskin. He had a singular facea face

built for swiftness and decision rather than for massive contemplation; the forehead broad, the nose long and

formidable, the lips cleanshaven and at once dogged and sensitive, the cheeks lean, with a deeply running

tide of red blood in them. His eyes, expressive now of the usual masculine impersonality and authority, might

reveal more subtle emotions under favorable circumstances, for they were large, and of a clear, brown color;

they seemed unexpectedly to hesitate and speculate; but Katharine only looked at him to wonder whether his

face would not have come nearer the standard of her dead heroes if it had been adorned with sidewhiskers.

In his spare build and thin, though healthy, cheeks, she saw tokens of an angular and acrid soul. His voice,

she noticed, had a slight vibrating or creaking sound in it, as he laid down the manuscript and said:

"Yes, I am," Katharine answered, and she added, "Do you think there's anything wrong in that?"

"Wrong? How should it be wrong? It must be a bore, though, showing your things to visitors," he added

"No. And that's what I should hate. I couldn't bear my grandfather to cut me out. And, after all," Denham

went on, glancing round him satirically, as Katharine thought, "it's not your grandfather only. You're cut out

all the way round. I suppose you come of one of the most distinguished families in England. There are the

Warburtons and the Manningsand you're related to the Otways, aren't you? I read it all in some magazine,"

Denham smiled, in a peculiarly provoking way. He was amused and gratified to find that he had the power to

annoy his oblivious, supercilious hostess, if he could not impress her; though he would have preferred to

He sat silent, holding the precious little book of poems unopened in his hands, and Katharine watched him,

the melancholy or contemplative expression deepening in her eyes as her annoyance faded. She appeared to

"Well," said Denham again, suddenly opening the little book of poems, as though he had said all that he

meant to say or could, with propriety, say. He turned over the pages with great decision, as if he were judging

the book in its entirety, the printing and paper and binding, as well as the poetry, and then, having satisfied

himself of its good or bad quality, he placed it on the writingtable, and examined the malacca cane with the

"No," said Denham. "We've never done anything to be proud ofunless you count paying one's bills a

"Yes, I might find you dull, but I don't think I should find you ridiculous," Katharine added, as if Denham

"Nobecause we're not in the least ridiculous. We're a respectable middleclass family, living at Highgate."

Denham merely smiled, and replacing the malacca cane on the rack, he drew a sword from its ornamental

"That belonged to Clive, so we say," said Katharine, taking up her duties as hostess again automatically.

"You pay your bills, and you speak the truth. I don't see why you should despise us."

Mr. Denham carefully sheathed the sword which the Hilberys said belonged to Clive.

"I shouldn't like to be you; that's all I said," he replied, as if he were saying what he thought as accurately as

Denham looked at her as she sat in her grandfather's armchair, drawing her greatuncle's malacca cane

smoothly through her fingers, while her background was made up equally of lustrous blueandwhite paint,

and crimson books with gilt lines on them. The vitality and composure of her attitude, as of a brightplumed

bird poised easily before further flights, roused him to show her the limitations of her lot. So soon, so easily,

"You'll never know anything at first hand," he began, almost savagely. "It's all been done for you. You'll

never know the pleasure of buying things after saving up for them, or reading books for the first time, or

"Go on," Katharine observed, as he paused, suddenly doubtful, when he heard his voice proclaiming aloud

"Of course, I don't know how you spend your time," he continued, a little stiffly, "but I suppose you have to

show people round. You are writing a life of your grandfather, aren't you? And this kind of thing"he

nodded towards the other room, where they could hear bursts of cultivated laughter"must take up a lot of

She looked at him expectantly, as if between them they were decorating a small figure of herself, and she saw

"You've got it very nearly right," she said, "but I only help my mother. I don't write myself."

"What do you mean?" she asked. "I don't leave the house at ten and come back at six."

Mr. Denham had recovered his selfcontrol; he spoke with a quietness which made Katharine rather anxious

that he should explain himself, but at the same time she wished to annoy him, to waft him away from her on

some light current of ridicule or satire, as she was wont to do with these intermittent young men of her

"Nobody ever does do anything worth doing nowadays," she remarked. "You see"she tapped the volume

of her grandfather's poems"we don't even print as well as they did, and as for poets or painters or

"No, we haven't any great men," Denham replied. "I'm very glad that we haven't. I hate great men. The

worship of greatness in the nineteenth century seems to me to explain the worthlessness of that generation."

Katharine opened her lips and drew in her breath, as if to reply with equal vigor, when the shutting of a door

in the next room withdrew her attention, and they both became conscious that the voices, which had been

rising and falling round the teatable, had fallen silent; the light, even, seemed to have sunk lower. A moment

later Mrs. Hilbery appeared in the doorway of the anteroom. She stood looking at them with a smile of

expectancy on her face, as if a scene from the drama of the younger generation were being played for her

benefit. She was a remarkablelooking woman, well advanced in the sixties, but owing to the lightness of her

frame and the brightness of her eyes she seemed to have been wafted over the surface of the years without

taking much harm in the passage. Her face was shrunken and aquiline, but any hint of sharpness was

dispelled by the large blue eyes, at once sagacious and innocent, which seemed to regard the world with an

enormous desire that it should behave itself nobly, and an entire confidence that it could do so, if it would

Certain lines on the broad forehead and about the lips might be taken to suggest that she had known moments

of some difficulty and perplexity in the course of her career, but these had not destroyed her trustfulness, and

she was clearly still prepared to give every one any number of fresh chances and the whole system the benefit

of the doubt. She wore a great resemblance to her father, and suggested, as he did, the fresh airs and open

Mr. Denham rose, put his book down, opened his mouth, but said nothing, as Katharine observed, with some

"There are some books that LIVE," she mused. "They are young with us, and they grow old with us. Are you

fond of poetry, Mr. Denham? But what an absurd question to ask! The truth is, dear Mr. Fortescue has almost

tired me out. He is so eloquent and so witty, so searching and so profound that, after half an hour or so, I feel

inclined to turn out all the lights. But perhaps he'd be more wonderful than ever in the dark. What d'you think,

Katharine? Shall we give a little party in complete darkness? There'd have to be bright rooms for the bores. . .

"But we've any number of things to show you!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, taking no notice of it. "Books,

pictures, china, manuscripts, and the very chair that Mary Queen of Scots sat in when she heard of Darnley's

murder. I must lie down for a little, and Katharine must change her dress (though she's wearing a very pretty

one), but if you don't mind being left alone, supper will be at eight. I dare say you'll write a poem of your own

while you're waiting. Ah, how I love the firelight! Doesn't our room look charming?"

She stepped back and bade them contemplate the empty drawingroom, with its rich, irregular lights, as the

"Dear things!" she exclaimed. "Dear chairs and tables! How like old friends they arefaithful, silent friends.

Which reminds me, Katharine, little Mr. Anning is coming tonight, and Tite Street, and Cadogan Square. . .

. Do remember to get that drawing of your great uncle glazed. Aunt Millicent remarked it last time she was

It was like tearing through a maze of diamondglittering spiders' webs to say goodbye and escape, for at

each movement Mrs. Hilbery remembered something further about the villainies of pictureframers or the

delights of poetry, and at one time it seemed to the young man that he would be hypnotized into doing what

she pretended to want him to do, for he could not suppose that she attached any value whatever to his

presence. Katharine, however, made an opportunity for him to leave, and for that he was grateful to her, as

The young man shut the door with a sharper slam than any visitor had used that afternoon, and walked up the

street at a great pace, cutting the air with his walkingstick. He was glad to find himself outside that

drawingroom, breathing raw fog, and in contact with unpolished people who only wanted their share of the

pavement allowed them. He thought that if he had had Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Hilbery out here he would have

made them, somehow, feel his superiority, for he was chafed by the memory of halting awkward sentences

which had failed to give even the young woman with the sad, but inwardly ironical eyes a hint of his force.

He tried to recall the actual words of his little outburst, and unconsciously supplemented them by so many

words of greater expressiveness that the irritation of his failure was somewhat assuaged. Sudden stabs of the

unmitigated truth assailed him now and then, for he was not inclined by nature to take a rosy view of his

conduct, but what with the beat of his foot upon the pavement, and the glimpse which halfdrawn curtains

offered him of kitchens, dining rooms, and drawingrooms, illustrating with mute power different scenes

His own experience underwent a curious change. His speed slackened, his head sank a little towards his

breast, and the lamplight shone now and again upon a face grown strangely tranquil. His thought was so

absorbing that when it became necessary to verify the name of a street, he looked at it for a time before he

read it; when he came to a crossing, he seemed to have to reassure himself by two or three taps, such as a

blind man gives, upon the curb; and, reaching the Underground station, he blinked in the bright circle of light,

glanced at his watch, decided that he might still indulge himself in darkness, and walked straight on.

And yet the thought was the thought with which he had started. He was still thinking about the people in the

house which he had left; but instead of remembering, with whatever accuracy he could, their looks and

sayings, he had consciously taken leave of the literal truth. A turn of the street, a firelit room, something

monumental in the procession of the lampposts, who shall say what accident of light or shape had suddenly

"She'll do. . . . Yes, Katharine Hilbery'll do. . . . I'll take Katharine Hilbery."

As soon as he had said this, his pace slackened, his head fell, his eyes became fixed. The desire to justify

himself, which had been so urgent, ceased to torment him, and, as if released from constraint, so that they

worked without friction or bidding, his faculties leapt forward and fixed, as a matter of course, upon the form

of Katharine Hilbery. It was marvellous how much they found to feed upon, considering the destructive

nature of Denham's criticism in her presence. The charm, which he had tried to disown, when under the effect

of it, the beauty, the character, the aloofness, which he had been determined not to feel, now possessed him

wholly; and when, as happened by the nature of things, he had exhausted his memory, he went on with his

imagination. He was conscious of what he was about, for in thus dwelling upon Miss Hilbery's qualities, he

showed a kind of method, as if he required this vision of her for a particular purpose. He increased her height,

he darkened her hair; but physically there was not much to change in her. His most daring liberty was taken

with her mind, which, for reasons of his own, he desired to be exalted and infallible, and of such

independence that it was only in the case of Ralph Denham that it swerved from its high, swift flight, but

where he was concerned, though fastidious at first, she finally swooped from her eminence to crown him with

her approval. These delicious details, however, were to be worked out in all their ramifications at his leisure;

the main point was that Katharine Hilbery would do; she would do for weeks, perhaps for months. In taking

her he had provided himself with something the lack of which had left a bare place in his mind for a

considerable time. He gave a sigh of satisfaction; his consciousness of his actual position somewhere in the

neighborhood of Knightsbridge returned to him, and he was soon speeding in the train towards Highgate.

Although thus supported by the knowledge of his new possession of considerable value, he was not proof

against the familiar thoughts which the suburban streets and the damp shrubs growing in front gardens and

the absurd names painted in white upon the gates of those gardens suggested to him. His walk was uphill, and

his mind dwelt gloomily upon the house which he approached, where he would find six or seven brothers and

sisters, a widowed mother, and, probably, some aunt or uncle sitting down to an unpleasant meal under a very

bright light. Should he put in force the threat which, two weeks ago, some such gathering had wrung from

himthe terrible threat that if visitors came on Sunday he should dine alone in his room? A glance in the

direction of Miss Hilbery determined him to make his stand this very night, and accordingly, having let

himself in, having verified the presence of Uncle Joseph by means of a bowler hat and a very large umbrella,

He went up a great many flights of stairs, and he noticed, as he had very seldom noticed, how the carpet

became steadily shabbier, until it ceased altogether, how the walls were discolored, sometimes by cascades of

damp, and sometimes by the outlines of pictureframes since removed, how the paper flapped loose at the

corners, and a great flake of plaster had fallen from the ceiling. The room itself was a cheerless one to return

to at this inauspicious hour. A flattened sofa would, later in the evening, become a bed; one of the tables

concealed a washing apparatus; his clothes and boots were disagreeably mixed with books which bore the gilt

of college arms; and, for decoration, there hung upon the wall photographs of bridges and cathedrals and

large, unprepossessing groups of insufficiently clothed young men, sitting in rows one above another upon

stone steps. There was a look of meanness and shabbiness in the furniture and curtains, and nowhere any sign

of luxury or even of a cultivated taste, unless the cheap classics in the bookcase were a sign of an effort in

that direction. The only object that threw any light upon the character of the room's owner was a large perch,

placed in the window to catch the air and sun, upon which a tame and, apparently, decrepit rook hopped dryly

from side to side. The bird, encouraged by a scratch behind the ear, settled upon Denham's shoulder. He lit

his gasfire and settled down in gloomy patience to await his dinner. After sitting thus for some minutes a

"They're to bring my dinner up here," said Ralph, peremptorily; whereupon she vanished, leaving the door

ajar in her haste to be gone. After Denham had waited some minutes, in the course of which neither he nor

the rook took their eyes off the fire, he muttered a curse, ran downstairs, intercepted the parlormaid, and cut

himself a slice of bread and cold meat. As he did so, the diningroom door sprang open, a voice exclaimed

"Ralph!" but Ralph paid no attention to the voice, and made off upstairs with his plate. He set it down in a

chair opposite him, and ate with a ferocity that was due partly to anger and partly to hunger. His mother, then,

was determined not to respect his wishes; he was a person of no importance in his own family; he was sent

for and treated as a child. He reflected, with a growing sense of injury, that almost every one of his actions

since opening the door of his room had been won from the grasp of the family system. By rights, he should

have been sitting downstairs in the drawingroom describing his afternoon's adventures, or listening to the

afternoon's adventures of other people; the room itself, the gasfire, the armchairall had been fought for;

the wretched bird, with half its feathers out and one leg lamed by a cat, had been rescued under protest; but

what his family most resented, he reflected, was his wish for privacy. To dine alone, or to sit alone after

dinner, was flat rebellion, to be fought with every weapon of underhand stealth or of open appeal. Which did

he dislike mostdeception or tears? But, at any rate, they could not rob him of his thoughts; they could not

make him say where he had been or whom he had seen. That was his own affair; that, indeed, was a step

entirely in the right direction, and, lighting his pipe, and cutting up the remains of his meal for the benefit of

the rook, Ralph calmed his rather excessive irritation and settled down to think over his prospects.

This particular afternoon was a step in the right direction, because it was part of his plan to get to know

people beyond the family circuit, just as it was part of his plan to learn German this autumn, and to review

legal books for Mr. Hilbery's "Critical Review." He had always made plans since he was a small boy; for

poverty, and the fact that he was the eldest son of a large family, had given him the habit of thinking of spring

and summer, autumn and winter, as so many stages in a prolonged campaign. Although he was still under

thirty, this forecasting habit had marked two semicircular lines above his eyebrows, which threatened, at this

moment, to crease into their wonted shapes. But instead of settling down to think, he rose, took a small piece

of cardboard marked in large letters with the word OUT, and hung it upon the handle of his door. This done,

he sharpened a pencil, lit a readinglamp and opened his book. But still he hesitated to take his seat. He

scratched the rook, he walked to the window; he parted the curtains, and looked down upon the city which

lay, hazily luminous, beneath him. He looked across the vapors in the direction of Chelsea; looked fixedly for

a moment, and then returned to his chair. But the whole thickness of some learned counsel's treatise upon

Torts did not screen him satisfactorily. Through the pages he saw a drawing room, very empty and spacious;

he heard low voices, he saw women's figures, he could even smell the scent of the cedar log which flamed in

the grate. His mind relaxed its tension, and seemed to be giving out now what it had taken in unconsciously at

the time. He could remember Mr. Fortescue's exact words, and the rolling emphasis with which he delivered

them, and he began to repeat what Mr. Fortescue had said, in Mr. Fortescue's own manner, about Manchester.

His mind then began to wander about the house, and he wondered whether there were other rooms like the

drawingroom, and he thought, inconsequently, how beautiful the bathroom must be, and how leisurely it

wasthe life of these wellkept people, who were, no doubt, still sitting in the same room, only they had

changed their clothes, and little Mr. Anning was there, and the aunt who would mind if the glass of her

father's picture was broken. Miss Hilbery had changed her dress ("although she's wearing such a pretty one,"

he heard her mother say), and she was talking to Mr. Anning, who was well over forty, and bald into the

bargain, about books. How peaceful and spacious it was; and the peace possessed him so completely that his

muscles slackened, his book drooped from his hand, and he forgot that the hour of work was wasting minute

He was roused by a creak upon the stair. With a guilty start he composed himself, frowned and looked

intently at the fiftysixth page of his volume. A step paused outside his door, and he knew that the person,

whoever it might be, was considering the placard, and debating whether to honor its decree or not. Certainly,

policy advised him to sit still in autocratic silence, for no custom can take root in a family unless every breach

of it is punished severely for the first six months or so. But Ralph was conscious of a distinct wish to be

interrupted, and his disappointment was perceptible when he heard the creaking sound rather farther down the

stairs, as if his visitor had decided to withdraw. He rose, opened the door with unnecessary abruptness, and

waited on the landing. The person stopped simultaneously half a flight downstairs.

"Well, come along in, then." He concealed his desire beneath a tone as grudging as he could make it.

Joan came in, but she was careful to show, by standing upright with one hand upon the mantelpiece, that she

She was older than Ralph by some three or four years. Her face was round but worn, and expressed that

tolerant but anxious good humor which is the special attribute of elder sisters in large families. Her pleasant

brown eyes resembled Ralph's, save in expression, for whereas he seemed to look straightly and keenly at one

object, she appeared to be in the habit of considering everything from many different points of view. This

made her appear his elder by more years than existed in fact between them. Her gaze rested for a moment or

"It's about Charles and Uncle John's offer. . . . Mother's been talking to me. She says she can't afford to pay

for him after this term. She says she'll have to ask for an overdraft as it is."

Ralph, as if he could foresee the length of this familiar argument, drew up a chair for his sister and sat down

Ralph shook his head, and for a time they sat silent. The lines curved themselves in semicircles above their

"I believe mother would take risks if she knew that Charles was the sort of boy to profit by it."

"He's got brains, hasn't he?" said Ralph. His tone had taken on that shade of pugnacity which suggested to his

sister that some personal grievance drove him to take the line he did. She wondered what it might be, but at

"In some ways he's fearfully backward, though, compared with what you were at his age. And he's difficult at

Ralph made a sound which belittled this particular argument. It was plain to Joan that she had struck one of

her brother's perverse moods, and he was going to oppose whatever his mother said. He called her "she,"

which was a proof of it. She sighed involuntarily, and the sigh annoyed Ralph, and he exclaimed with

She, too, was becoming annoyed. She had spent the whole of the afternoon discussing wearisome details of

education and expense with her mother, and she had come to her brother for help, encouraged, rather

irrationally, to expect help by the fact that he had been out somewhere, she didn't know and didn't mean to

Ralph was fond of his sister, and her irritation made him think how unfair it was that all these burdens should

"The truth is," he observed gloomily, "that I ought to have accepted Uncle John's offer. I should have been

"I don't think that for a moment," Joan replied quickly, repenting of her annoyance. "The question, to my

Neither brother nor sister spoke with much conviction, and after reflecting for a moment what these proposed

reforms in a strictly economical household meant, Ralph announced very decidedly:

It was out of the question that she should put any more household work upon herself. No, the hardship must

fall on him, for he was determined that his family should have as many chances of distinguishing themselves

as other families hadas the Hilberys had, for example. He believed secretly and rather defiantly, for it was

a fact not capable of proof, that there was something very remarkable about his family.

"She ought to look upon it as an investment; but if she won't, we must find some other way, that's all."

A threat was contained in this sentence, and Joan knew, without asking, what the threat was. In the course of

his professional life, which now extended over six or seven years, Ralph had saved, perhaps, three or four

hundred pounds. Considering the sacrifices he had made in order to put by this sum it always amazed Joan to

find that he used it to gamble with, buying shares and selling them again, increasing it sometimes, sometimes

diminishing it, and always running the risk of losing every penny of it in a day's disaster. But although she

wondered, she could not help loving him the better for his odd combination of Spartan selfcontrol and what

appeared to her romantic and childish folly. Ralph interested her more than any one else in the world, and she

often broke off in the middle of one of these economic discussions, in spite of their gravity, to consider some

"I think you'd be foolish to risk your money on poor old Charles," she observed. "Fond as I am of him, he

doesn't seem to me exactly brilliant. . . . Besides, why should you be sacrificed?"

"My dear Joan," Ralph exclaimed, stretching himself out with a gesture of impatience, "don't you see that

we've all got to be sacrificed? What's the use of denying it? What's the use of struggling against it? So it

always has been, so it always will be. We've got no money and we never shall have any money. We shall just

turn round in the mill every day of our lives until we drop and die, worn out, as most people do, when one

Joan looked at him, opened her lips as if to speak, and closed them again. Then she said, very tentatively:

"No. Are you? Perhaps I'm as happy as most people, though. God knows whether I'm happy or not. What is

He glanced with half a smile, in spite of his gloomy irritation, at his sister. She looked, as usual, as if she

were weighing one thing with another, and balancing them together before she made up her mind.

"Happiness," she remarked at length enigmatically, rather as if she were sampling the word, and then she

paused. She paused for a considerable space, as if she were considering happiness in all its bearings. "Hilda

was here today," she suddenly resumed, as if they had never mentioned happiness. "She brought

Bobbiehe's a fine boy now." Ralph observed, with an amusement that had a tinge of irony in it, that she

was now going to sidle away quickly from this dangerous approach to intimacy on to topics of general and

family interest. Nevertheless, he reflected, she was the only one of his family with whom he found it possible

to discuss happiness, although he might very well have discussed happiness with Miss Hilbery at their first

meeting. He looked critically at Joan, and wished that she did not look so provincial or suburban in her high

green dress with the faded trimming, so patient, and almost resigned. He began to wish to tell her about the

Hilberys in order to abuse them, for in the miniature battle which so often rages between two quickly

following impressions of life, the life of the Hilberys was getting the better of the life of the Denhams in his

mind, and he wanted to assure himself that there was some quality in which Joan infinitely surpassed Miss

Hilbery. He should have felt that his own sister was more original, and had greater vitality than Miss Hilbery

had; but his main impression of Katharine now was of a person of great vitality and composure; and at the

moment he could not perceive what poor dear Joan had gained from the fact that she was the granddaughter

of a man who kept a shop, and herself earned her own living. The infinite dreariness and sordidness of their

life oppressed him in spite of his fundamental belief that, as a family, they were somehow remarkable.

"Shall you talk to mother?" Joan inquired. "Because, you see, the thing's got to be settled, one way or another.

"I suppose it doesn't much matter either way," he exclaimed. "He's doomed to misery in the long run."

"You know you're talking nonsense," she said. "It doesn't hurt any one to have to earn their own living. I'm

Ralph was pleased that she should feel this, and wished her to continue, but he went on, perversely enough.

"Isn't that only because you've forgotten how to enjoy yourself? You never have time for anything decent"

"Well, going for walks, or music, or books, or seeing interesting people. You never do anything that's really

"I always think you could make this room much nicer, if you liked," she observed.

"What does it matter what sort of room I have when I'm forced to spend all the best years of my life drawing

("That's Herbert only just going to bed now," Joan interposed, as a door on the landing slammed vigorously.

Ralph looked at the ceiling, and shut his lips closely together. Why, he wondered, could Joan never for one

moment detach her mind from the details of domestic life? It seemed to him that she was getting more and

more enmeshed in them, and capable of shorter and less frequent flights into the outer world, and yet she was

"Poor Ralph!" said Joan suddenly, with a smile. "You think your sister's getting very old and very

"I don't think anything of the kind," he said stoutly, but he flushed. "But you lead a dog's life, Joan. When

you're not working in an office, you're worrying over the rest of us. And I'm not much good to you, I'm

Joan rose, and stood for a moment warming her hands, and, apparently, meditating as to whether she should

say anything more or not. A feeling of great intimacy united the brother and sister, and the semicircular lines

above their eyebrows disappeared. No, there was nothing more to be said on either side. Joan brushed her

brother's head with her hand as she passed him, murmured good night, and left the room. For some minutes

after she had gone Ralph lay quiescent, resting his head on his hand, but gradually his eyes filled with

thought, and the line reappeared on his brow, as the pleasant impression of companionship and ancient

After a time he opened his book, and read on steadily, glancing once or twice at his watch, as if he had set

himself a task to be accomplished in a certain measure of time. Now and then he heard voices in the house,

and the closing of bedroom doors, which showed that the building, at the top of which he sat, was inhabited

in every one of its cells. When midnight struck, Ralph shut his book, and with a candle in his hand,

descended to the ground floor, to ascertain that all lights were extinct and all doors locked. It was a

threadbare, wellworn house that he thus examined, as if the inmates had grazed down all luxuriance and

plenty to the verge of decency; and in the night, bereft of life, bare places and ancient blemishes were

Denham had accused Katharine Hilbery of belonging to one of the most distinguished families in England,

and if any one will take the trouble to consult Mr. Galton's "Hereditary Genius," he will find that this

assertion is not far from the truth. The Alardyces, the Hilberys, the Millingtons, and the Otways seem to

prove that intellect is a possession which can be tossed from one member of a certain group to another almost

indefinitely, and with apparent certainty that the brilliant gift will be safely caught and held by nine out of ten

of the privileged race. They had been conspicuous judges and admirals, lawyers and servants of the State for

some years before the richness of the soil culminated in the rarest flower that any family can boast, a great

writer, a poet eminent among the poets of England, a Richard Alardyce; and having produced him, they

proved once more the amazing virtues of their race by proceeding unconcernedly again with their usual task

of breeding distinguished men. They had sailed with Sir John Franklin to the North Pole, and ridden with

Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow, and when they were not lighthouses firmly based on rock for the

guidance of their generation, they were steady, serviceable candles, illuminating the ordinary chambers of

daily life. Whatever profession you looked at, there was a Warburton or an Alardyce, a Millington or a

It may be said, indeed, that English society being what it is, no very great merit is required, once you bear a

wellknown name, to put you into a position where it is easier on the whole to be eminent than obscure. And

if this is true of the sons, even the daughters, even in the nineteenth century, are apt to become people of

importance philanthropists and educationalists if they are spinsters, and the wives of distinguished men if

they marry. It is true that there were several lamentable exceptions to this rule in the Alardyce group, which

seems to indicate that the cadets of such houses go more rapidly to the bad than the children of ordinary

fathers and mothers, as if it were somehow a relief to them. But, on the whole, in these first years of the

twentieth century, the Alardyces and their relations were keeping their heads well above water. One finds

them at the tops of professions, with letters after their names; they sit in luxurious public offices, with private

secretaries attached to them; they write solid books in dark covers, issued by the presses of the two great

universities, and when one of them dies the chances are that another of them writes his biography.

Now the source of this nobility was, of course, the poet, and his immediate descendants, therefore, were

invested with greater luster than the collateral branches. Mrs. Hilbery, in virtue of her position as the only

child of the poet, was spiritually the head of the family, and Katharine, her daughter, had some superior rank

among all the cousins and connections, the more so because she was an only child. The Alardyces had

married and intermarried, and their offspring were generally profuse, and had a way of meeting regularly in

each other's houses for meals and family celebrations which had acquired a semi sacred character, and were

In times gone by, Mrs. Hilbery had known all the poets, all the novelists, all the beautiful women and

distinguished men of her time. These being now either dead or secluded in their infirm glory, she made her

house a meetingplace for her own relations, to whom she would lament the passing of the great days of the

nineteenth century, when every department of letters and art was represented in England by two or three

illustrious names. Where are their successors? she would ask, and the absence of any poet or painter or

novelist of the true caliber at the present day was a text upon which she liked to ruminate, in a sunset mood of

benignant reminiscence, which it would have been hard to disturb had there been need. But she was far from

visiting their inferiority upon the younger generation. She welcomed them very heartily to her house, told

them her stories, gave them sovereigns and ices and good advice, and weaved round them romances which

The quality of her birth oozed into Katharine's consciousness from a dozen different sources as soon as she

was able to perceive anything. Above her nursery fireplace hung a photograph of her grandfather's tomb in

Poets' Corner, and she was told in one of those moments of grownup confidence which are so tremendously

impressive to the child's mind, that he was buried there because he was a "good and great man." Later, on an

anniversary, she was taken by her mother through the fog in a hansom cab, and given a large bunch of bright,

sweetscented flowers to lay upon his tomb. The candles in the church, the singing and the booming of the

organ, were all, she thought, in his honor. Again and again she was brought down into the drawingroom to

receive the blessing of some awful distinguished old man, who sat, even to her childish eye, somewhat apart,

all gathered together and clutching a stick, unlike an ordinary visitor in her father's own arm chair, and her

father himself was there, unlike himself, too, a little excited and very polite. These formidable old creatures

used to take her in their arms, look very keenly in her eyes, and then to bless her, and tell her that she must

mind and be a good girl, or detect a look in her face something like Richard's as a small boy. That drew down

upon her her mother's fervent embrace, and she was sent back to the nursery very proud, and with a

mysterious sense of an important and unexplained state of things, which time, by degrees, unveiled to her.

There were always visitorsuncles and aunts and cousins "from India," to be reverenced for their

relationship alone, and others of the solitary and formidable class, whom she was enjoined by her parents to

"remember all your life." By these means, and from hearing constant talk of great men and their works, her

earliest conceptions of the world included an august circle of beings to whom she gave the names of

Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, and so on, who were, for some reason, much more nearly akin to

the Hilberys than to other people. They made a kind of boundary to her vision of life, and played a

considerable part in determining her scale of good and bad in her own small affairs. Her descent from one of

these gods was no surprise to her, but matter for satisfaction, until, as the years wore on, the privileges of her

lot were taken for granted, and certain drawbacks made themselves very manifest. Perhaps it is a little

depressing to inherit not lands but an example of intellectual and spiritual virtue; perhaps the conclusiveness

of a great ancestor is a little discouraging to those who run the risk of comparison with him. It seems as if,

having flowered so splendidly, nothing now remained possible but a steady growth of good, green stalk and

leaf. For these reasons, and for others, Katharine had her moments of despondency. The glorious past, in

which men and women grew to unexampled size, intruded too much upon the present, and dwarfed it too

consistently, to be altogether encouraging to one forced to make her experiment in living when the great age

She was drawn to dwell upon these matters more than was natural, in the first place owing to her mother's

absorption in them, and in the second because a great part of her time was spent in imagination with the dead,

since she was helping her mother to produce a life of the great poet. When Katharine was seventeen or

eighteenthat is to say, some ten years agoher mother had enthusiastically announced that now, with a

daughter to help her, the biography would soon be published. Notices to this effect found their way into the

literary papers, and for some time Katharine worked with a sense of great pride and achievement.

Lately, however, it had seemed to her that they were making no way at all, and this was the more tantalizing

because no one with the ghost of a literary temperament could doubt but that they had materials for one of the

greatest biographies that has ever been written. Shelves and boxes bulged with the precious stuff. The most

private lives of the most interesting people lay furled in yellow bundles of close written manuscript. In

addition to this Mrs. Hilbery had in her own head as bright a vision of that time as now remained to the

living, and could give those flashes and thrills to the old words which gave them almost the substance of

flesh. She had no difficulty in writing, and covered a page every morning as instinctively as a thrush sings,

but nevertheless, with all this to urge and inspire, and the most devout intention to accomplish the work, the

book still remained unwritten. Papers accumulated without much furthering their task, and in dull moments

Katharine had her doubts whether they would ever produce anything at all fit to lay before the public. Where

did the difficulty lie? Not in their materials, alas! nor in their ambitions, but in something more profound, in

her own inaptitude, and above all, in her mother's temperament. Katharine would calculate that she had never

known her write for more than ten minutes at a time. Ideas came to her chiefly when she was in motion. She

liked to perambulate the room with a duster in her hand, with which she stopped to polish the backs of

already lustrous books, musing and romancing as she did so. Suddenly the right phrase or the penetrating

point of view would suggest itself, and she would drop her duster and write ecstatically for a few breathless

moments; and then the mood would pass away, and the duster would be sought for, and the old books

polished again. These spells of inspiration never burnt steadily, but flickered over the gigantic mass of the

subject as capriciously as a willo'the wisp, lighting now on this point, now on that. It was as much as

Katharine could do to keep the pages of her mother's manuscript in order, but to sort them so that the

sixteenth year of Richard Alardyce's life succeeded the fifteenth was beyond her skill. And yet they were so

brilliant, these paragraphs, so nobly phrased, so lightninglike in their illumination, that the dead seemed to

crowd the very room. Read continuously, they produced a sort of vertigo, and set her asking herself in despair

what on earth she was to do with them? Her mother refused, also, to face the radical questions of what to

leave in and what to leave out. She could not decide how far the public was to be told the truth about the

poet's separation from his wife. She drafted passages to suit either case, and then liked each so well that she

But the book must be written. It was a duty that they owed the world, and to Katharine, at least, it meant more

than that, for if they could not between them get this one book accomplished they had no right to their

privileged position. Their increment became yearly more and more unearned. Besides, it must be established

By the time she was twentyseven, these thoughts had become very familiar to her. They trod their way

through her mind as she sat opposite her mother of a morning at a table heaped with bundles of old letters and

well supplied with pencils, scissors, bottles of gum, indiarubber bands, large envelopes, and other

appliances for the manufacture of books. Shortly before Ralph Denham's visit, Katharine had resolved to try

the effect of strict rules upon her mother's habits of literary composition. They were to be seated at their

tables every morning at ten o'clock, with a cleanswept morning of empty, secluded hours before them. They

were to keep their eyes fast upon the paper, and nothing was to tempt them to speech, save at the stroke of the

hour when ten minutes for relaxation were to be allowed them. If these rules were observed for a year, she

made out on a sheet of paper that the completion of the book was certain, and she laid her scheme before her

mother with a feeling that much of the task was already accomplished. Mrs. Hilbery examined the sheet of

paper very carefully. Then she clapped her hands and exclaimed enthusiastically:

"Well done, Katharine! What a wonderful head for business you've got! Now I shall keep this before me, and

every day I shall make a little mark in my pocketbook, and on the last day of alllet me think, what shall we

do to celebrate the last day of all? If it weren't the winter we could take a jaunt to Italy. They say

Switzerland's very lovely in the snow, except for the cold. But, as you say, the great thing is to finish the

When they inspected her manuscripts, which Katharine had put in order, they found a state of things well

calculated to dash their spirits, if they had not just resolved on reform. They found, to begin with, a great

variety of very imposing paragraphs with which the biography was to open; many of these, it is true, were

unfinished, and resembled triumphal arches standing upon one leg, but, as Mrs. Hilbery observed, they could

be patched up in ten minutes, if she gave her mind to it. Next, there was an account of the ancient home of the

Alardyces, or rather, of spring in Suffolk, which was very beautifully written, although not essential to the

story. However, Katharine had put together a string of names and dates, so that the poet was capably brought

into the world, and his ninth year was reached without further mishap. After that, Mrs. Hilbery wished, for

sentimental reasons, to introduce the recollections of a very fluent old lady, who had been brought up in the

same village, but these Katharine decided must go. It might be advisable to introduce here a sketch of

contemporary poetry contributed by Mr. Hilbery, and thus terse and learned and altogether out of keeping

with the rest, but Mrs. Hilbery was of opinion that it was too bare, and made one feel altogether like a good

little girl in a lectureroom, which was not at all in keeping with her father. It was put on one side. Now came

the period of his early manhood, when various affairs of the heart must either be concealed or revealed; here

again Mrs. Hilbery was of two minds, and a thick packet of manuscript was shelved for further consideration.

Several years were now altogether omitted, because Mrs. Hilbery had found something distasteful to her in

that period, and had preferred to dwell upon her own recollections as a child. After this, it seemed to

Katharine that the book became a wild dance of willo'thewisps, without form or continuity, without

coherence even, or any attempt to make a narrative. Here were twenty pages upon her grandfather's taste in

hats, an essay upon contemporary china, a long account of a summer day's expedition into the country, when

they had missed their train, together with fragmentary visions of all sorts of famous men and women, which

seemed to be partly imaginary and partly authentic. There were, moreover, thousands of letters, and a mass of

faithful recollections contributed by old friends, which had grown yellow now in their envelopes, but must be

placed somewhere, or their feelings would be hurt. So many volumes had been written about the poet since

his death that she had also to dispose of a great number of misstatements, which involved minute researches

and much correspondence. Sometimes Katharine brooded, half crushed, among her papers; sometimes she

felt that it was necessary for her very existence that she should free herself from the past; at others, that the

past had completely displaced the present, which, when one resumed life after a morning among the dead,

The worst of it was that she had no aptitude for literature. She did not like phrases. She had even some natural

antipathy to that process of selfexamination, that perpetual effort to understand one's own feeling, and

express it beautifully, fitly, or energetically in language, which constituted so great a part of her mother's

existence. She was, on the contrary, inclined to be silent; she shrank from expressing herself even in talk, let

alone in writing. As this disposition was highly convenient in a family much given to the manufacture of

phrases, and seemed to argue a corresponding capacity for action, she was, from her childhood even, put in

charge of household affairs. She had the reputation, which nothing in her manner contradicted, of being the

most practical of people. Ordering meals, directing servants, paying bills, and so contriving that every clock

ticked more or less accurately in time, and a number of vases were always full of fresh flowers was supposed

to be a natural endowment of hers, and, indeed, Mrs. Hilbery often observed that it was poetry the wrong side

out. From a very early age, too, she had to exert herself in another capacity; she had to counsel and help and

generally sustain her mother. Mrs. Hilbery would have been perfectly well able to sustain herself if the world

had been what the world is not. She was beautifully adapted for life in another planet. But the natural genius

she had for conducting affairs there was of no real use to her here. Her watch, for example, was a constant

source of surprise to her, and at the age of sixtyfive she was still amazed at the ascendancy which rules and

reasons exerted over the lives of other people. She had never learnt her lesson, and had constantly to be

punished for her ignorance. But as that ignorance was combined with a fine natural insight which saw deep

whenever it saw at all, it was not possible to write Mrs. Hilbery off among the dunces; on the contrary, she

had a way of seeming the wisest person in the room. But, on the whole, she found it very necessary to seek

Katharine, thus, was a member of a very great profession which has, as yet, no title and very little

recognition, although the labor of mill and factory is, perhaps, no more severe and the results of less benefit

to the world. She lived at home. She did it very well, too. Any one coming to the house in Cheyne Walk felt

that here was an orderly place, shapely, controlleda place where life had been trained to show to the best

advantage, and, though composed of different elements, made to appear harmonious and with a character of

its own. Perhaps it was the chief triumph of Katharine's art that Mrs. Hilbery's character predominated. She

and Mr. Hilbery appeared to be a rich background for her mother's more striking qualities.

Silence being, thus, both natural to her and imposed upon her, the only other remark that her mother's friends

were in the habit of making about it was that it was neither a stupid silence nor an indifferent silence. But to

what quality it owed its character, since character of some sort it had, no one troubled themselves to inquire.

It was understood that she was helping her mother to produce a great book. She was known to manage the

household. She was certainly beautiful. That accounted for her satisfactorily. But it would have been a

surprise, not only to other people but to Katharine herself, if some magic watch could have taken count of the

moments spent in an entirely different occupation from her ostensible one. Sitting with faded papers before

her, she took part in a series of scenes such as the taming of wild ponies upon the American prairies, or the

conduct of a vast ship in a hurricane round a black promontory of rock, or in others more peaceful, but

marked by her complete emancipation from her present surroundings and, needless to say, by her surpassing

ability in her new vocation. When she was rid of the pretense of paper and pen, phrasemaking and

biography, she turned her attention in a more legitimate direction, though, strangely enough, she would rather

have confessed her wildest dreams of hurricane and prairie than the fact that, upstairs, alone in her room, she

rose early in the morning or sat up late at night to . . . work at mathematics. No force on earth would have

made her confess that. Her actions when thus engaged were furtive and secretive, like those of some

nocturnal animal. Steps had only to sound on the staircase, and she slipped her paper between the leaves of a

great Greek dictionary which she had purloined from her father's room for this purpose. It was only at night,

indeed, that she felt secure enough from surprise to concentrate her mind to the utmost.

Perhaps the unwomanly nature of the science made her instinctively wish to conceal her love of it. But the

more profound reason was that in her mind mathematics were directly opposed to literature. She would not

have cared to confess how infinitely she preferred the exactitude, the starlike impersonality, of figures to the

confusion, agitation, and vagueness of the finest prose. There was something a little unseemly in thus

opposing the tradition of her family; something that made her feel wrongheaded, and thus more than ever

disposed to shut her desires away from view and cherish them with extraordinary fondness. Again and again

she was thinking of some problem when she should have been thinking of her grandfather. Waking from

these trances, she would see that her mother, too, had lapsed into some dream almost as visionary as her own,

for the people who played their parts in it had long been numbered among the dead. But, seeing her own state

mirrored in her mother's face, Katharine would shake herself awake with a sense of irritation. Her mother was

the last person she wished to resemble, much though she admired her. Her common sense would assert itself

almost brutally, and Mrs. Hilbery, looking at her with her odd sidelong glance, that was half malicious and

half tender, would liken her to "your wicked old Uncle Judge Peter, who used to be heard delivering sentence

of death in the bathroom. Thank Heaven, Katharine, I've not a drop of HIM in me!"

At about nine o'clock at night, on every alternate Wednesday, Miss Mary Datchet made the same resolve, that

she would never again lend her rooms for any purposes whatsoever. Being, as they were, rather large and

conveniently situated in a street mostly dedicated to offices off the Strand, people who wished to meet, either

for purposes of enjoyment, or to discuss art, or to reform the State, had a way of suggesting that Mary had

better be asked to lend them her rooms. She always met the request with the same frown of wellsimulated

annoyance, which presently dissolved in a kind of halfhumorous, half surly shrug, as of a large dog

tormented by children who shakes his ears. She would lend her room, but only on condition that all the

arrangements were made by her. This fortnightly meeting of a society for the free discussion of everything

entailed a great deal of moving, and pulling, and ranging of furniture against the wall, and placing of

breakable and precious things in safe places. Miss Datchet was quite capable of lifting a kitchen table on her

back, if need were, for although wellproportioned and dressed becomingly, she had the appearance of

She was some twentyfive years of age, but looked older because she earned, or intended to earn, her own

living, and had already lost the look of the irresponsible spectator, and taken on that of the private in the army

of workers. Her gestures seemed to have a certain purpose, the muscles round eyes and lips were set rather

firmly, as though the senses had undergone some discipline, and were held ready for a call on them. She had

contracted two faint lines between her eyebrows, not from anxiety but from thought, and it was quite evident

that all the feminine instincts of pleasing, soothing, and charming were crossed by others in no way peculiar

to her sex. For the rest she was browneyed, a little clumsy in movement, and suggested country birth and a

descent from respectable hardworking ancestors, who had been men of faith and integrity rather than

At the end of a fairly hard day's work it was certainly something of an effort to clear one's room, to pull the

mattress off one's bed, and lay it on the floor, to fill a pitcher with cold coffee, and to sweep a long table clear

for plates and cups and saucers, with pyramids of little pink biscuits between them; but when these alterations

were effected, Mary felt a lightness of spirit come to her, as if she had put off the stout stuff of her working

hours and slipped over her entire being some vesture of thin, bright silk. She knelt before the fire and looked

out into the room. The light fell softly, but with clear radiance, through shades of yellow and blue paper, and

the room, which was set with one or two sofas resembling grassy mounds in their lack of shape, looked

unusually large and quiet. Mary was led to think of the heights of a Sussex down, and the swelling green

circle of some camp of ancient warriors. The moonlight would be falling there so peacefully now, and she

"And here we are," she said, half aloud, half satirically, yet with evident pride, "talking about art."

She pulled a basket containing balls of differently colored wools and a pair of stockings which needed

darning towards her, and began to set her fingers to work; while her mind, reflecting the lassitude of her

body, went on perversely, conjuring up visions of solitude and quiet, and she pictured herself laying aside her

knitting and walking out on to the down, and hearing nothing but the sheep cropping the grass close to the

roots, while the shadows of the little trees moved very slightly this way and that in the moonlight, as the

breeze went through them. But she was perfectly conscious of her present situation, and derived some

pleasure from the reflection that she could rejoice equally in solitude, and in the presence of the many very

different people who were now making their way, by divers paths, across London to the spot where she was

As she ran her needle in and out of the wool, she thought of the various stages in her own life which made her

present position seem the culmination of successive miracles. She thought of her clerical father in his country

parsonage, and of her mother's death, and of her own determination to obtain education, and of her college

life, which had merged, not so very long ago, in the wonderful maze of London, which still seemed to her, in

spite of her constitutional levelheadedness, like a vast electric light, casting radiance upon the myriads of

men and women who crowded round it. And here she was at the very center of it all, that center which was

constantly in the minds of people in remote Canadian forests and on the plains of India, when their thoughts

turned to England. The nine mellow strokes, by which she was now apprised of the hour, were a message

from the great clock at Westminster itself. As the last of them died away, there was a firm knocking on her

own door, and she rose and opened it. She returned to the room, with a look of steady pleasure in her eyes,

"But you expect a great many people," he added, looking round him. "It's like a room on the stage. Who is it

"William Rodney, upon the Elizabethan use of metaphor. I expect a good solid paper, with plenty of

Ralph warmed his hands at the fire, which was flapping bravely in the grate, while Mary took up her stocking

"I suppose you are the only woman in London who darns her own stockings," he observed.

"I'm only one of a great many thousands really," she replied, "though I must admit that I was thinking myself

very remarkable when you came in. And now that you're here I don't think myself remarkable at all. How

horrid of you! But I'm afraid you're much more remarkable than I am. You've done much more than I've

"Well, I must reflect with Emerson that it's being and not doing that matters," she continued.

"Emerson?" Ralph exclaimed, with derision. "You don't mean to say you read Emerson?"

"Perhaps it wasn't Emerson; but why shouldn't I read Emerson?" she asked, with a tinge of anxiety.

"There's no reason that I know of. It's the combination that's odd books and stockings. The combination is

very odd." But it seemed to recommend itself to him. Mary gave a little laugh, expressive of happiness, and

the particular stitches that she was now putting into her work appeared to her to be done with singular grace

"You always say that," she said. "I assure you it's a common 'combination,' as you call it, in the houses of the

clergy. The only thing that's odd about me is that I enjoy them bothEmerson and the stocking."

"It's only Mr. Turner, on the floor below," said Mary, and she felt grateful to Mr. Turner for having alarmed

"There'll be the Morrises and the Crashaws, and Dick Osborne, and Septimus, and all that set. Katharine

Mary pressed him to tell her all about it, and Ralph was not at all unwilling to exhibit proofs of the extent of

his knowledge. He described the scene with certain additions and exaggerations which interested Mary very

"But, in spite of what you say, I do admire her," she said. "I've only seen her once or twice, but she seems to

"I didn't mean to abuse her. I only felt that she wasn't very sympathetic to me."

"Now that's my door, all right," Mary exclaimed, carefully putting her wools away, as a succession of knocks

reverberated unnecessarily, accompanied by a sound of people stamping their feet and laughing. A moment

later the room was full of young men and women, who came in with a peculiar look of expectation,

exclaimed "Oh!" when they saw Denham, and then stood still, gaping rather foolishly.

The room very soon contained between twenty and thirty people, who found seats for the most part upon the

floor, occupying the mattresses, and hunching themselves together into triangular shapes. They were all

young and some of them seemed to make a protest by their hair and dress, and something somber and

truculent in the expression of their faces, against the more normal type, who would have passed unnoticed in

an omnibus or an underground railway. It was notable that the talk was confined to groups, and was, at first,

entirely spasmodic in character, and muttered in undertones as if the speakers were suspicious of their

Katharine Hilbery came in rather late, and took up a position on the floor, with her back against the wall. She

looked round quickly, recognized about half a dozen people, to whom she nodded, but failed to see Ralph, or,

if so, had already forgotten to attach any name to him. But in a second these heterogeneous elements were all

united by the voice of Mr. Rodney, who suddenly strode up to the table, and began very rapidly in

All the different heads swung slightly or steadied themselves into a position in which they could gaze straight

at the speaker's face, and the same rather solemn expression was visible on all of them. But, at the same time,

even the faces that were most exposed to view, and therefore most tautly under control, disclosed a sudden

impulsive tremor which, unless directly checked, would have developed into an outburst of laughter. The first

sight of Mr. Rodney was irresistibly ludicrous. He was very red in the face, whether from the cool November

night or nervousness, and every movement, from the way he wrung his hands to the way he jerked his head to

right and left, as though a vision drew him now to the door, now to the window, bespoke his horrible

discomfort under the stare of so many eyes. He was scrupulously well dressed, and a pearl in the center of his

tie seemed to give him a touch of aristocratic opulence. But the rather prominent eyes and the impulsive

stammering manner, which seemed to indicate a torrent of ideas intermittently pressing for utterance and

always checked in their course by a clutch of nervousness, drew no pity, as in the case of a more imposing

personage, but a desire to laugh, which was, however, entirely lacking in malice. Mr. Rodney was evidently

so painfully conscious of the oddity of his appearance, and his very redness and the starts to which his body

was liable gave such proof of his own discomfort, that there was something endearing in this ridiculous

susceptibility, although most people would probably have echoed Denham's private exclamation, "Fancy

His paper was carefully written out, but in spite of this precaution Mr. Rodney managed to turn over two

sheets instead of one, to choose the wrong sentence where two were written together, and to discover his own

handwriting suddenly illegible. When he found himself possessed of a coherent passage, he shook it at his

audience almost aggressively, and then fumbled for another. After a distressing search a fresh discovery

would be made, and produced in the same way, until, by means of repeated attacks, he had stirred his

audience to a degree of animation quite remarkable in these gatherings. Whether they were stirred by his

enthusiasm for poetry or by the contortions which a human being was going through for their benefit, it

would be hard to say. At length Mr. Rodney sat down impulsively in the middle of a sentence, and, after a

pause of bewilderment, the audience expressed its relief at being able to laugh aloud in a decided outburst of

Mr. Rodney acknowledged this with a wild glance round him, and, instead of waiting to answer questions, he

jumped up, thrust himself through the seated bodies into the corner where Katharine was sitting, and

"Well, Katharine, I hope I've made a big enough fool of myself even for you! It was terrible! terrible!

"Hush! You must answer their questions," Katharine whispered, desiring, at all costs, to keep him quiet.

Oddly enough, when the speaker was no longer in front of them, there seemed to be much that was suggestive

in what he had said. At any rate, a palefaced young man with sad eyes was already on his feet, delivering an

accurately worded speech with perfect composure. William Rodney listened with a curious lifting of his

"No, I shan't! They'd only laugh at me. Why did I let you persuade me that these sort of people care for

There was much to be said both for and against Mr. Rodney's paper. It had been crammed with assertions that

suchandsuch passages, taken liberally from English, French, and Italian, are the supreme pearls of

literature. Further, he was fond of using metaphors which, compounded in the study, were apt to sound either

cramped or out of place as he delivered them in fragments. Literature was a fresh garland of spring flowers,

he said, in which yewberries and the purple nightshade mingled with the various tints of the anemone; and

somehow or other this garland encircled marble brows. He had read very badly some very beautiful

quotations. But through his manner and his confusion of language there had emerged some passion of feeling

which, as he spoke, formed in the majority of the audience a little picture or an idea which each now was

eager to give expression to. Most of the people there proposed to spend their lives in the practice either of

writing or painting, and merely by looking at them it could be seen that, as they listened to Mr. Purvis first,

and then to Mr. Greenhalgh, they were seeing something done by these gentlemen to a possession which they

thought to be their own. One person after another rose, and, as with an illbalanced axe, attempted to hew out

his conception of art a little more clearly, and sat down with the feeling that, for some reason which he could

not grasp, his strokes had gone awry. As they sat down they turned almost invariably to the person sitting

next them, and rectified and continued what they had just said in public. Before long, therefore, the groups on

the mattresses and the groups on the chairs were all in communication with each other, and Mary Datchet,

Both of them instinctively turned their eyes in the direction of the reader of the paper. He was lying back

against the wall, with his eyes apparently shut, and his chin sunk upon his collar. Katharine was turning over

the pages of his manuscript as if she were looking for some passage that had particularly struck her, and had a

"Let's go and tell him how much we liked it," said Mary, thus suggesting an action which Ralph was anxious

to take, though without her he would have been too proud to do it, for he suspected that he had more interest

"That was a very interesting paper," Mary began, without any shyness, seating herself on the floor opposite to

Rodney, who had opened his eyes on their approach, regarded her for a moment in suspicious silence.

"Do you say that merely to disguise the fact of my ridiculous failure?" he asked.

"He says he doesn't mind what we think of him," she remarked. "He says we don't care a rap for art of any

"I don't intend to pity you, Mr. Rodney," Mary remarked, kindly, but firmly. "When a paper's a failure,

The sound, which filled the room, with its hurry of short syllables, its sudden pauses, and its sudden attacks,

"D'you think that's all about my paper?" Rodney inquired, after a moment's attention, with a distinct

"It's the ten minutes after a paper is read that proves whether it's been a success or not," he said. "If I were

This commendation seemed to comfort Mr. Rodney completely, and he began to bethink him of all the

"Did you agree at all, Denham, with what I said about Shakespeare's later use of imagery? I'm afraid I didn't

Here he gathered himself together, and by means of a series of froglike jerks, succeeded in bringing himself

Denham answered him with the brevity which is the result of having another sentence in the mind to be

addressed to another person. He wished to say to Katharine: "Did you remember to get that picture glazed

before your aunt came to dinner?" but, besides having to answer Rodney, he was not sure that the remark,

with its assertion of intimacy, would not strike Katharine as impertinent. She was listening to what some one

in another group was saying. Rodney, meanwhile, was talking about the Elizabethan dramatists.

He was a curiouslooking man since, upon first sight, especially if he chanced to be talking with animation,

he appeared, in some way, ridiculous; but, next moment, in repose, his face, with its large nose, thin cheeks

and lips expressing the utmost sensibility, somehow recalled a Roman head bound with laurel, cut upon a

circle of semi transparent reddish stone. It had dignity and character. By profession a clerk in a Government

office, he was one of those martyred spirits to whom literature is at once a source of divine joy and of almost

intolerable irritation. Not content to rest in their love of it, they must attempt to practise it themselves, and

they are generally endowed with very little facility in composition. They condemn whatever they produce.

Moreover, the violence of their feelings is such that they seldom meet with adequate sympathy, and being

rendered very sensitive by their cultivated perceptions, suffer constant slights both to their own persons and

to the thing they worship. But Rodney could never resist making trial of the sympathies of any one who

seemed favorably disposed, and Denham's praise had stimulated his very susceptible vanity.

"You remember the passage just before the death of the Duchess?" he continued, edging still closer to

Denham, and adjusting his elbow and knee in an incredibly angular combination. Here, Katharine, who had

been cut off by these maneuvers from all communication with the outer world, rose, and seated herself upon

the windowsill, where she was joined by Mary Datchet. The two young women could thus survey the whole

party. Denham looked after them, and made as if he were tearing handfuls of grass up by the roots from the

carpet. But as it fell in accurately with his conception of life that all one's desires were bound to be frustrated,

he concentrated his mind upon literature, and determined, philosophically, to get what he could out of that.

Katharine was pleasantly excited. A variety of courses was open to her. She knew several people slightly, and

at any moment one of them might rise from the floor and come and speak to her; on the other hand, she might

select somebody for herself, or she might strike into Rodney's discourse, to which she was intermittently

attentive. She was conscious of Mary's body beside her, but, at the same time, the consciousness of being

both of them women made it unnecessary to speak to her. But Mary, feeling, as she had said, that Katharine

was a "personality," wished so much to speak to her that in a few moments she did.

"They're exactly like a flock of sheep, aren't they?" she said, referring to the noise that rose from the scattered

"No, I don't think it's got anything to do with the Elizabethans. There! Didn't you hear them say, 'Insurance

"I wonder why men always talk about politics?" Mary speculated. "I suppose, if we had votes, we should,

Katharine looked at Ralph Denham, who was now pounding his way through the metaphysics of metaphor

with Rodney, and was reminded of his talk that Sunday afternoon. She connected him vaguely with Mary.

"I suppose you're one of the people who think we should all have professions," she said, rather distantly, as if

"Well, I think I do," Katharine continued, with half a sigh. "You will always be able to say that you've done

"In a crowd? Why in a crowd?" Mary asked, deepening the two lines between her eyes, and hoisting herself

"Don't you see how many different things these people care about? And I want to beat them downI only

mean," she corrected herself, "that I want to assert myself, and it's difficult, if one hasn't a profession."

Mary smiled, thinking that to beat people down was a process that should present no difficulty to Miss

Katharine Hilbery. They knew each other so slightly that the beginning of intimacy, which Katharine seemed

to initiate by talking about herself, had something solemn in it, and they were silent, as if to decide whether to

"Ah, but I want to trample upon their prostrate bodies!" Katharine announced, a moment later, with a laugh,

"One doesn't necessarily trample upon people's bodies because one runs an office," Mary remarked.

"No. Perhaps not," Katharine replied. The conversation lapsed, and Mary saw Katharine looking out into the

room rather moodily with closed lips, the desire to talk about herself or to initiate a friendship having,

apparently, left her. Mary was struck by her capacity for being thus easily silent, and occupied with her own

thoughts. It was a habit that spoke of loneliness and a mind thinking for itself. When Katharine remained

"And yet they are very cleverat least," Katharine added, "I suppose they have all read Webster."

"Surely you don't think that a proof of cleverness? I've read Webster, I've read Ben Jonson, but I don't think

"I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking how you live alone in this room, and have parties."

"It means, chiefly, a power of being disagreeable to one's own family, I think. I have that, perhaps. I didn't

want to live at home, and I told my father. He didn't like it. . . . But then I have a sister, and you haven't, have

Katharine seemed instantly to be confronted by some familiar thought from which she wished to escape. She

replied, "Yes, I am helping my mother," in such a way that Mary felt herself baffled, and put back again into

the position in which she had been at the beginning of their talk. It seemed to her that Katharine possessed a

curious power of drawing near and receding, which sent alternate emotions through her far more quickly than

was usual, and kept her in a condition of curious alertness. Desiring to classify her, Mary bethought her of the

"She's an egoist," she said to herself, and stored that word up to give to Ralph one day when, as it would

"Heavens, what a mess there'll be tomorrow morning!" Katharine exclaimed. "I hope you don't sleep in this

"Let me guess. You were laughing because you thought I'd changed the conversation?"

So saying, Katharine drew back the curtain in order, perhaps, to conceal the momentary flush of pleasure

"Mary Datchet," said Mary. "It's not such an imposing name as Katharine Hilbery, I'm afraid."

They both looked out of the window, first up at the hard silver moon, stationary among a hurry of little

greyblue clouds, and then down upon the roofs of London, with all their upright chimneys, and then below

them at the empty moonlit pavement of the street, upon which the joint of each pavingstone was clearly

marked out. Mary then saw Katharine raise her eyes again to the moon, with a contemplative look in them, as

though she were setting that moon against the moon of other nights, held in memory. Some one in the room

behind them made a joke about stargazing, which destroyed their pleasure in it, and they looked back into

Ralph had been watching for this moment, and he instantly produced his sentence.

"I wonder, Miss Hilbery, whether you remembered to get that picture glazed?" His voice showed that the

"Oh, you idiot!" Mary exclaimed, very nearly aloud, with a sense that Ralph had said something very stupid.

So, after three lessons in Latin grammar, one might correct a fellow student, whose knowledge did not

"Picturewhat picture?" Katharine asked. "Oh, at home, you meanthat Sunday afternoon. Was it the day

The three of them stood for a moment awkwardly silent, and then Mary left them in order to see that the great

pitcher of coffee was properly handled, for beneath all her education she preserved the anxieties of one who

Ralph could think of nothing further to say; but could one have stripped off his mask of flesh, one would

have seen that his will power was rigidly set upon a single objectthat Miss Hilbery should obey him. He

wished her to stay there until, by some measures not yet apparent to him, he had conquered her interest.

These states of mind transmit themselves very often without the use of language, and it was evident to

Katharine that this young man had fixed his mind upon her. She instantly recalled her first impressions of

him, and saw herself again proffering family relics. She reverted to the state of mind in which he had left her

that Sunday afternoon. She supposed that he judged her very severely. She argued naturally that, if this were

the case, the burden of the conversation should rest with him. But she submitted so far as to stand perfectly

still, her eyes upon the opposite wall, and her lips very nearly closed, though the desire to laugh stirred them

"You know the names of the stars, I suppose?" Denham remarked, and from the tone of his voice one might

"I think you make a system of saying disagreeable things, Miss Hilbery," he broke out, again going further

than he meant to. "I suppose it's one of the characteristics of your class. They never talk seriously to their

Whether it was that they were meeting on neutral ground tonight, or whether the carelessness of an old grey

coat that Denham wore gave an ease to his bearing that he lacked in conventional dress, Katharine certainly

"In what sense are you my inferior?" she asked, looking at him gravely, as though honestly searching for his

meaning. The look gave him great pleasure. For the first time he felt himself on perfectly equal terms with a

woman whom he wished to think well of him, although he could not have explained why her opinion of him

mattered one way or another. Perhaps, after all, he only wanted to have something of her to take home to

"I don't think I understand what you mean," Katharine repeated, and then she was obliged to stop and answer

some one who wished to know whether she would buy a ticket for an opera from them, at a reduction. Indeed,

the temper of the meeting was now unfavorable to separate conversation; it had become rather debauched and

hilarious, and people who scarcely knew each other were making use of Christian names with apparent

cordiality, and had reached that kind of gay tolerance and general friendliness which human beings in

England only attain after sitting together for three hours or so, and the first cold blast in the air of the street

freezes them into isolation once more. Cloaks were being flung round the shoulders, hats swiftly pinned to

the head; and Denham had the mortification of seeing Katharine helped to prepare herself by the ridiculous

Rodney. It was not the convention of the meeting to say goodbye, or necessarily even to nod to the person

with whom one was talking; but, nevertheless, Denham was disappointed by the completeness with which

Katharine parted from him, without any attempt to finish her sentence. She left with Rodney.

Denham had no conscious intention of following Katharine, but, seeing her depart, he took his hat and ran

rather more quickly down the stairs than he would have done if Katharine had not been in front of him. He

overtook a friend of his, by name Harry Sandys, who was going the same way, and they walked together a

The night was very still, and on such nights, when the traffic thins away, the walker becomes conscious of the

moon in the street, as if the curtains of the sky had been drawn apart, and the heaven lay bare, as it does in the

country. The air was softly cool, so that people who had been sitting talking in a crowd found it pleasant to

walk a little before deciding to stop an omnibus or encounter light again in an underground railway. Sandys,

who was a barrister with a philosophic tendency, took out his pipe, lit it, murmured "hum" and "ha," and was

silent. The couple in front of them kept their distance accurately, and appeared, so far as Denham could judge

by the way they turned towards each other, to be talking very constantly. He observed that when a pedestrian

going the opposite way forced them to part they came together again directly afterwards. Without intending

to watch them he never quite lost sight of the yellow scarf twisted round Katharine's head, or the light

overcoat which made Rodney look fashionable among the crowd. At the Strand he supposed that they would

separate, but instead they crossed the road, and took their way down one of the narrow passages which lead

through ancient courts to the river. Among the crowd of people in the big thoroughfares Rodney seemed

merely to be lending Katharine his escort, but now, when passengers were rare and the footsteps of the couple

were distinctly heard in the silence, Denham could not help picturing to himself some change in their

conversation. The effect of the light and shadow, which seemed to increase their height, was to make them

mysterious and significant, so that Denham had no feeling of irritation with Katharine, but rather a

halfdreamy acquiescence in the course of the world. Yes, she did very well to dream aboutbut Sandys

had suddenly begun to talk. He was a solitary man who had made his friends at college and always addressed

them as if they were still undergraduates arguing in his room, though many months or even years had passed

in some cases between the last sentence and the present one. The method was a little singular, but very

restful, for it seemed to ignore completely all accidents of human life, and to span very deep abysses with a

On this occasion he began, while they waited for a minute on the edge of the Strand:

Denham returned a suitable answer, and he proceeded to explain how this decision had been arrived at, and

what changes it involved in the philosophy which they both accepted. Meanwhile Katharine and Rodney

drew further ahead, and Denham kept, if that is the right expression for an involuntary action, one filament of

his mind upon them, while with the rest of his intelligence he sought to understand what Sandys was saying.

As they passed through the courts thus talking, Sandys laid the tip of his stick upon one of the stones forming

a timeworn arch, and struck it meditatively two or three times in order to illustrate something very obscure

about the complex nature of one's apprehension of facts. During the pause which this necessitated, Katharine

and Rodney turned the corner and disappeared. For a moment Denham stopped involuntarily in his sentence,

Unconscious that they were observed, Katharine and Rodney had come out on the Embankment. When they

had crossed the road, Rodney slapped his hand upon the stone parapet above the river and exclaimed:

"I promise I won't say another word about it, Katharine! But do stop a minute and look at the moon upon the

They stood silent for a few moments while the river shifted in its bed, and the silver and red lights which

were laid upon it were torn by the current and joined together again. Very far off up the river a steamer

hooted with its hollow voice of unspeakable melancholy, as if from the heart of lonely mistshrouded

"Ah!" Rodney cried, striking his hand once more upon the balustrade, "why can't one say how beautiful it all

is? Why am I condemned for ever, Katharine, to feel what I can't express? And the things I can give there's

no use in my giving. Trust me, Katharine," he added hastily, "I won't speak of it again. But in the presence of

beauty look at the iridescence round the moon!one feelsone feelsPerhaps if you married meI'm

half a poet, you see, and I can't pretend not to feel what I do feel. If I could writeah, that would be another

He spoke these disconnected sentences rather abruptly, with his eyes alternately upon the moon and upon the

"But for me I suppose you would recommend marriage?" said Katharine, with her eyes fixed on the moon.

"Certainly I should. Not for you only, but for all women. Why, you're nothing at all without it; you're only

half alive; using only half your faculties; you must feel that for yourself. That is why" Here he stopped

himself, and they began to walk slowly along the Embankment, the moon fronting them.

"I've been told a great many unpleasant things about myself tonight," Katharine stated, without attending to

him. "Mr. Denham seems to think it his mission to lecture me, though I hardly know him. By the way,

"And we write sonnets to your eyebrows, you cruel practical creature. Denham?" he added, as Katharine

remained silent. "A good fellow, I should think. He cares, naturally, for the right sort of things, I expect. But

"What happens with Mr. Denham is this: He comes to tea. I do all I can to put him at his ease. He merely sits

and scowls at me. Then I show him our manuscripts. At this he becomes really angry, and tells me I've no

business to call myself a middleclass woman. So we part in a huff; and next time we meet, which was

tonight, he walks straight up to me, and says, 'Go to the Devil!' That's the sort of behavior my mother

She paused and, slackening her steps, looked at the lighted train drawing itself smoothly over Hungerford

"Would your mother object to my being seen with you? No one could possibly recognize us, could they?"

Katharine looked at him, and perceiving that his solicitude was genuine, she laughed again, but with an

"You may laugh, Katharine, but I can tell you that if any of your friends saw us together at this time of night

they would talk about it, and I should find that very disagreeable. But why do you laugh?"

"I don't know. Because you're such a queer mixture, I think. You're half poet and half old maid."

"I know I always seem to you highly ridiculous. But I can't help having inherited certain traditions and trying

"Nonsense, William. You may come of the oldest family in Devonshire, but that's no reason why you should

"I'm ten years older than you are, Katharine, and I know more of the world than you do."

Rodney looked back over his shoulder and perceived that they were being followed at a short distance by a

taxicab, which evidently awaited his summons. Katharine saw it, too, and exclaimed:

"Nonsense, Katharine; you'll do nothing of the kind. It's nearly twelve o'clock, and we've walked too far as it

Katharine laughed and walked on so quickly that both Rodney and the taxicab had to increase their pace to

"Now, William," she said, "if people see me racing along the Embankment like this they WILL talk. You had

At this William beckoned, with a despotic gesture, to the cab with one hand, and with the other he brought

"Don't let the man see us struggling, for God's sake!" he murmured. Katharine stood for a moment quite still.

William shut the door sharply, gave the address to the driver, and turned away, lifting his hat punctiliously

He looked back after the cab twice, suspiciously, half expecting that she would stop it and dismount; but it

bore her swiftly on, and was soon out of sight. William felt in the mood for a short soliloquy of indignation,

"Of all the unreasonable, inconsiderate creatures I've ever known, she's the worst!" he exclaimed to himself,

striding back along the Embankment. "Heaven forbid that I should ever make a fool of myself with her again.

Why, I'd sooner marry the daughter of my landlady than Katharine Hilbery! She'd leave me not a moment's

Uttered aloud and with vehemence so that the stars of Heaven might hear, for there was no human being at

hand, these sentiments sounded satisfactorily irrefutable. Rodney quieted down, and walked on in silence,

until he perceived some one approaching him, who had something, either in his walk or his dress, which

proclaimed that he was one of William's acquaintances before it was possible to tell which of them he was. It

was Denham who, having parted from Sandys at the bottom of his staircase, was now walking to the Tube at

Charing Cross, deep in the thoughts which his talk with Sandys had suggested. He had forgotten the meeting

at Mary Datchet's rooms, he had forgotten Rodney, and metaphors and Elizabethan drama, and could have

sworn that he had forgotten Katharine Hilbery, too, although that was more disputable. His mind was scaling

the highest pinnacles of its alps, where there was only starlight and the untrodden snow. He cast strange eyes

If he had been in full possession of his mind, Denham would probably have passed on with a salutation. But

the shock of the interruption made him stand still, and before he knew what he was doing, he had turned and

was walking with Rodney in obedience to Rodney's invitation to come to his rooms and have something to

drink. Denham had no wish to drink with Rodney, but he followed him passively enough. Rodney was

gratified by this obedience. He felt inclined to be communicative with this silent man, who possessed so

obviously all the good masculine qualities in which Katharine now seemed lamentably deficient.

"You do well, Denham," he began impulsively, "to have nothing to do with young women. I offer you my

experienceif one trusts them one invariably has cause to repent. Not that I have any reason at this

moment," he added hastily, "to complain of them. It's a subject that crops up now and again for no particular

reason. Miss Datchet, I dare say, is one of the exceptions. Do you like Miss Datchet?"

These remarks indicated clearly enough that Rodney's nerves were in a state of irritation, and Denham

speedily woke to the situation of the world as it had been one hour ago. He had last seen Rodney walking

with Katharine. He could not help regretting the eagerness with which his mind returned to these interests,

and fretted him with the old trivial anxieties. He sank in his own esteem. Reason bade him break from

Rodney, who clearly tended to become confidential, before he had utterly lost touch with the problems of

high philosophy. He looked along the road, and marked a lamppost at a distance of some hundred yards, and

"Yes, I like Mary; I don't see how one could help liking her," he remarked cautiously, with his eye on the

"Ah, Denham, you're so different from me. You never give yourself away. I watched you this evening with

Katharine Hilbery. My instinct is to trust the person I'm talking to. That's why I'm always being taken in, I

Denham seemed to be pondering this statement of Rodney's, but, as a matter of fact, he was hardly conscious

of Rodney and his revelations, and was only concerned to make him mention Katharine again before they

Rodney stopped and once more began beating a kind of rhythm, as if he were marking a phrase in a

"Katharine Hilbery," he repeated, with a curious little chuckle. "No, Denham, I have no illusions about that

young woman. I think I made that plain to her tonight. But don't run away with a false impression," he

continued eagerly, turning and linking his arm through Denham's, as though to prevent him from escaping;

and, thus compelled, Denham passed the monitory lamppost, to which, in passing, he breathed an excuse,

for how could he break away when Rodney's arm was actually linked in his? "You must not think that I have

any bitterness against herfar from it. It's not altogether her fault, poor girl. She lives, you know, one of

those odious, selfcentered livesat least, I think them odious for a womanfeeding her wits upon

everything, having control of everything, getting far too much her own way at homespoilt, in a sense,

feeling that every one is at her feet, and so not realizing how she hurtsthat is, how rudely she behaves to

people who haven't all her advantages. Still, to do her justice, she's no fool," he added, as if to warn Denham

not to take any liberties. "She has taste. She has sense. She can understand you when you talk to her. But

she's a woman, and there's an end of it," he added, with another little chuckle, and dropped Denham's arm.

"Oh dear me, no. I should never think of telling Katharine the truth about herself. That wouldn't do at all. One

"Now I've learnt that she's refused to marry him why don't I go home?" Denham thought to himself. But he

went on walking beside Rodney, and for a time they did not speak, though Rodney hummed snatches of a

tune out of an opera by Mozart. A feeling of contempt and liking combine very naturally in the mind of one

to whom another has just spoken unpremeditatedly, revealing rather more of his private feelings than he

intended to reveal. Denham began to wonder what sort of person Rodney was, and at the same time Rodney

"I sometimes wonder why we don't chuck it. Why don't you emigrate, Denham? I should have thought that

"I'm often on the point of going myself. And then I know I couldn't live without this"and he waved his

hand towards the City of London, which wore, at this moment, the appearance of a town cut out of gray

"There are one or two people I'm fond of, and there's a little good music, and a few pictures, now and

thenjust enough to keep one dangling about here. Ah, but I couldn't live with savages! Are you fond of

books? Music? Pictures? D'you care at all for first editions? I've got a few nice things up here, things I pick

They had reached a small court of high eighteenthcentury houses, in one of which Rodney had his rooms.

They climbed a very steep staircase, through whose uncurtained windows the moonlight fell, illuminating the

banisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles of plates set on the windowsills, and jars halffull of milk.

Rodney's rooms were small, but the sittingroom window looked out into a courtyard, with its flagged

pavement, and its single tree, and across to the flat redbrick fronts of the opposite houses, which would not

have surprised Dr. Johnson, if he had come out of his grave for a turn in the moonlight. Rodney lit his lamp,

pulled his curtains, offered Denham a chair, and, flinging the manuscript of his paper on the Elizabethan use

"Oh dear me, what a waste of time! But it's over now, and so we may think no more about it."

He then busied himself very dexterously in lighting a fire, producing glasses, whisky, a cake, and cups and

saucers. He put on a faded crimson dressinggown, and a pair of red slippers, and advanced to Denham with

"The Baskerville Congreve," said Rodney, offering it to his guest. "I couldn't read him in a cheap edition."

When he was seen thus among his books and his valuables, amiably anxious to make his visitor comfortable,

and moving about with something of the dexterity and grace of a Persian cat, Denham relaxed his critical

attitude, and felt more at home with Rodney than he would have done with many men better known to him.

Rodney's room was the room of a person who cherishes a great many personal tastes, guarding them from the

rough blasts of the public with scrupulous attention. His papers and his books rose in jagged mounds on table

and floor, round which he skirted with nervous care lest his dressinggown might disarrange them ever so

slightly. On a chair stood a stack of photographs of statues and pictures, which it was his habit to exhibit, one

by one, for the space of a day or two. The books on his shelves were as orderly as regiments of soldiers, and

the backs of them shone like so many bronze beetlewings; though, if you took one from its place you saw a

shabbier volume behind it, since space was limited. An oval Venetian mirror stood above the fireplace, and

reflected duskily in its spotted depths the faint yellow and crimson of a jarful of tulips which stood among the

letters and pipes and cigarettes upon the mantelpiece. A small piano occupied a corner of the room, with the

"Well, Rodney," said Denham, as he filled his pipe and looked about him, "this is all very nice and

Rodney turned his head half round and smiled, with the pride of a proprietor, and then prevented himself

"If you mean that I shouldn't do anything good with leisure if I had it, I dare say you're right. But I should be

They sat silent, and the smoke from their pipes joined amicably in a blue vapor above their heads.

"I could spend three hours every day reading Shakespeare," Rodney remarked. "And there's music and

"I should write plays," he repeated. "I've written threequarters of one already, and I'm only waiting for a

The question arose in Denham's mind whether he should ask to see this play, as, no doubt, he was expected to

do. He looked rather stealthily at Rodney, who was tapping the coal nervously with a poker, and quivering

almost physically, so Denham thought, with desire to talk about this play of his, and vanity unrequited and

urgent. He seemed very much at Denham's mercy, and Denham could not help liking him, partly on that

"Well, . . . will you let me see the play?" Denham asked, and Rodney looked immediately appeased, but,

nevertheless, he sat silent for a moment, holding the poker perfectly upright in the air, regarding it with his

"Do you really care for this kind of thing?" he asked at length, in a different tone of voice from that in which

he had been speaking. And, without waiting for an answer, he went on, rather querulously: "Very few people

As he moved to fetch the play, Denham stretched a hand to the bookcase beside him, and took down the first

volume which his fingers touched. It happened to be a small and very lovely edition of Sir Thomas Browne,

containing the "Urn Burial," the "Hydriotaphia," and the "Garden of Cyrus," and, opening it at a passage

which he knew very nearly by heart, Denham began to read and, for some time, continued to read.

Rodney resumed his seat, with his manuscript on his knee, and from time to time he glanced at Denham, and

then joined his fingertips and crossed his thin legs over the fender, as if he experienced a good deal of

pleasure. At length Denham shut the book, and stood, with his back to the fireplace, occasionally making an

inarticulate humming sound which seemed to refer to Sir Thomas Browne. He put his hat on his head, and

stood over Rodney, who still lay stretched back in his chair, with his toes within the fender.

"I shall look in again some time," Denham remarked, upon which Rodney held up his hand, containing his

Denham took the manuscript and went. Two days later he was much surprised to find a thin parcel on his

breakfastplate, which, on being opened, revealed the very copy of Sir Thomas Browne which he had studied

so intently in Rodney's rooms. From sheer laziness he returned no thanks, but he thought of Rodney from

time to time with interest, disconnecting him from Katharine, and meant to go round one evening and smoke

a pipe with him. It pleased Rodney thus to give away whatever his friends genuinely admired. His library was

Of all the hours of an ordinary working weekday, which are the pleasantest to look forward to and to look

back upon? If a single instance is of use in framing a theory, it may be said that the minutes between

ninetwentyfive and ninethirty in the morning had a singular charm for Mary Datchet. She spent them in a

very enviable frame of mind; her contentment was almost unalloyed. High in the air as her flat was, some

beams from the morning sun reached her even in November, striking straight at curtain, chair, and carpet, and

painting there three bright, true spaces of green, blue, and purple, upon which the eye rested with a pleasure

There were few mornings when Mary did not look up, as she bent to lace her boots, and as she followed the

yellow rod from curtain to breakfasttable she usually breathed some sigh of thankfulness that her life

provided her with such moments of pure enjoyment. She was robbing no one of anything, and yet, to get so

much pleasure from simple things, such as eating one's breakfast alone in a room which had nice colors in it,

clean from the skirting of the boards to the corners of the ceiling, seemed to suit her so thoroughly that she

used at first to hunt about for some one to apologize to, or for some flaw in the situation. She had now been

six months in London, and she could find no flaw, but that, as she invariably concluded by the time her boots

were laced, was solely and entirely due to the fact that she had her work. Every day, as she stood with her

dispatchbox in her hand at the door of her flat, and gave one look back into the room to see that everything

was straight before she left, she said to herself that she was very glad that she was going to leave it all, that to

have sat there all day long, in the enjoyment of leisure, would have been intolerable.

Out in the street she liked to think herself one of the workers who, at this hour, take their way in rapid single

file along all the broad pavements of the city, with their heads slightly lowered, as if all their effort were to

follow each other as closely as might be; so that Mary used to figure to herself a straight rabbitrun worn by

their unswerving feet upon the pavement. But she liked to pretend that she was indistinguishable from the

rest, and that when a wet day drove her to the Underground or omnibus, she gave and took her share of crowd

and wet with clerks and typists and commercial men, and shared with them the serious business of

Thus thinking, on the particular morning in question, she made her away across Lincoln's Inn Fields and up

Kingsway, and so through Southampton Row until she reached her office in Russell Square. Now and then

she would pause and look into the window of some bookseller or flower shop, where, at this early hour, the

goods were being arranged, and empty gaps behind the plate glass revealed a state of undress. Mary felt

kindly disposed towards the shopkeepers, and hoped that they would trick the midday public into purchasing,

for at this hour of the morning she ranged herself entirely on the side of the shopkeepers and bank clerks, and

regarded all who slept late and had money to spend as her enemy and natural prey. And directly she had

crossed the road at Holborn, her thoughts all came naturally and regularly to roost upon her work, and she

forgot that she was, properly speaking, an amateur worker, whose services were unpaid, and could hardly be

said to wind the world up for its daily task, since the world, so far, had shown very little desire to take the

She was thinking all the way up Southampton Row of notepaper and foolscap, and how an economy in the

use of paper might be effected (without, of course, hurting Mrs. Seal's feelings), for she was certain that the

great organizers always pounce, to begin with, upon trifles like these, and build up their triumphant reforms

upon a basis of absolute solidity; and, without acknowledging it for a moment, Mary Datchet was determined

to be a great organizer, and had already doomed her society to reconstruction of the most radical kind. Once

or twice lately, it is true, she had started, broad awake, before turning into Russell Square, and denounced

herself rather sharply for being already in a groove, capable, that is, of thinking the same thoughts every

morning at the same hour, so that the chestnutcolored brick of the Russell Square houses had some curious

connection with her thoughts about office economy, and served also as a sign that she should get into trim for

meeting Mr. Clacton, or Mrs. Seal, or whoever might be beforehand with her at the office. Having no

religious belief, she was the more conscientious about her life, examining her position from time to time very

seriously, and nothing annoyed her more than to find one of these bad habits nibbling away unheeded at the

precious substance. What was the good, after all, of being a woman if one didn't keep fresh, and cram one's

life with all sorts of views and experiments? Thus she always gave herself a little shake, as she turned the

corner, and, as often as not, reached her own door whistling a snatch of a Somersetshire ballad.

The suffrage office was at the top of one of the large Russell Square houses, which had once been lived in by

a great city merchant and his family, and was now let out in slices to a number of societies which displayed

assorted initials upon doors of ground glass, and kept, each of them, a typewriter which clicked busily all day

long. The old house, with its great stone staircase, echoed hollowly to the sound of typewriters and of

errandboys from ten to six. The noise of different typewriters already at work, disseminating their views

upon the protection of native races, or the value of cereals as foodstuffs, quickened Mary's steps, and she

always ran up the last flight of steps which led to her own landing, at whatever hour she came, so as to get her

She sat herself down to her letters, and very soon all these speculations were forgotten, and the two lines

drew themselves between her eyebrows, as the contents of the letters, the office furniture, and the sounds of

activity in the next room gradually asserted their sway upon her. By eleven o'clock the atmosphere of

concentration was running so strongly in one direction that any thought of a different order could hardly have

survived its birth more than a moment or so. The task which lay before her was to organize a series of

entertainments, the profits of which were to benefit the society, which drooped for want of funds. It was her

first attempt at organization on a large scale, and she meant to achieve something remarkable. She meant to

use the cumbrous machine to pick out this, that, and the other interesting person from the muddle of the

world, and to set them for a week in a pattern which must catch the eyes of Cabinet Ministers, and the eyes

once caught, the old arguments were to be delivered with unexampled originality. Such was the scheme as a

whole; and in contemplation of it she would become quite flushed and excited, and have to remind herself of

The door would open, and Mr. Clacton would come in to search for a certain leaflet buried beneath a pyramid

of leaflets. He was a thin, sandyhaired man of about thirtyfive, spoke with a Cockney accent, and had

about him a frugal look, as if nature had not dealt generously with him in any way, which, naturally,

prevented him from dealing generously with other people. When he had found his leaflet, and offered a few

jocular hints upon keeping papers in order, the typewriting would stop abruptly, and Mrs. Seal would burst

into the room with a letter which needed explanation in her hand. This was a more serious interruption than

the other, because she never knew exactly what she wanted, and half a dozen requests would bolt from her,

no one of which was clearly stated. Dressed in plumcolored velveteen, with short, gray hair, and a face that

seemed permanently flushed with philanthropic enthusiasm, she was always in a hurry, and always in some

disorder. She wore two crucifixes, which got themselves entangled in a heavy gold chain upon her breast, and

seemed to Mary expressive of her mental ambiguity. Only her vast enthusiasm and her worship of Miss

Markham, one of the pioneers of the society, kept her in her place, for which she had no sound qualification.

So the morning wore on, and the pile of letters grew, and Mary felt, at last, that she was the center ganglion

of a very fine network of nerves which fell over England, and one of these days, when she touched the heart

of the system, would begin feeling and rushing together and emitting their splendid blaze of revolutionary

fireworks for some such metaphor represents what she felt about her work, when her brain had been heated

Shortly before one o'clock Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal desisted from their labors, and the old joke about

luncheon, which came out regularly at this hour, was repeated with scarcely any variation of words. Mr.

Clacton patronized a vegetarian restaurant; Mrs. Seal brought sandwiches, which she ate beneath the

planetrees in Russell Square; while Mary generally went to a gaudy establishment, upholstered in red plush,

near by, where, much to the vegetarian's disapproval, you could buy steak, two inches thick, or a roast section

"The bare branches against the sky do one so much GOOD," Mrs. Seal asserted, looking out into the Square.

"I confess I don't know how you manage it, Miss Datchet," Mr. Clacton remarked. "I should sleep all the

"What's the very latest thing in literature?" Mary asked, good humoredly pointing to the yellowcovered

volume beneath Mr. Clacton's arm, for he invariably read some new French author at lunchtime, or

squeezed in a visit to a picture gallery, balancing his social work with an ardent culture of which he was

So they parted and Mary walked away, wondering if they guessed that she really wanted to get away from

them, and supposing that they had not quite reached that degree of subtlety. She bought herself an evening

paper, which she read as she ate, looking over the top of it again and again at the queer people who were

buying cakes or imparting their secrets, until some young woman whom she knew came in, and she called

out, "Eleanor, come and sit by me," and they finished their lunch together, parting on the strip of pavement

among the different lines of traffic with a pleasant feeling that they were stepping once more into their

But, instead of going straight back to the office today, Mary turned into the British Museum, and strolled

down the gallery with the shapes of stone until she found an empty seat directly beneath the gaze of the Elgin

marbles. She looked at them, and seemed, as usual, borne up on some wave of exaltation and emotion, by

which her life at once became solemn and beautifulan impression which was due as much, perhaps, to the

solitude and chill and silence of the gallery as to the actual beauty of the statues. One must suppose, at least,

that her emotions were not purely esthetic, because, after she had gazed at the Ulysses for a minute or two,

she began to think about Ralph Denham. So secure did she feel with these silent shapes that she almost

yielded to an impulse to say "I am in love with you" aloud. The presence of this immense and enduring

beauty made her almost alarmingly conscious of her desire, and at the same time proud of a feeling which did

not display anything like the same proportions when she was going about her daily work.

She repressed her impulse to speak aloud, and rose and wandered about rather aimlessly among the statues

until she found herself in another gallery devoted to engraved obelisks and winged Assyrian bulls, and her

emotion took another turn. She began to picture herself traveling with Ralph in a land where these monsters

were couchant in the sand. "For," she thought to herself, as she gazed fixedly at some information printed

behind a piece of glass, "the wonderful thing about you is that you're ready for anything; you're not in the

And she conjured up a scene of herself on a camel's back, in the desert, while Ralph commanded a whole

"That is what you can do," she went on, moving on to the next statue. "You always make people do what you

A glow spread over her spirit, and filled her eyes with brightness. Nevertheless, before she left the Museum

she was very far from saying, even in the privacy of her own mind, "I am in love with you," and that sentence

might very well never have framed itself. She was, indeed, rather annoyed with herself for having allowed

such an illconsidered breach of her reserve, weakening her powers of resistance, she felt, should this

impulse return again. For, as she walked along the street to her office, the force of all her customary

objections to being in love with any one overcame her. She did not want to marry at all. It seemed to her that

there was something amateurish in bringing love into touch with a perfectly straightforward friendship, such

as hers was with Ralph, which, for two years now, had based itself upon common interests in impersonal

But the afternoon spirit differed intrinsically from the morning spirit. Mary found herself watching the flight

of a bird, or making drawings of the branches of the planetrees upon her blottingpaper. People came in to

see Mr. Clacton on business, and a seductive smell of cigarette smoke issued from his room. Mrs. Seal

wandered about with newspaper cuttings, which seemed to her either "quite splendid" or "really too bad for

words." She used to paste these into books, or send them to her friends, having first drawn a broad bar in blue

pencil down the margin, a proceeding which signified equally and indistinguishably the depths of her

About four o'clock on that same afternoon Katharine Hilbery was walking up Kingsway. The question of tea

presented itself. The street lamps were being lit already, and as she stood still for a moment beneath one of

them, she tried to think of some neighboring drawingroom where there would be firelight and talk congenial

to her mood. That mood, owing to the spinning traffic and the evening veil of unreality, was illadapted to

her home surroundings. Perhaps, on the whole, a shop was the best place in which to preserve this queer

sense of heightened existence. At the same time she wished to talk. Remembering Mary Datchet and her

repeated invitations, she crossed the road, turned into Russell Square, and peered about, seeking for numbers

with a sense of adventure that was out of all proportion to the deed itself. She found herself in a dimly lighted

hall, unguarded by a porter, and pushed open the first swing door. But the officeboy had never heard of

Miss Datchet. Did she belong to the S.R.F.R.? Katharine shook her head with a smile of dismay. A voice

Katharine mounted past innumerable glass doors, with initials on them, and became steadily more and more

doubtful of the wisdom of her venture. At the top she paused for a moment to breathe and collect herself. She

heard the typewriter and formal professional voices inside, not belonging, she thought, to any one she had

ever spoken to. She touched the bell, and the door was opened almost immediately by Mary herself. Her face

"You!" she exclaimed. "We thought you were the printer." Still holding the door open, she called back, "No,

Mr. Clacton, it's not Penningtons. I should ring them up againdouble three double eight, Central. Well, this

The light of relief shone in Mary's eyes. The boredom of the afternoon was dissipated at once, and she was

glad that Katharine had found them in a momentary press of activity, owing to the failure of the printer to

The unshaded electric light shining upon the table covered with papers dazed Katharine for a moment. After

the confusion of her twilight walk, and her random thoughts, life in this small room appeared extremely

concentrated and bright. She turned instinctively to look out of the window, which was uncurtained, but Mary

"It was very clever of you to find your way," she said, and Katharine wondered, as she stood there, feeling,

for the moment, entirely detached and unabsorbed, why she had come. She looked, indeed, to Mary's eyes

strangely out of place in the office. Her figure in the long cloak, which took deep folds, and her face, which

was composed into a mask of sensitive apprehension, disturbed Mary for a moment with a sense of the

presence of some one who was of another world, and, therefore, subversive of her world. She became

immediately anxious that Katharine should be impressed by the importance of her world, and hoped that

neither Mrs. Seal nor Mr. Clacton would appear until the impression of importance had been received. But in

this she was disappointed. Mrs. Seal burst into the room holding a kettle in her hand, which she set upon the

stove, and then, with inefficient haste, she set light to the gas, which flared up, exploded, and went out.

"Always the way, always the way," she muttered. "Kit Markham is the only person who knows how to deal

Mary had to go to her help, and together they spread the table, and apologized for the disparity between the

"If we had known Miss Hilbery was coming, we should have bought a cake," said Mary, upon which Mrs.

Seal looked at Katharine for the first time, suspiciously, because she was a person who needed cake.

Here Mr. Clacton opened the door, and came in, holding a typewritten letter in his hand, which he was

"Well done, Salford!" Mrs. Seal exclaimed enthusiastically, thumping the teapot which she held upon the

"Yes, these provincial centers seem to be coming into line at last," said Mr. Clacton, and then Mary

introduced him to Miss Hilbery, and he asked her, in a very formal manner, if she were interested "in our

"And the proofs still not come?" said Mrs. Seal, putting both her elbows on the table, and propping her chin

on her hands, as Mary began to pour out tea. "It's too badtoo bad. At this rate we shall miss the country

post. Which reminds me, Mr. Clacton, don't you think we should circularize the provinces with Partridge's

last speech? What? You've not read it? Oh, it's the best thing they've had in the House this Session. Even the

"We don't allow shop at tea, Sally," she said firmly. "We fine her a penny each time she forgets, and the fines

go to buying a plum cake," she explained, seeking to draw Katharine into the community. She had given up

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Mrs. Seal apologized. "It's my misfortune to be an enthusiast," she said, turning to

Katharine. "My father's daughter could hardly be anything else. I think I've been on as many committees as

most people. Waifs and Strays, Rescue Work, Church Work, C. O. S.local branchbesides the usual civic

duties which fall to one as a householder. But I've given them all up for our work here, and I don't regret it for

a second," she added. "This is the root question, I feel; until women have votes"

"It'll be sixpence, at least, Sally," said Mary, bringing her fist down on the table. "And we're all sick to death

Mrs. Seal looked for a moment as though she could hardly believe her ears, and made a deprecating

"tuttuttut" in her throat, looking alternately at Katharine and Mary, and shaking her head as she did so.

Then she remarked, rather confidentially to Katharine, with a little nod in Mary's direction:

"She's doing more for the cause than any of us. She's giving her youth for, alas! when I was young there

Mr. Clacton hastily reverted to the joke about luncheon, and explained how Mrs. Seal fed on a bag of biscuits

under the trees, whatever the weather might be, rather, Katharine thought, as though Mrs. Seal were a pet dog

"Yes, I took my little bag into the square," said Mrs. Seal, with the selfconscious guilt of a child owning

some fault to its elders. "It was really very sustaining, and the bare boughs against the sky do one so much

GOOD. But I shall have to give up going into the square," she proceeded, wrinkling her forehead. "The

injustice of it! Why should I have a beautiful square all to myself, when poor women who need rest have

nowhere at all to sit?" She looked fiercely at Katharine, giving her short locks a little shake. "It's dreadful

what a tyrant one still is, in spite of all one's efforts. One tries to lead a decent life, but one can't. Of course,

directly one thinks of it, one sees that ALL squares should be open to EVERY ONE. Is there any society with

"A most excellent object," said Mr. Clacton in his professional manner. "At the same time, one must deplore

the ramification of organizations, Mrs. Seal. So much excellent effort thrown away, not to speak of pounds,

shillings, and pence. Now how many organizations of a philanthropic nature do you suppose there are in the

City of London itself, Miss Hilbery?" he added, screwing his mouth into a queer little smile, as if to show that

Katharine smiled, too. Her unlikeness to the rest of them had, by this time, penetrated to Mr. Clacton, who

was not naturally observant, and he was wondering who she was; this same unlikeness had subtly stimulated

Mrs. Seal to try and make a convert of her. Mary, too, looked at her almost as if she begged her to make

things easy. For Katharine had shown no disposition to make things easy. She had scarcely spoken, and her

silence, though grave and even thoughtful, seemed to Mary the silence of one who criticizes.

"Well, there are more in this house than I'd any notion of," she said. "On the ground floor you protect natives,

"Why do you say that 'we' do these things?" Mary interposed, rather sharply. "We're not responsible for all

Mr. Clacton cleared his throat and looked at each of the young ladies in turn. He was a good deal struck by

the appearance and manner of Miss Hilbery, which seemed to him to place her among those cultivated and

luxurious people of whom he used to dream. Mary, on the other hand, was more of his own sort, and a little

too much inclined to order him about. He picked up crumbs of dry biscuit and put them into his mouth with

"No, I'm afraid I don't," said Katharine, with such ready candor that Mrs. Seal was nonplussed, and stared at

her with a puzzled expression, as if she could not classify her among the varieties of human beings known to

"Mrs. Seal is an enthusiast in these matters," said Mr. Clacton, almost apologetically. "We have to remind her

sometimes that others have a right to their views even if they differ from our own. . . . "Punch" has a very

funny picture this week, about a Suffragist and an agricultural laborer. Have you seen this week's "Punch,"

Mr. Clacton then told them the substance of the joke, which, however, depended a good deal for its success

upon the expression which the artist had put into the people's faces. Mrs. Seal sat all the time perfectly grave.

"But surely, if you care about the welfare of your sex at all, you must wish them to have the vote?"

Katharine stirred her spoon round and round, stared into the swirl of the tea, and remained silent. Mr.

Clacton, meanwhile, framed a question which, after a moment's hesitation, he put to Katharine.

"Are you in any way related, I wonder, to the poet Alardyce? His daughter, I believe, married a Mr. Hilbery."

"Yes; I'm the poet's granddaughter," said Katharine, with a little sigh, after a pause; and for a moment they

"The poet's granddaughter!" Mrs. Seal repeated, half to herself, with a shake of her head, as if that explained

"Ah, indeed. That interests me very much," he said. "I owe a great debt to your grandfather, Miss Hilbery. At

one time I could have repeated the greater part of him by heart. But one gets out of the way of reading poetry,

A sharp rap at the door made Katharine's answer inaudible. Mrs. Seal looked up with renewed hope in her

"The proofs at last!" ran to open the door. "Oh, it's only Mr. Denham!" she cried, without any attempt to

conceal her disappointment. Ralph, Katharine supposed, was a frequent visitor, for the only person he thought

it necessary to greet was herself, and Mary at once explained the strange fact of her being there by saying:

At these remarks Mrs. Seal began to exhibit signs of discomposure, which displayed themselves by a tossing

movement of her head, and, as Ralph took a letter from his pocket, and placed his finger upon a certain

"Now, I know what you're going to say, Mr. Denham! But it was the day Kit Markham was here, and she

upsets one sowith her wonderful vitality, always thinking of something new that we ought to be doing and

aren'tand I was conscious at the time that my dates were mixed. It had nothing to do with Mary at all, I

"My dear Sally, don't apologize," said Mary, laughing. "Men are such pedantsthey don't know what things

"Now, Denham, speak up for our sex," said Mr. Clacton in a jocular manner, indeed, but like most

insignificant men he was very quick to resent being found fault with by a woman, in argument with whom he

was fond of calling himself "a mere man." He wished, however, to enter into a literary conservation with

"Doesn't it seem strange to you, Miss Hilbery," he said, "that the French, with all their wealth of illustrious

names, have no poet who can compare with your grandfather? Let me see. There's Chenier and Hugo and

Alfred de Mussetwonderful men, but, at the same time, there's a richness, a freshness about Alardyce"

Here the telephone bell rang, and he had to absent himself with a smile and a bow which signified that,

although literature is delightful, it is not work. Mrs. Seal rose at the same time, but remained hovering over

the table, delivering herself of a tirade against party government. "For if I were to tell you what I know of

backstairs intrigue, and what can be done by the power of the purse, you wouldn't credit me, Mr. Denham,

you wouldn't, indeed. Which is why I feel that the only work for my father's daughterfor he was one of the

pioneers, Mr. Denham, and on his tombstone I had that verse from the Psalms put, about the sowers and the

seed. . . . And what wouldn't I give that he should be alive now, seeing what we're going to see" but

reflecting that the glories of the future depended in part upon the activity of her typewriter, she bobbed her

head, and hurried back to the seclusion of her little room, from which immediately issued sounds of

Mary made it clear at once, by starting a fresh topic of general interest, that though she saw the humor of her

"The standard of morality seems to me frightfully low," she observed reflectively, pouring out a second cup

of tea, "especially among women who aren't well educated. They don't see that small things matter, and that's

where the leakage begins, and then we find ourselves in difficultiesI very nearly lost my temper

yesterday," she went on, looking at Ralph with a little smile, as though he knew what happened when she lost

her temper. "It makes me very angry when people tell me liesdoesn't it make you angry?" she asked

"But considering that every one tells lies," Katharine remarked, looking about the room to see where she had

put down her umbrella and her parcel, for there was an intimacy in the way in which Mary and Ralph

addressed each other which made her wish to leave them. Mary, on the other hand, was anxious, superficially

at least, that Katharine should stay and so fortify her in her determination not to be in love with Ralph.

Ralph, while lifting his cup from his lips to the table, had made up his mind that if Miss Hilbery left, he

"I don't think that I tell lies, and I don't think that Ralph tells lies, do you, Ralph?" Mary continued.

Katharine laughed, with more gayety, as it seemed to Mary, than she could properly account for. What was

she laughing at? At them, presumably. Katharine had risen, and was glancing hither and thither, at the presses

and the cupboards, and all the machinery of the office, as if she included them all in her rather malicious

amusement, which caused Mary to keep her eyes on her straightly and rather fiercely, as if she were a

gayplumed, mischievous bird, who might light on the topmost bough and pick off the ruddiest cherry,

without any warning. Two women less like each other could scarcely be imagined, Ralph thought, looking

from one to the other. Next moment, he too, rose, and nodding to Mary, as Katharine said goodbye, opened

Mary sat still and made no attempt to prevent them from going. For a second or two after the door had shut

on them her eyes rested on the door with a straightforward fierceness in which, for a moment, a certain

degree of bewilderment seemed to enter; but, after a brief hesitation, she put down her cup and proceeded to

The impulse which had driven Ralph to take this action was the result of a very swift little piece of reasoning,

and thus, perhaps, was not quite so much of an impulse as it seemed. It passed through his mind that if he

missed this chance of talking to Katharine, he would have to face an enraged ghost, when he was alone in his

room again, demanding an explanation of his cowardly indecision. It was better, on the whole, to risk present

discomfiture than to waste an evening bandying excuses and constructing impossible scenes with this

uncompromising section of himself. For ever since he had visited the Hilberys he had been much at the mercy

of a phantom Katharine, who came to him when he sat alone, and answered him as he would have her

answer, and was always beside him to crown those varying triumphs which were transacted almost every

night, in imaginary scenes, as he walked through the lamplit streets home from the office. To walk with

Katharine in the flesh would either feed that phantom with fresh food, which, as all who nourish dreams are

aware, is a process that becomes necessary from time to time, or refine it to such a degree of thinness that it

was scarcely serviceable any longer; and that, too, is sometimes a welcome change to a dreamer. And all the

time Ralph was well aware that the bulk of Katharine was not represented in his dreams at all, so that when

he met her he was bewildered by the fact that she had nothing to do with his dream of her.

When, on reaching the street, Katharine found that Mr. Denham proceeded to keep pace by her side, she was

surprised and, perhaps, a little annoyed. She, too, had her margin of imagination, and tonight her activity in

this obscure region of the mind required solitude. If she had had her way, she would have walked very fast

down the Tottenham Court Road, and then sprung into a cab and raced swiftly home. The view she had had

of the inside of an office was of the nature of a dream to her. Shut off up there, she compared Mrs. Seal, and

Mary Datchet, and Mr. Clacton to enchanted people in a bewitched tower, with the spiders' webs looping

across the corners of the room, and all the tools of the necromancer's craft at hand; for so aloof and unreal and

apart from the normal world did they seem to her, in the house of innumerable typewriters, murmuring their

incantations and concocting their drugs, and flinging their frail spiders' webs over the torrent of life which

She may have been conscious that there was some exaggeration in this fancy of hers, for she certainly did not

wish to share it with Ralph. To him, she supposed, Mary Datchet, composing leaflets for Cabinet Ministers

among her typewriters, represented all that was interesting and genuine; and, accordingly, she shut them both

out from all share in the crowded street, with its pendant necklace of lamps, its lighted windows, and its

throng of men and women, which exhilarated her to such an extent that she very nearly forgot her companion.

She walked very fast, and the effect of people passing in the opposite direction was to produce a queer

dizziness both in her head and in Ralph's, which set their bodies far apart. But she did her duty by her

"Mary Datchet does that sort of work very well. . . . She's responsible for it, I suppose?"

So they walked on down the Tottenham Court Road, parting and coming together again, and Ralph felt much

Katharine acquiesced, and they climbed up, and found themselves alone on top of it.

"But which way are you going?" Katharine asked, waking a little from the trance into which movement

"I'm going to the Temple," Ralph replied, inventing a destination on the spur of the moment. He felt the

change come over her as they sat down and the omnibus began to move forward. He imagined her

contemplating the avenue in front of them with those honest sad eyes which seemed to set him at such a

distance from them. But the breeze was blowing in their faces; it lifted her hat for a second, and she drew out

a pin and stuck it in again,a little action which seemed, for some reason, to make her rather more fallible.

Ah, if only her hat would blow off, and leave her altogether disheveled, accepting it from his hands!

"This is like Venice," she observed, raising her hand. "The motor cars, I mean, shooting about so quickly,

"I've never seen Venice," he replied. "I keep that and some other things for my old age."

"Think of providing for one's old age! And would you refuse to see Venice if you had the chance?"

Instead of answering her, he wondered whether he should tell her something that was quite true about

"I've planned out my life in sections ever since I was a child, to make it last longer. You see, I'm always

"And so am I!" Katharine exclaimed. "But, after all," she added, "why should you miss anything?"

"Why? Because I'm poor, for one thing," Ralph rejoined. "You, I suppose, can have Venice and India and

She said nothing for a moment, but rested one hand, which was bare of glove, upon the rail in front of her,

meditating upon a variety of things, of which one was that this strange young man pronounced Dante as she

was used to hearing it pronounced, and another, that he had, most unexpectedly, a feeling about life that was

familiar to her. Perhaps, then, he was the sort of person she might take an interest in, if she came to know him

better, and as she had placed him among those whom she would never want to know better, this was enough

to make her silent. She hastily recalled her first view of him, in the little room where the relics were kept, and

ran a bar through half her impressions, as one cancels a badly written sentence, having found the right one.

"But to know that one might have things doesn't alter the fact that one hasn't got them," she said, in some

confusion. "How could I go to India, for example? Besides," she began impulsively, and stopped herself.

Here the conductor came round, and interrupted them. Ralph waited for her to resume her sentence, but she

"I have a message to give your father," he remarked. "Perhaps you would give it him, or I could come"

"Still, I don't see why you shouldn't go to India," Ralph began, in order to keep her from rising, as she

But she got up in spite of him, and said goodbye with her usual air of decision, and left him with a

quickness which Ralph connected now with all her movements. He looked down and saw her standing on the

pavement edge, an alert, commanding figure, which waited its season to cross, and then walked boldly and

swiftly to the other side. That gesture and action would be added to the picture he had of her, but at present

And little Augustus Pelham said to me, 'It's the younger generation knocking at the door,' and I said to him,

'Oh, but the younger generation comes in without knocking, Mr. Pelham.' Such a feeble little joke, wasn't it,

"Let us congratulate ourselves that we shall be in the grave before that work is published," said Mr. Hilbery.

The elderly couple were waiting for the dinnerbell to ring and for their daughter to come into the room.

Their armchairs were drawn up on either side of the fire, and each sat in the same slightly crouched

position, looking into the coals, with the expressions of people who have had their share of experiences and

wait, rather passively, for something to happen. Mr. Hilbery now gave all his attention to a piece of coal

which had fallen out of the grate, and to selecting a favorable position for it among the lumps that were

burning already. Mrs. Hilbery watched him in silence, and the smile changed on her lips as if her mind still

When Mr. Hilbery had accomplished his task, he resumed his crouching position again, and began to toy with

the little green stone attached to his watchchain. His deep, ovalshaped eyes were fixed upon the flames,

but behind the superficial glaze seemed to brood an observant and whimsical spirit, which kept the brown of

the eye still unusually vivid. But a look of indolence, the result of skepticism or of a taste too fastidious to be

satisfied by the prizes and conclusions so easily within his grasp, lent him an expression almost of

melancholy. After sitting thus for a time, he seemed to reach some point in his thinking which demonstrated

its futility, upon which he sighed and stretched his hand for a book lying on the table by his side.

Directly the door opened he closed the book, and the eyes of father and mother both rested on Katharine as

she came towards them. The sight seemed at once to give them a motive which they had not had before. To

them she appeared, as she walked towards them in her light evening dress, extremely young, and the sight of

her refreshed them, were it only because her youth and ignorance made their knowledge of the world of some

"The only excuse for you, Katharine, is that dinner is still later than you are," said Mr. Hilbery, putting down

"I don't mind her being late when the result is so charming," said Mrs. Hilbery, looking with pride at her

daughter. "Still, I don't know that I LIKE your being out so late, Katharine," she continued. "You took a cab,

Here dinner was announced, and Mr. Hilbery formally led his wife downstairs on his arm. They were all

dressed for dinner, and, indeed, the prettiness of the dinnertable merited that compliment. There was no

cloth upon the table, and the china made regular circles of deep blue upon the shining brown wood. In the

middle there was a bowl of tawny red and yellow chrysanthemums, and one of pure white, so fresh that the

narrow petals were curved backwards into a firm white ball. From the surrounding walls the heads of three

famous Victorian writers surveyed this entertainment, and slips of paper pasted beneath them testified in the

great man's own handwriting that he was yours sincerely or affectionately or for ever. The father and

daughter would have been quite content, apparently, to eat their dinner in silence, or with a few cryptic

remarks expressed in a shorthand which could not be understood by the servants. But silence depressed Mrs.

Hilbery, and far from minding the presence of maids, she would often address herself to them, and was never

altogether unconscious of their approval or disapproval of her remarks. In the first place she called them to

"That's more cheerful," she exclaimed. "D'you know, Katharine, that ridiculous goose came to tea with me?

Oh, how I wanted you! He tried to make epigrams all the time, and I got so nervous, expecting them, you

"Only one of my geese, happily, makes epigramsAugustus Pelham, of course," said Mrs. Hilbery.

"Poor Augustus!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. "But we're all too hard on him. Remember how devoted he is to

"No, no, Katharinethat's too bad. That'swhat's the word I mean, Trevor, something long and Latinthe

"Well, that'll do. I don't believe in sending girls to college, but I should teach them that sort of thing. It makes

one feel so dignified, bringing out these little allusions, and passing on gracefully to the next topic. But I don't

know what's come over meI actually had to ask Augustus the name of the lady Hamlet was in love with, as

you were out, Katharine, and Heaven knows what he mayn't put down about me in his diary."

"I wish," Katharine started, with great impetuosity, and checked herself. Her mother always stirred her to feel

and think quickly, and then she remembered that her father was there, listening with attention.

He often surprised her, thus, into telling him what she had not meant to tell him; and then they argued, while

"I wish mother wasn't famous. I was out at tea, and they would talk to me about poetry."

"Who's been talking to you about poetry, Katharine?" Mrs. Hilbery demanded, and Katharine was committed

"They have an office at the top of one of the old houses in Russell Square. I never saw such queerlooking

people. And the man discovered I was related to the poet, and talked to me about poetry. Even Mary Datchet

"I don't remember any offices in Russell Square in the old days, when Mamma lived there," Mrs. Hilbery

mused, "and I can't fancy turning one of those noble great rooms into a stuffy little Suffrage office. Still, if

"But it's nice to think of them reading your grandfather, and not filling up those dreadful little forms all day

long," Mrs. Hilbery persisted, her notion of office life being derived from some chance view of a scene

"At any rate, they haven't made a convert of Katharine, which was what I was afraid of," Mr. Hilbery

"Oh no," said Katharine very decidedly, "I wouldn't work with them for anything."

"It's curious," Mr. Hilbery continued, agreeing with his daughter, "how the sight of one's fellowenthusiasts

always chokes one off. They show up the faults of one's cause so much more plainly than one's antagonists.

One can be enthusiastic in one's study, but directly one comes into touch with the people who agree with one,

all the glamor goes. So I've always found," and he proceeded to tell them, as he peeled his apple, how he

committed himself once, in his youthful days, to make a speech at a political meeting, and went there ablaze

with enthusiasm for the ideals of his own side; but while his leaders spoke, he became gradually converted to

the other way of thinking, if thinking it could be called, and had to feign illness in order to avoid making a

Katharine listened and felt as she generally did when her father, and to some extent her mother, described

their feelings, that she quite understood and agreed with them, but, at the same time, saw something which

they did not see, and always felt some disappointment when they fell short of her vision, as they always did.

The plates succeeded each other swiftly and noiselessly in front of her, and the table was decked for dessert,

and as the talk murmured on in familiar grooves, she sat there, rather like a judge, listening to her parents,

Daily life in a house where there are young and old is full of curious little ceremonies and pieties, which are

discharged quite punctually, though the meaning of them is obscure, and a mystery has come to brood over

them which lends even a superstitious charm to their performance. Such was the nightly ceremony of the

cigar and the glass of port, which were placed on the right hand and on the left hand of Mr. Hilbery, and

simultaneously Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine left the room. All the years they had lived together they had never

seen Mr. Hilbery smoke his cigar or drink his port, and they would have felt it unseemly if, by chance, they

had surprised him as he sat there. These short, but clearly marked, periods of separation between the sexes

were always used for an intimate postscript to what had been said at dinner, the sense of being women

together coming out most strongly when the male sex was, as if by some religious rite, secluded from the

female. Katharine knew by heart the sort of mood that possessed her as she walked upstairs to the

drawingroom, her mother's arm in hers; and she could anticipate the pleasure with which, when she had

turned on the lights, they both regarded the drawingroom, fresh swept and set in order for the last section of

the day, with the red parrots swinging on the chintz curtains, and the armchairs warming in the blaze. Mrs.

Hilbery stood over the fire, with one foot on the fender, and her skirts slightly raised.

"Oh, Katharine," she exclaimed, "how you've made me think of Mamma and the old days in Russell Square! I

can see the chandeliers, and the green silk of the piano, and Mamma sitting in her cashmere shawl by the

window, singing till the little ragamuffin boys outside stopped to listen. Papa sent me in with a bunch of

violets while he waited round the corner. It must have been a summer evening. That was before things were

As she spoke an expression of regret, which must have come frequently to cause the lines which now grew

deep round the lips and eyes, settled on her face. The poet's marriage had not been a happy one. He had left

his wife, and after some years of a rather reckless existence, she had died, before her time. This disaster had

led to great irregularities of education, and, indeed, Mrs. Hilbery might be said to have escaped education

altogether. But she had been her father's companion at the season when he wrote the finest of his poems. She

had sat on his knee in taverns and other haunts of drunken poets, and it was for her sake, so people said, that

he had cured himself of his dissipation, and become the irreproachable literary character that the world

knows, whose inspiration had deserted him. As Mrs. Hilbery grew old she thought more and more of the past,

and this ancient disaster seemed at times almost to prey upon her mind, as if she could not pass out of life

Katharine wished to comfort her mother, but it was difficult to do this satisfactorily when the facts

themselves were so much of a legend. The house in Russell Square, for example, with its noble rooms, and

the magnoliatree in the garden, and the sweetvoiced piano, and the sound of feet coming down the

corridors, and other properties of size and romancehad they any existence? Yet why should Mrs. Alardyce

live all alone in this gigantic mansion, and, if she did not live alone, with whom did she live? For its own

sake, Katharine rather liked this tragic story, and would have been glad to hear the details of it, and to have

been able to discuss them frankly. But this it became less and less possible to do, for though Mrs. Hilbery

was constantly reverting to the story, it was always in this tentative and restless fashion, as though by a touch

here and there she could set things straight which had been crooked these sixty years. Perhaps, indeed, she no

"If they'd lived now," she concluded, "I feel it wouldn't have happened. People aren't so set upon tragedy as

they were then. If my father had been able to go round the world, or if she'd had a rest cure, everything would

have come right. But what could I do? And then they had bad friends, both of them, who made mischief. Ah,

While comforting her, Katharine thought to herself, "Now this is what Mary Datchet and Mr. Denham don't

understand. This is the sort of position I'm always getting into. How simple it must be to live as they do!" for

all the evening she had been comparing her home and her father and mother with the Suffrage office and the

"But, Katharine," Mrs. Hilbery continued, with one of her sudden changes of mood, "though, Heaven knows,

I don't want to see you married, surely if ever a man loved a woman, William loves you. And it's a nice,

richsounding name tooKatharine Rodney, which, unfortunately, doesn't mean that he's got any money,

The alteration of her name annoyed Katharine, and she observed, rather sharply, that she didn't want to marry

"It's very dull that you can only marry one husband, certainly," Mrs. Hilbery reflected. "I always wish that

you could marry everybody who wants to marry you. Perhaps they'll come to that in time, but meanwhile I

confess that dear William" But here Mr. Hilbery came in, and the more solid part of the evening began.

This consisted in the reading aloud by Katharine from some prose work or other, while her mother knitted

scarves intermittently on a little circular frame, and her father read the newspaper, not so attentively but that

he could comment humorously now and again upon the fortunes of the hero and the heroine. The Hilberys

subscribed to a library, which delivered books on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Katharine did her best to interest

her parents in the works of living and highly respectable authors; but Mrs. Hilbery was perturbed by the very

look of the light, gold wreathed volumes, and would make little faces as if she tasted something bitter as the

reading went on; while Mr. Hilbery would treat the moderns with a curious elaborate banter such as one

might apply to the antics of a promising child. So this evening, after five pages or so of one of these masters,

Mrs. Hilbery protested that it was all too clever and cheap and nasty for words.

Katharine had to go to the bookcase and choose a portly volume in sleek, yellow calf, which had directly a

sedative effect upon both her parents. But the delivery of the evening post broke in upon the periods of Henry

She took her letters up to her room with her, having persuaded her mother to go to bed directly Mr. Hilbery

left them, for so long as she sat in the same room as her mother, Mrs. Hilbery might, at any moment, ask for a

sight of the post. A very hasty glance through many sheets had shown Katharine that, by some coincidence,

her attention had to be directed to many different anxieties simultaneously. In the first place, Rodney had

written a very full account of his state of mind, which was illustrated by a sonnet, and he demanded a

reconsideration of their position, which agitated Katharine more than she liked. Then there were two letters

which had to be laid side by side and compared before she could make out the truth of their story, and even

when she knew the facts she could not decide what to make of them; and finally she had to reflect upon a

great many pages from a cousin who found himself in financial difficulties, which forced him to the

uncongenial occupation of teaching the young ladies of Bungay to play upon the violin.

But the two letters which each told the same story differently were the chief source of her perplexity. She was

really rather shocked to find it definitely established that her own second cousin, Cyril Alardyce, had lived

for the last four years with a woman who was not his wife, who had borne him two children, and was now

about to bear him another. This state of things had been discovered by Mrs. Milvain, her aunt Celia, a zealous

inquirer into such matters, whose letter was also under consideration. Cyril, she said, must be made to marry

the woman at once; and Cyril, rightly or wrongly, was indignant with such interference with his affairs, and

would not own that he had any cause to be ashamed of himself. Had he any cause to be ashamed of himself,

"Remember," she wrote, in her profuse, emphatic statement, "that he bears your grandfather's name, and so

will the child that is to be born. The poor boy is not so much to blame as the woman who deluded him,

"What would Ralph Denham say to this?" thought Katharine, beginning to pace up and down her bedroom.

She twitched aside the curtains, so that, on turning, she was faced by darkness, and looking out, could just

distinguish the branches of a planetree and the yellow lights of some one else's windows.

"What would Mary Datchet and Ralph Denham say?" she reflected, pausing by the window, which, as the

night was warm, she raised, in order to feel the air upon her face, and to lose herself in the nothingness of

night. But with the air the distant humming sound of faroff crowded thoroughfares was admitted to the

room. The incessant and tumultuous hum of the distant traffic seemed, as she stood there, to represent the

thick texture of her life, for her life was so hemmed in with the progress of other lives that the sound of its

own advance was inaudible. People like Ralph and Mary, she thought, had it all their own way, and an empty

space before them, and, as she envied them, she cast her mind out to imagine an empty land where all this

petty intercourse of men and women, this life made up of the dense crossings and entanglements of men and

women, had no existence whatever. Even now, alone, at night, looking out into the shapeless mass of

London, she was forced to remember that there was one point and here another with which she had some

connection. William Rodney, at this very moment, was seated in a minute speck of light somewhere to the

east of her, and his mind was occupied, not with his book, but with her. She wished that no one in the whole

world would think of her. However, there was no way of escaping from one's fellowbeings, she concluded,

She could not doubt but that William's letter was the most genuine she had yet received from him. He had

come to the conclusion that he could not live without her, he wrote. He believed that he knew her, and could

give her happiness, and that their marriage would be unlike other marriages. Nor was the sonnet, in spite of

its accomplishment, lacking in passion, and Katharine, as she read the pages through again, could see in what

direction her feelings ought to flow, supposing they revealed themselves. She would come to feel a humorous

sort of tenderness for him, a zealous care for his susceptibilities, and, after all, she considered, thinking of her

Naturally, with her face, position, and background, she had experience of young men who wished to marry

her, and made protestations of love, but, perhaps because she did not return the feeling, it remained

something of a pageant to her. Not having experience of it herself, her mind had unconsciously occupied

itself for some years in dressing up an image of love, and the marriage that was the outcome of love, and the

man who inspired love, which naturally dwarfed any examples that came her way. Easily, and without

correction by reason, her imagination made pictures, superb backgrounds casting a rich though phantom light

upon the facts in the foreground. Splendid as the waters that drop with resounding thunder from high ledges

of rock, and plunge downwards into the blue depths of night, was the presence of love she dreamt, drawing

into it every drop of the force of life, and dashing them all asunder in the superb catastrophe in which

everything was surrendered, and nothing might be reclaimed. The man, too, was some magnanimous hero,

riding a great horse by the shore of the sea. They rode through forests together, they galloped by the rim of

the sea. But waking, she was able to contemplate a perfectly loveless marriage, as the thing one did actually

in real life, for possibly the people who dream thus are those who do the most prosaic things.

At this moment she was much inclined to sit on into the night, spinning her light fabric of thoughts until she

tired of their futility, and went to her mathematics; but, as she knew very well, it was necessary that she

should see her father before he went to bed. The case of Cyril Alardyce must be discussed, her mother's

illusions and the rights of the family attended to. Being vague herself as to what all this amounted to, she had

to take counsel with her father. She took her letters in her hand and went downstairs. It was past eleven, and

the clocks had come into their reign, the grandfather's clock in the hall ticking in competition with the small

clock on the landing. Mr. Hilbery's study ran out behind the rest of the house, on the ground floor, and was a

very silent, subterranean place, the sun in daytime casting a mere abstract of light through a skylight upon his

books and the large table, with its spread of white papers, now illumined by a green readinglamp. Here Mr.

Hilbery sat editing his review, or placing together documents by means of which it could be proved that

Shelley had written "of" instead of "and," or that the inn in which Byron had slept was called the "Nag's

Head" and not the "Turkish Knight," or that the Christian name of Keats's uncle had been John rather than

Richard, for he knew more minute details about these poets than any man in England, probably, and was

preparing an edition of Shelley which scrupulously observed the poet's system of punctuation. He saw the

humor of these researches, but that did not prevent him from carrying them out with the utmost scrupulosity.

He was lying back comfortably in a deep armchair smoking a cigar, and ruminating the fruitful question as

to whether Coleridge had wished to marry Dorothy Wordsworth, and what, if he had done so, would have

been the consequences to him in particular, and to literature in general. When Katharine came in he reflected

that he knew what she had come for, and he made a pencil note before he spoke to her. Having done this, he

saw that she was reading, and he watched her for a moment without saying anything. She was reading

"Isabella and the Pot of Basil," and her mind was full of the Italian hills and the blue daylight, and the hedges

set with little rosettes of red and white roses. Feeling that her father waited for her, she sighed and said,

"I've had a letter from Aunt Celia about Cyril, father. . . . It seems to be trueabout his marriage. What are

"Cyril seems to have been behaving in a very foolish manner," said Mr. Hilbery, in his pleasant and

Katharine found some difficulty in carrying on the conversation, while her father balanced his fingertips so

"He's about done for himself, I should say," he continued. Without saying anything, he took Katharine's

"I shall tell your mother. But I shall tell her that there is nothing whatever for us to do."

"What in the name of conscience did he do it for?" he speculated at last, rather to himself than to her.

Katharine had begun to read her aunt's letter over again, and she now quoted a sentence. "Ibsen and Butler. . .

"Well, if the younger generation want to carry on its life on those lines, it's none of our affair," he remarked.

"But isn't it our affair, perhaps, to make them get married?" Katharine asked rather wearily.

"Why the dickens should they apply to me?" her father demanded with sudden irritation.

"But I'm not the head of the family. Alfred's the head of the family. Let them apply to Alfred," said Mr.

Hilbery, relapsing again into his armchair. Katharine was aware that she had touched a sensitive spot,

"I think, perhaps, the best thing would be for me to go and see them," she observed.

"I won't have you going anywhere near them," Mr. Hilbery replied with unwonted decision and authority.

"Indeed, I don't understand why they've dragged you into the business at allI don't see that it's got anything

"But did he ever tell you anything about this?" Mr. Hilbery asked rather sharply.

Katharine shook her head. She was, indeed, a good deal hurt that Cyril had not confided in herdid he think,

as Ralph Denham or Mary Datchet might think, that she was, for some reason, unsympathetichostile even?

"As to your mother," said Mr. Hilbery, after a pause, in which he seemed to be considering the color of the

flames, "you had better tell her the facts. She'd better know the facts before every one begins to talk about it,

though why Aunt Celia thinks it necessary to come, I'm sure I don't know. And the less talk there is the

Granting the assumption that gentlemen of sixty who are highly cultivated, and have had much experience of

life, probably think of many things which they do not say, Katharine could not help feeling rather puzzled by

her father's attitude, as she went back to her room. What a distance he was from it all! How superficially he

smoothed these events into a semblance of decency which harmonized with his own view of life! He never

wondered what Cyril had felt, nor did the hidden aspects of the case tempt him to examine into them. He

merely seemed to realize, rather languidly, that Cyril had behaved in a way which was foolish, because other

people did not behave in that way. He seemed to be looking through a telescope at little figures hundreds of

Her selfish anxiety not to have to tell Mrs. Hilbery what had happened made her follow her father into the

"Have you told mother?" she asked. Her manner to her father was almost stern, and she seemed to hold

"My dear child, it went out of my head." He smoothed his silk hat energetically, and at once affected an air of

hurry. "I'll send a note round from the office. . . . I'm late this morning, and I've any amount of proofs to get

"That wouldn't do at all," Katharine said decidedly. "She must be told you or I must tell her. We ought to

Mr. Hilbery had now placed his hat on his head, and his hand was on the doorknob. An expression which

Katharine knew well from her childhood, when he asked her to shield him in some neglect of duty, came into

his eyes; malice, humor, and irresponsibility were blended in it. He nodded his head to and fro significantly,

opened the door with an adroit movement, and stepped out with a lightness unexpected at his age. He waved

his hand once to his daughter, and was gone. Left alone, Katharine could not help laughing to find herself

cheated as usual in domestic bargainings with her father, and left to do the disagreeable work which

Katharine disliked telling her mother about Cyril's misbehavior quite as much as her father did, and for much

the same reasons. They both shrank, nervously, as people fear the report of a gun on the stage, from all that

would have to be said on this occasion. Katharine, moreover, was unable to decide what she thought of

Cyril's misbehavior. As usual, she saw something which her father and mother did not see, and the effect of

that something was to suspend Cyril's behavior in her mind without any qualification at all. They would think

When Katharine reached the study, Mrs. Hilbery had already dipped her pen in the ink.

"Katharine," she said, lifting it in the air, "I've just made out such a queer, strange thing about your

grandfather. I'm three years and six months older than he was when he died. I couldn't very well have been

his mother, but I might have been his elder sister, and that seems to me such a pleasant fancy. I'm going to

She began her sentence, at any rate, and Katharine sat down at her own table, untied the bundle of old letters

upon which she was working, smoothed them out absentmindedly, and began to decipher the faded script.

In a minute she looked across at her mother, to judge her mood. Peace and happiness had relaxed every

muscle in her face; her lips were parted very slightly, and her breath came in smooth, controlled inspirations

like those of a child who is surrounding itself with a building of bricks, and increasing in ecstasy as each

brick is placed in position. So Mrs. Hilbery was raising round her the skies and trees of the past with every

stroke of her pen, and recalling the voices of the dead. Quiet as the room was, and undisturbed by the sounds

of the present moment, Katharine could fancy that here was a deep pool of past time, and that she and her

mother were bathed in the light of sixty years ago. What could the present give, she wondered, to compare

with the rich crowd of gifts bestowed by the past? Here was a Thursday morning in process of manufacture;

each second was minted fresh by the clock upon the mantelpiece. She strained her ears and could just hear,

far off, the hoot of a motorcar and the rush of wheels coming nearer and dying away again, and the voices

of men crying old iron and vegetables in one of the poorer streets at the back of the house. Rooms, of course,

accumulate their suggestions, and any room in which one has been used to carry on any particular occupation

gives off memories of moods, of ideas, of postures that have been seen in it; so that to attempt any different

Katharine was unconsciously affected, each time she entered her mother's room, by all these influences,

which had had their birth years ago, when she was a child, and had something sweet and solemn about them,

and connected themselves with early memories of the cavernous glooms and sonorous echoes of the Abbey

where her grandfather lay buried. All the books and pictures, even the chairs and tables, had belonged to him,

or had reference to him; even the china dogs on the mantelpiece and the little shepherdesses with their sheep

had been bought by him for a penny a piece from a man who used to stand with a tray of toys in Kensington

High Street, as Katharine had often heard her mother tell. Often she had sat in this room, with her mind fixed

so firmly on those vanished figures that she could almost see the muscles round their eyes and lips, and had

given to each his own voice, with its tricks of accent, and his coat and his cravat. Often she had seemed to

herself to be moving among them, an invisible ghost among the living, better acquainted with them than with

her own friends, because she knew their secrets and possessed a divine foreknowledge of their destiny. They

had been so unhappy, such muddlers, so wrongheaded, it seemed to her. She could have told them what to

do, and what not to do. It was a melancholy fact that they would pay no heed to her, and were bound to come

to grief in their own antiquated way. Their behavior was often grotesquely irrational; their conventions

monstrously absurd; and yet, as she brooded upon them, she felt so closely attached to them that it was

useless to try to pass judgment upon them. She very nearly lost consciousness that she was a separate being,

with a future of her own. On a morning of slight depression, such as this, she would try to find some sort of

clue to the muddle which their old letters presented; some reason which seemed to make it worth while to

Mrs. Hilbery had risen from her table, and was standing looking out of the window at a string of barges

"I really believe I'm bewitched! I only want three sentences, you see, something quite straightforward and

She began to pace up and down the room, snatching up her duster; but she was too much annoyed to find any

"Besides," she said, giving the sheet she had written to Katharine, "I don't believe this'll do. Did your

grandfather ever visit the Hebrides, Katharine?" She looked in a strangely beseeching way at her daughter.

"My mind got running on the Hebrides, and I couldn't help writing a little description of them. Perhaps it

would do at the beginning of a chapter. Chapters often begin quite differently from the way they go on, you

know." Katharine read what her mother had written. She might have been a schoolmaster criticizing a child's

essay. Her face gave Mrs. Hilbery, who watched it anxiously, no ground for hope.

"It's very beautiful," she stated, "but, you see, mother, we ought to go from point to point"

"Oh, I know," Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. "And that's just what I can't do. Things keep coming into my head. It

isn't that I don't know everything and feel everything (who did know him, if I didn't?), but I can't put it down,

you see. There's a kind of blind spot," she said, touching her forehead, "there. And when I can't sleep o'

From exultation she had passed to the depths of depression which the imagination of her death aroused. The

depression communicated itself to Katharine. How impotent they were, fiddling about all day long with

papers! And the clock was striking eleven and nothing done! She watched her mother, now rummaging in a

great brassbound box which stood by her table, but she did not go to her help. Of course, Katharine

reflected, her mother had now lost some paper, and they would waste the rest of the morning looking for it.

She cast her eyes down in irritation, and read again her mother's musical sentences about the silver gulls, and

the roots of little pink flowers washed by pellucid streams, and the blue mists of hyacinths, until she was

struck by her mother's silence. She raised her eyes. Mrs. Hilbery had emptied a portfolio containing old

"Surely, Katharine," she said, "the men were far handsomer in those days than they are now, in spite of their

odious whiskers? Look at old John Graham, in his white waistcoatlook at Uncle Harley. That's Peter the

Katharine looked at her mother, but did not stir or answer. She had suddenly become very angry, with a rage

which their relationship made silent, and therefore doubly powerful and critical. She felt all the unfairness of

the claim which her mother tacitly made to her time and sympathy, and what Mrs. Hilbery took, Katharine

thought bitterly, she wasted. Then, in a flash, she remembered that she had still to tell her about Cyril's

misbehavior. Her anger immediately dissipated itself; it broke like some wave that has gathered itself high

above the rest; the waters were resumed into the sea again, and Katharine felt once more full of peace and

solicitude, and anxious only that her mother should be protected from pain. She crossed the room

instinctively, and sat on the arm of her mother's chair. Mrs. Hilbery leant her head against her daughter's

"What is nobler," she mused, turning over the photographs, "than to be a woman to whom every one turns, in

sorrow or difficulty? How have the young women of your generation improved upon that, Katharine? I can

see them now, sweeping over the lawns at Melbury House, in their flounces and furbelows, so calm and

stately and imperial (and the monkey and the little black dwarf following behind), as if nothing mattered in

the world but to be beautiful and kind. But they did more than we do, I sometimes think. They WERE, and

that's better than doing. They seem to me like ships, like majestic ships, holding on their way, not shoving or

pushing, not fretted by little things, as we are, but taking their way, like ships with white sails."

Katharine tried to interrupt this discourse, but the opportunity did not come, and she could not forbear to turn

over the pages of the album in which the old photographs were stored. The faces of these men and women

shone forth wonderfully after the hubbub of living faces, and seemed, as her mother had said, to wear a

marvelous dignity and calm, as if they had ruled their kingdoms justly and deserved great love. Some were of

almost incredible beauty, others were ugly enough in a forcible way, but none were dull or bored or

insignificant. The superb stiff folds of the crinolines suited the women; the cloaks and hats of the gentlemen

seemed full of character. Once more Katharine felt the serene air all round her, and seemed far off to hear the

solemn beating of the sea upon the shore. But she knew that she must join the present on to this past.

"That's Janie Mannering," she said, pointing to a superb, whitehaired dame, whose satin robes seemed

strung with pearls. "I must have told you how she found her cook drunk under the kitchen table when the

Empress was coming to dinner, and tucked up her velvet sleeves (she always dressed like an Empress

herself), cooked the whole meal, and appeared in the drawingroom as if she'd been sleeping on a bank of

roses all day. She could do anything with her handsthey all could make a cottage or embroider a

"And that's Queenie Colquhoun," she went on, turning the pages, "who took her coffin out with her to

Jamaica, packed with lovely shawls and bonnets, because you couldn't get coffins in Jamaica, and she had a

horror of dying there (as she did), and being devoured by the white ants. And there's Sabine, the loveliest of

them all; ah! it was like a star rising when she came into the room. And that's Miriam, in her coachman's

cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore great topboots underneath. You young people may say

Turning the page, she came upon the picture of a very masculine, handsome lady, whose head the

"Ah, you wretch!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, "what a wicked old despot you were, in your day! How we all

bowed down before you! 'Maggie,' she used to say, 'if it hadn't been for me, where would you be now?' And it

was true; she brought them together, you know. She said to my father, 'Marry her,' and he did; and she said to

poor little Clara, 'Fall down and worship him,' and she did; but she got up again, of course. What else could

one expect? She was a mere childeighteen and half dead with fright, too. But that old tyrant never

repented. She used to say that she had given them three perfect months, and no one had a right to more; and I

sometimes think, Katharine, that's true, you know. It's more than most of us have, only we have to pretend,

which was a thing neither of them could ever do. I fancy," Mrs. Hilbery mused, "that there was a kind of

sincerity in those days between men and women which, with all your outspokenness, you haven't got."

Katharine again tried to interrupt. But Mrs. Hilbery had been gathering impetus from her recollections, and

"They must have been good friends at heart," she resumed, "because she used to sing his songs. Ah, how did

it go?" and Mrs. Hilbery, who had a very sweet voice, trolled out a famous lyric of her father's which had

been set to an absurdly and charmingly sentimental air by some early Victorian composer.

"It's the vitality of them!" she concluded, striking her fist against the table. "That's what we haven't got! We're

virtuous, we're earnest, we go to meetings, we pay the poor their wages, but we don't live as they lived. As

often as not, my father wasn't in bed three nights out of the seven, but always fresh as paint in the morning. I

hear him now, come singing up the stairs to the nursery, and tossing the loaf for breakfast on his swordstick,

and then off we went for a day's pleasuringRichmond, Hampton Court, the Surrey Hills. Why shouldn't we

At this moment, just as Mrs. Hilbery was examining the weather from the window, there was a knock at the

door. A slight, elderly lady came in, and was saluted by Katharine, with very evident dismay, as "Aunt

Celia!" She was dismayed because she guessed why Aunt Celia had come. It was certainly in order to discuss

the case of Cyril and the woman who was not his wife, and owing to her procrastination Mrs. Hilbery was

quite unprepared. Who could be more unprepared? Here she was, suggesting that all three of them should go

on a jaunt to Blackfriars to inspect the site of Shakespeare's theater, for the weather was hardly settled enough

To this proposal Mrs. Milvain listened with a patient smile, which indicated that for many years she had

accepted such eccentricities in her sisterinlaw with bland philosophy. Katharine took up her position at

some distance, standing with her foot on the fender, as though by so doing she could get a better view of the

matter. But, in spite of her aunt's presence, how unreal the whole question of Cyril and his morality appeared!

The difficulty, it now seemed, was not to break the news gently to Mrs. Hilbery, but to make her understand

it. How was one to lasso her mind, and tether it to this minute, unimportant spot? A matteroffact statement

"I think Aunt Celia has come to talk about Cyril, mother," she said rather brutally. "Aunt Celia has

"No, he is NOT married," Mrs. Milvain interposed, in low tones, addressing herself to Mrs. Hilbery. "He has

"We thought it better to wait until it was proved before we told you," Katharine added.

"But I met Cyril only a fortnight ago at the National Gallery!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. "I don't believe a

word of it," and she tossed her head with a smile on her lips at Mrs. Milvain, as though she could quite

understand her mistake, which was a very natural mistake, in the case of a childless woman, whose husband

"I didn't WISH to believe it, Maggie," said Mrs. Milvain. "For a long time I COULDN'T believe it. But now

"Cyril married!" Mrs. Hilbery repeated. "And never telling us a word, though we've had him in our house

Feeling that the burden of proof was laid upon her, Mrs. Milvain now proceeded with her story. She was

elderly and fragile, but her childlessness seemed always to impose these painful duties on her, and to revere

the family, and to keep it in repair, had now become the chief object of her life. She told her story in a low,

"I have suspected for some time that he was not happy. There were new lines on his face. So I went to his

rooms, when I knew he was engaged at the poor men's college. He lectures thereRoman law, you know, or

it may be Greek. The landlady said Mr. Alardyce only slept there about once a fortnight now. He looked so

ill, she said. She had seen him with a young person. I suspected something directly. I went to his room, and

there was an envelope on the mantelpiece, and a letter with an address in Seton Street, off the Kennington

Mrs. Hilbery fidgeted rather restlessly, and hummed fragments of her tune, as if to interrupt.

"I went to Seton Street," Aunt Celia continued firmly. "A very low placelodginghouses, you know, with

canaries in the window. Number seven just like all the others. I rang, I knocked; no one came. I went down

the area. I am certain I saw some one insidechildrena cradle. But no replyno reply." She sighed, and

looked straight in front of her with a glazed expression in her halfveiled blue eyes.

"I stood in the street," she resumed, "in case I could catch a sight of one of them. It seemed a very long time.

There were rough men singing in the publichouse round the corner. At last the door opened, and some

oneit must have been the woman herselfcame right past me. There was only the pillarbox between us."

"One could see how the poor boy had been deluded," was all that Mrs. Milvain vouchsafed by way of

"But they've got nothing to live upon," Mrs. Hilbery continued. "If he'd come to us like a man," she went on,

"and said, 'I've been a fool,' one would have pitied him; one would have tried to help him. There's nothing so

disgraceful after all But he's been going about all these years, pretending, letting one take it for granted,

"I've never heard anything so detestable!" Mrs. Hilbery wound up, striking her fist on the arm of her chair. As

she realized the facts she became thoroughly disgusted, although, perhaps, she was more hurt by the

concealment of the sin than by the sin itself. She looked splendidly roused and indignant; and Katharine felt

an immense relief and pride in her mother. It was plain that her indignation was very genuine, and that her

mind was as perfectly focused upon the facts as any one could wishmore so, by a long way, than Aunt

Celia's mind, which seemed to be timidly circling, with a morbid pleasure, in these unpleasant shades. She

and her mother together would take the situation in hand, visit Cyril, and see the whole thing through.

"We must realize Cyril's point of view first," she said, speaking directly to her mother, as if to a

contemporary, but before the words were out of her mouth, there was more confusion outside, and Cousin

Caroline, Mrs. Hilbery's maiden cousin, entered the room. Although she was by birth an Alardyce, and Aunt

Celia a Hilbery, the complexities of the family relationship were such that each was at once first and second

cousin to the other, and thus aunt and cousin to the culprit Cyril, so that his misbehavior was almost as much

Cousin Caroline's affair as Aunt Celia's. Cousin Caroline was a lady of very imposing height and

circumference, but in spite of her size and her handsome trappings, there was something exposed and

unsheltered in her expression, as if for many summers her thin red skin and hooked nose and reduplication of

chins, so much resembling the profile of a cockatoo, had been bared to the weather; she was, indeed, a single

lady; but she had, it was the habit to say, "made a life for herself," and was thus entitled to be heard with

"This unhappy business," she began, out of breath as she was. "If the train had not gone out of the station just

as I arrived, I should have been with you before. Celia has doubtless told you. You will agree with me,

"But does he refuse to marry her?" Mrs. Hilbery inquired, with a return of her bewilderment.

"He has written an absurd perverted letter, all quotations," Cousin Caroline puffed. "He thinks he's doing a

very fine thing, where we only see the folly of it. . . . The girl's every bit as infatuated as he isfor which I

"She entangled him," Aunt Celia intervened, with a very curious smoothness of intonation, which seemed to

convey a vision of threads weaving and interweaving a close, white mesh round their victim.

"It's no use going into the rights and wrongs of the affair now, Celia," said Cousin Caroline with some

acerbity, for she believed herself the only practical one of the family, and regretted that, owing to the

slowness of the kitchen clock, Mrs. Milvain had already confused poor dear Maggie with her own incomplete

version of the facts. "The mischief's done, and very ugly mischief too. Are we to allow the third child to be

born out of wedlock? (I am sorry to have to say these things before you, Katharine.) He will bear your name,

Katharine, who had been looking at her mother constantly, while the chatter of tongues held sway, perceived

that the look of straightforward indignation had already vanished; her mother was evidently casting about in

her mind for some method of escape, or bright spot, or sudden illumination which should show to the

satisfaction of everybody that all had happened, miraculously but incontestably, for the best.

"It's detestablequite detestable!" she repeated, but in tones of no great assurance; and then her face lit up

with a smile which, tentative at first, soon became almost assured. "Nowadays, people don't think so badly of

these things as they used to do," she began. "It will be horribly uncomfortable for them sometimes, but if they

are brave, clever children, as they will be, I dare say it'll make remarkable people of them in the end. Robert

Browning used to say that every great man has Jewish blood in him, and we must try to look at it in that light.

And, after all, Cyril has acted on principle. One may disagree with his principle, but, at least, one can respect

itlike the French Revolution, or Cromwell cutting the King's head off. Some of the most terrible things in

"I'm afraid I take a very different view of principle," Cousin Caroline remarked tartly.

"Principle!" Aunt Celia repeated, with an air of deprecating such a word in such a connection. "I will go

"But why should you take these disagreeable things upon yourself, Celia?" Mrs. Hilbery interposed, and

Cousin Caroline thereupon protested with some further plan involving sacrifice of herself.

Growing weary of it all, Katharine turned to the window, and stood among the folds of the curtain, pressing

close to the windowpane, and gazing disconsolately at the river much in the attitude of a child depressed by

the meaningless talk of its elders. She was much disappointed in her motherand in herself too. The little

tug which she gave to the blind, letting it fly up to the top with a snap, signified her annoyance. She was very

angry, and yet impotent to give expression to her anger, or know with whom she was angry. How they talked

and moralized and made up stories to suit their own version of the becoming, and secretly praised their own

devotion and tact! No; they had their dwelling in a mist, she decided; hundreds of miles away away from

what? "Perhaps it would be better if I married William," she thought suddenly, and the thought appeared to

loom through the mist like solid ground. She stood there, thinking of her own destiny, and the elder ladies

talked on, until they had talked themselves into a decision to ask the young woman to luncheon, and tell her,

very friendlily, how such behavior appeared to women like themselves, who knew the world. And then Mrs.

Messrs. Grateley and Hooper, the solicitors in whose firm Ralph Denham was clerk, had their office in

Lincoln's Inn Fields, and there Ralph Denham appeared every morning very punctually at ten o'clock. His

punctuality, together with other qualities, marked him out among the clerks for success, and indeed it would

have been safe to wager that in ten years' time or so one would find him at the head of his profession, had it

not been for a peculiarity which sometimes seemed to make everything about him uncertain and perilous. His

sister Joan had already been disturbed by his love of gambling with his savings. Scrutinizing him constantly

with the eye of affection, she had become aware of a curious perversity in his temperament which caused her

much anxiety, and would have caused her still more if she had not recognized the germs of it in her own

nature. She could fancy Ralph suddenly sacrificing his entire career for some fantastic imagination; some

cause or idea or even (so her fancy ran) for some woman seen from a railway train, hanging up clothes in a

back yard. When he had found this beauty or this cause, no force, she knew, would avail to restrain him from

pursuit of it. She suspected the East also, and always fidgeted herself when she saw him with a book of

Indian travels in his hand, as though he were sucking contagion from the page. On the other hand, no

common love affair, had there been such a thing, would have caused her a moment's uneasiness where Ralph

was concerned. He was destined in her fancy for something splendid in the way of success or failure, she

And yet nobody could have worked harder or done better in all the recognized stages of a young man's life

than Ralph had done, and Joan had to gather materials for her fears from trifles in her brother's behavior

which would have escaped any other eye. It was natural that she should be anxious. Life had been so arduous

for all of them from the start that she could not help dreading any sudden relaxation of his grasp upon what he

held, though, as she knew from inspection of her own life, such sudden impulse to let go and make away

from the discipline and the drudgery was sometimes almost irresistible. But with Ralph, if he broke away, she

knew that it would be only to put himself under harsher constraint; she figured him toiling through sandy

deserts under a tropical sun to find the source of some river or the haunt of some fly; she figured him living

by the labor of his hands in some city slum, the victim of one of those terrible theories of right and wrong

which were current at the time; she figured him prisoner for life in the house of a woman who had seduced

him by her misfortunes. Half proudly, and wholly anxiously, she framed such thoughts, as they sat, late at

It is likely that Ralph would not have recognized his own dream of a future in the forecasts which disturbed

his sister's peace of mind. Certainly, if any one of them had been put before him he would have rejected it

with a laugh, as the sort of life that held no attractions for him. He could not have said how it was that he had

put these absurd notions into his sister's head. Indeed, he prided himself upon being well broken into a life of

hard work, about which he had no sort of illusions. His vision of his own future, unlike many such forecasts,

could have been made public at any moment without a blush; he attributed to himself a strong brain, and

conferred on himself a seat in the House of Commons at the age of fifty, a moderate fortune, and, with luck,

an unimportant office in a Liberal Government. There was nothing extravagant in a forecast of that kind, and

certainly nothing dishonorable. Nevertheless, as his sister guessed, it needed all Ralph's strength of will,

together with the pressure of circumstances, to keep his feet moving in the path which led that way. It needed,

in particular, a constant repetition of a phrase to the effect that he shared the common fate, found it best of all,

and wished for no other; and by repeating such phrases he acquired punctuality and habits of work, and could

very plausibly demonstrate that to be a clerk in a solicitor's office was the best of all possible lives, and that

But, like all beliefs not genuinely held, this one depended very much upon the amount of acceptance it

received from other people, and in private, when the pressure of public opinion was removed, Ralph let

himself swing very rapidly away from his actual circumstances upon strange voyages which, indeed, he

would have been ashamed to describe. In these dreams, of course, he figured in noble and romantic parts, but

selfglorification was not the only motive of them. They gave outlet to some spirit which found no work to

do in real life, for, with the pessimism which his lot forced upon him, Ralph had made up his mind that there

was no use for what, contemptuously enough, he called dreams, in the world which we inhabit. It sometimes

seemed to him that this spirit was the most valuable possession he had; he thought that by means of it he

could set flowering waste tracts of the earth, cure many ills, or raise up beauty where none now existed; it

was, too, a fierce and potent spirit which would devour the dusty books and parchments on the office wall

with one lick of its tongue, and leave him in a minute standing in nakedness, if he gave way to it. His

endeavor, for many years, had been to control the spirit, and at the age of twentynine he thought he could

pride himself upon a life rigidly divided into the hours of work and those of dreams; the two lived side by

side without harming each other. As a matter of fact, this effort at discipline had been helped by the interests

of a difficult profession, but the old conclusion to which Ralph had come when he left college still held sway

in his mind, and tinged his views with the melancholy belief that life for most people compels the exercise of

the lower gifts and wastes the precious ones, until it forces us to agree that there is little virtue, as well as

Denham was not altogether popular either in his office or among his family. He was too positive, at this stage

of his career, as to what was right and what wrong, too proud of his selfcontrol, and, as is natural in the case

of persons not altogether happy or well suited in their conditions, too apt to prove the folly of contentment, if

he found any one who confessed to that weakness. In the office his rather ostentatious efficiency annoyed

those who took their own work more lightly, and, if they foretold his advancement, it was not altogether

sympathetically. Indeed, he appeared to be rather a hard and self sufficient young man, with a queer temper,

and manners that were uncompromisingly abrupt, who was consumed with a desire to get on in the world,

which was natural, these critics thought, in a man of no means, but not engaging.

The young men in the office had a perfect right to these opinions, because Denham showed no particular

desire for their friendship. He liked them well enough, but shut them up in that compartment of life which

was devoted to work. Hitherto, indeed, he had found little difficulty in arranging his life as methodically as he

arranged his expenditure, but about this time he began to encounter experiences which were not so easy to

classify. Mary Datchet had begun this confusion two years ago by bursting into laughter at some remark of

his, almost the first time they met. She could not explain why it was. She thought him quite astonishingly

odd. When he knew her well enough to tell her how he spent Monday and Wednesday and Saturday, she was

still more amused; she laughed till he laughed, too, without knowing why. It seemed to her very odd that he

should know as much about breeding bulldogs as any man in England; that he had a collection of wild

flowers found near London; and his weekly visit to old Miss Trotter at Ealing, who was an authority upon the

science of Heraldry, never failed to excite her laughter. She wanted to know everything, even the kind of cake

which the old lady supplied on these occasions; and their summer excursions to churches in the neighborhood

of London for the purpose of taking rubbings of the brasses became most important festivals, from the

interest she took in them. In six months she knew more about his odd friends and hobbies than his own

brothers and sisters knew, after living with him all his life; and Ralph found this very pleasant, though

Certainly it was very pleasant to be with Mary Datchet and to become, directly the door was shut, quite a

different sort of person, eccentric and lovable, with scarcely any likeness to the self most people knew. He

became less serious, and rather less dictatorial at home, for he was apt to hear Mary laughing at him, and

telling him, as she was fond of doing, that he knew nothing at all about anything. She made him, also, take an

interest in public questions, for which she had a natural liking; and was in process of turning him from Tory

to Radical, after a course of public meetings, which began by boring him acutely, and ended by exciting him

But he was reserved; when ideas started up in his mind, he divided them automatically into those he could

discuss with Mary, and those he must keep for himself. She knew this and it interested her, for she was

accustomed to find young men very ready to talk about themselves, and had come to listen to them as one

listens to children, without any thought of herself. But with Ralph, she had very little of this maternal feeling,

Late one afternoon Ralph stepped along the Strand to an interview with a lawyer upon business. The

afternoon light was almost over, and already streams of greenish and yellowish artificial light were being

poured into an atmosphere which, in country lanes, would now have been soft with the smoke of wood fires;

and on both sides of the road the shop windows were full of sparkling chains and highly polished leather

cases, which stood upon shelves made of thick plateglass. None of these different objects was seen

separately by Denham, but from all of them he drew an impression of stir and cheerfulness. Thus it came

about that he saw Katharine Hilbery coming towards him, and looked straight at her, as if she were only an

illustration of the argument that was going forward in his mind. In this spirit he noticed the rather set

expression in her eyes, and the slight, halfconscious movement of her lips, which, together with her height

and the distinction of her dress, made her look as if the scurrying crowd impeded her, and her direction were

different from theirs. He noticed this calmly; but suddenly, as he passed her, his hands and knees began to

tremble, and his heart beat painfully. She did not see him, and went on repeating to herself some lines which

had stuck to her memory: "It's life that matters, nothing but lifethe process of discovering the

everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself at all." Thus occupied, she did not see Denham, and

he had not the courage to stop her. But immediately the whole scene in the Strand wore that curious look of

order and purpose which is imparted to the most heterogeneous things when music sounds; and so pleasant

was this impression that he was very glad that he had not stopped her, after all. It grew slowly fainter, but

When his interview with the barrister was over, it was too late to go back to the office. His sight of Katharine

had put him queerly out of tune for a domestic evening. Where should he go? To walk through the streets of

London until he came to Katharine's house, to look up at the windows and fancy her within, seemed to him

possible for a moment; and then he rejected the plan almost with a blush as, with a curious division of

consciousness, one plucks a flower sentimentally and throws it away, with a blush, when it is actually picked.

No, he would go and see Mary Datchet. By this time she would be back from her work.

To see Ralph appear unexpectedly in her room threw Mary for a second off her balance. She had been

cleaning knives in her little scullery, and when she had let him in she went back again, and turned on the

coldwater tap to its fullest volume, and then turned it off again. "Now," she thought to herself, as she

screwed it tight, "I'm not going to let these silly ideas come into my head. . . . Don't you think Mr. Asquith

deserves to be hanged?" she called back into the sittingroom, and when she joined him, drying her hands,

she began to tell him about the latest evasion on the part of the Government with respect to the Women's

Suffrage Bill. Ralph did not want to talk about politics, but he could not help respecting Mary for taking such

an interest in public questions. He looked at her as she leant forward, poking the fire, and expressing herself

very clearly in phrases which bore distantly the taint of the platform, and he thought, "How absurd Mary

would think me if she knew that I almost made up my mind to walk all the way to Chelsea in order to look at

Katharine's windows. She wouldn't understand it, but I like her very much as she is."

For some time they discussed what the women had better do; and as Ralph became genuinely interested in the

question, Mary unconsciously let her attention wander, and a great desire came over her to talk to Ralph

about her own feelings; or, at any rate, about something personal, so that she might see what he felt for her;

but she resisted this wish. But she could not prevent him from feeling her lack of interest in what he was

saying, and gradually they both became silent. One thought after another came up in Ralph's mind, but they

were all, in some way, connected with Katharine, or with vague feelings of romance and adventure such as

she inspired. But he could not talk to Mary about such thoughts; and he pitied her for knowing nothing of

what he was feeling. "Here," he thought, "is where we differ from women; they have no sense of romance."

His tone was certainly provoking, but, as a general rule, Mary was not easily provoked. This evening,

"You work too hard. I don't mean your health," he added, as she laughed scornfully, "I mean that you seem to

"But only a week ago you were saying the opposite." Her tone was defiant, but she became curiously

depressed. Ralph did not perceive it, and took this opportunity of lecturing her, and expressing his latest

views upon the proper conduct of life. She listened, but her main impression was that he had been meeting

some one who had influenced him. He was telling her that she ought to read more, and to see that there were

other points of view as deserving of attention as her own. Naturally, having last seen him as he left the office

in company with Katharine, she attributed the change to her; it was likely that Katharine, on leaving the scene

which she had so clearly despised, had pronounced some such criticism, or suggested it by her own attitude.

But she knew that Ralph would never admit that he had been influenced by anybody.

It was true that Mary's reading had been rather limited to such works as she needed to know for the sake of

examinations; and her time for reading in London was very little. For some reason, no one likes to be told

that they do not read enough poetry, but her resentment was only visible in the way she changed the position

of her hands, and in the fixed look in her eyes. And then she thought to herself, "I'm behaving exactly as I

said I wouldn't behave," whereupon she relaxed all her muscles and said, in her reasonable way:

Ralph had unconsciously been irritated by Mary, and he now delivered himself of a few names of great poets

which were the text for a discourse upon the imperfection of Mary's character and way of life.

"You live with your inferiors," he said, warming unreasonably, as he knew, to his text. "And you get into a

groove because, on the whole, it's rather a pleasant groove. And you tend to forget what you're there for.

You've the feminine habit of making much of details. You don't see when things matter and when they don't.

And that's what's the ruin of all these organizations. That's why the Suffragists have never done anything all

these years. What's the point of drawingroom meetings and bazaars? You want to have ideas, Mary; get

hold of something big; never mind making mistakes, but don't niggle. Why don't you throw it all up for a

year, and travel?see something of the world. Don't be content to live with half a dozen people in a

"I've rather come to that way of thinking myselfabout myself, I mean," said Mary, surprising him by her

"But look here, Mary, you haven't been taking this seriously, have you?" His irritation was spent, and the

depression, which she could not keep out of her voice, made him feel suddenly with remorse that he had been

"You won't go away, will you?" he asked. And as she said nothing, he added, "Oh no, don't go away."

"I don't know exactly what I mean to do," she replied. She hovered on the verge of some discussion of her

plans, but she received no encouragement. He fell into one of his queer silences, which seemed to Mary, in

spite of all her precautions, to have reference to what she also could not prevent herself from thinking

abouttheir feeling for each other and their relationship. She felt that the two lines of thought bored their

way in long, parallel tunnels which came very close indeed, but never ran into each other.

When he had gone, and he left her without breaking his silence more than was needed to wish her good night,

she sat on for a time, reviewing what he had said. If love is a devastating fire which melts the whole being

into one mountain torrent, Mary was no more in love with Denham than she was in love with her poker or her

tongs. But probably these extreme passions are very rare, and the state of mind thus depicted belongs to the

very last stages of love, when the power to resist has been eaten away, week by week or day by day. Like

most intelligent people, Mary was something of an egoist, to the extent, that is, of attaching great importance

to what she felt, and she was by nature enough of a moralist to like to make certain, from time to time, that

her feelings were creditable to her. When Ralph left her she thought over her state of mind, and came to the

conclusion that it would be a good thing to learn a languagesay Italian or German. She then went to a

drawer, which she had to unlock, and took from it certain deeply scored manuscript pages. She read them

through, looking up from her reading every now and then and thinking very intently for a few seconds about

Ralph. She did her best to verify all the qualities in him which gave rise to emotions in her; and persuaded

herself that she accounted reasonably for them all. Then she looked back again at her manuscript, and decided

that to write grammatical English prose is the hardest thing in the world. But she thought about herself a great

deal more than she thought about grammatical English prose or about Ralph Denham, and it may therefore be

disputed whether she was in love, or, if so, to which branch of the family her passion belonged.

It's life that matters, nothing but lifethe process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process," said

Katharine, as she passed under the archway, and so into the wide space of King's Bench Walk, "not the

discovery itself at all." She spoke the last words looking up at Rodney's windows, which were a semilucent

red color, in her honor, as she knew. He had asked her to tea with him. But she was in a mood when it is

almost physically disagreeable to interrupt the stride of one's thought, and she walked up and down two or

three times under the trees before approaching his staircase. She liked getting hold of some book which

neither her father or mother had read, and keeping it to herself, and gnawing its contents in privacy, and

pondering the meaning without sharing her thoughts with any one, or having to decide whether the book was

a good one or a bad one. This evening she had twisted the words of Dostoevsky to suit her mooda fatalistic

mood to proclaim that the process of discovery was life, and that, presumably, the nature of one's goal

mattered not at all. She sat down for a moment upon one of the seats; felt herself carried along in the swirl of

many things; decided, in her sudden way, that it was time to heave all this thinking overboard, and rose,

leaving a fishmonger's basket on the seat behind her. Two minutes later her rap sounded with authority upon

It was true, but he was so glad to see her that he forgot his annoyance. He had been occupied for over an hour

in making things ready for her, and he now had his reward in seeing her look right and left, as she slipped her

cloak from her shoulders, with evident satisfaction, although she said nothing. He had seen that the fire burnt

well; jampots were on the table, tin covers shone in the fender, and the shabby comfort of the room was

extreme. He was dressed in his old crimson dressinggown, which was faded irregularly, and had bright new

patches on it, like the paler grass which one finds on lifting a stone. He made the tea, and Katharine drew off

her gloves, and crossed her legs with a gesture that was rather masculine in its ease. Nor did they talk much

until they were smoking cigarettes over the fire, having placed their teacups upon the floor between them.

They had not met since they had exchanged letters about their relationship. Katharine's answer to his

protestation had been short and sensible. Half a sheet of notepaper contained the whole of it, for she merely

had to say that she was not in love with him, and so could not marry him, but their friendship would continue,

she hoped, unchanged. She had added a postscript in which she stated, "I like your sonnet very much."

So far as William was concerned, this appearance of ease was assumed. Three times that afternoon he had

dressed himself in a tailcoat, and three times he had discarded it for an old dressinggown; three times he

had placed his pearl tiepin in position, and three times he had removed it again, the little lookingglass in

his room being the witness of these changes of mind. The question was, which would Katharine prefer on this

particular afternoon in December? He read her note once more, and the postscript about the sonnet settled the

matter. Evidently she admired most the poet in him; and as this, on the whole, agreed with his own opinion,

he decided to err, if anything, on the side of shabbiness. His demeanor was also regulated with premeditation;

he spoke little, and only on impersonal matters; he wished her to realize that in visiting him for the first time

alone she was doing nothing remarkable, although, in fact, that was a point about which he was not at all

Certainly Katharine seemed quite unmoved by any disturbing thoughts; and if he had been completely master

of himself, he might, indeed, have complained that she was a trifle absentminded. The ease, the familiarity

of the situation alone with Rodney, among teacups and candles, had more effect upon her than was apparent.

She asked to look at his books, and then at his pictures. It was while she held photograph from the Greek in

"My oysters! I had a basket," she explained, "and I've left it somewhere. Uncle Dudley dines with us

She rose and began to wander about the room. William rose also, and stood in front of the fire, muttering,

"Oysters, oystersyour basket of oysters!" but though he looked vaguely here and there, as if the oysters

might be on the top of the bookshelf, his eyes returned always to Katharine. She drew the curtain and looked

"I had them," she calculated, "in the Strand; I sat on a seat. Well, never mind," she concluded, turning back

into the room abruptly, "I dare say some old creature is enjoying them by this time."

"I should have thought that you never forgot anything," William remarked, as they settled down again.

"And I wonder," William proceeded, with some caution, "what the truth about you is? But I know this sort of

"However we start, we end by talking about the same thingabout poetry, I mean. I wonder if you realize,

William, that I've never read even Shakespeare? It's rather wonderful how I've kept it up all these years."

"You've kept it up for ten years very beautifully, as far as I'm concerned," he said.

She looked into the fire silently. She could not deny that the surface of her feeling was absolutely unruffled

by anything in William's character; on the contrary, she felt certain that she could deal with whatever turned

up. He gave her peace, in which she could think of things that were far removed from what they talked about.

Even now, when he sat within a yard of her, how easily her mind ranged hither and thither! Suddenly a

picture presented itself before her, without any effort on her part as pictures will, of herself in these very

rooms; she had come in from a lecture, and she held a pile of books in her hand, scientific books, and books

about mathematics and astronomy which she had mastered. She put them down on the table over there. It was

a picture plucked from her life two or three years hence, when she was married to William; but here she

She could not entirely forget William's presence, because, in spite of his efforts to control himself, his

nervousness was apparent. On such occasions his eyes protruded more than ever, and his face had more than

ever the appearance of being covered with a thin crackling skin, through which every flush of his volatile

blood showed itself instantly. By this time he had shaped so many sentences and rejected them, felt so many

"You may say you don't read books," he remarked, "but, all the same, you know about them. Besides, who

wants you to be learned? Leave that to the poor devils who've got nothing better to do.

"Well, then, why don't you read me something before I go?" said Katharine, looking at her watch.

"Katharine, you've only just come! Let me see now, what have I got to show you?" He rose, and stirred about

the papers on his table, as if in doubt; he then picked up a manuscript, and after spreading it smoothly upon

"I believe you only ask me to read out of kindness," he burst out. "Let's find something else to talk about.

"I don't generally ask things out of kindness," Katharine observed; "however, if you don't want to read, you

William gave a queer snort of exasperation, and opened his manuscript once more, though he kept his eyes

"One can trust you, certainly, to say unpleasant things," he said, smoothing out the page, clearing his throat,

and reading half a stanza to himself. "Ahem! The Princess is lost in the wood, and she hears the sound of a

horn. (This would all be very pretty on the stage, but I can't get the effect here.) Anyhow, Sylvano enters,

accompanied by the rest of the gentlemen of Gratian's court. I begin where he soliloquizes." He jerked his

Although Katharine had just disclaimed any knowledge of literature, she listened attentively. At least, she

listened to the first twenty five lines attentively, and then she frowned. Her attention was only aroused again

when Rodney raised his fingera sign, she knew, that the meter was about to change.

His theory was that every mood has its meter. His mastery of meters was very great; and, if the beauty of a

drama depended upon the variety of measures in which the personages speak, Rodney's plays must have

challenged the works of Shakespeare. Katharine's ignorance of Shakespeare did not prevent her from feeling

fairly certain that plays should not produce a sense of chill stupor in the audience, such as overcame her as

the lines flowed on, sometimes long and sometimes short, but always delivered with the same lilt of voice,

which seemed to nail each line firmly on to the same spot in the hearer's brain. Still, she reflected, these sorts

of skill are almost exclusively masculine; women neither practice them nor know how to value them; and

one's husband's proficiency in this direction might legitimately increase one's respect for him, since

mystification is no bad basis for respect. No one could doubt that William was a scholar. The reading ended

"That seems to me extremely well written, William; although, of course, I don't know enough to criticize in

"But perhapshave you time to listen to one more short piece? the scene between the lovers? There's some

real feeling in that, I think. Denham agrees that it's the best thing I've done."

"You've read it to Ralph Denham?" Katharine inquired, with surprise. "He's a better judge than I am. What

"My dear Katharine," Rodney exclaimed, "I don't ask you for criticism, as I should ask a scholar. I dare say

there are only five men in England whose opinion of my work matters a straw to me. But I trust you where

feeling is concerned. I had you in my mind often when I was writing those scenes. I kept asking myself, 'Now

is this the sort of thing Katharine would like?' I always think of you when I'm writing, Katharine, even when

it's the sort of thing you wouldn't know about. And I'd ratheryes, I really believe I'd ratheryou thought

"You think too much of me altogether, William," she said, forgetting that she had not meant to speak in this

"No, Katharine, I don't," he replied, replacing his manuscript in the drawer. "It does me good to think of you."

So quiet an answer, followed as it was by no expression of love, but merely by the statement that if she must

go he would take her to the Strand, and would, if she could wait a moment, change his dressing gown for a

coat, moved her to the warmest feeling of affection for him that she had yet experienced. While he changed in

the next room, she stood by the bookcase, taking down books and opening them, but reading nothing on their

She felt certain that she would marry Rodney. How could one avoid it? How could one find fault with it?

Here she sighed, and, putting the thought of marriage away, fell into a dream state, in which she became

another person, and the whole world seemed changed. Being a frequent visitor to that world, she could find

her way there unhesitatingly. If she had tried to analyze her impressions, she would have said that there dwelt

the realities of the appearances which figure in our world; so direct, powerful, and unimpeded were her

sensations there, compared with those called forth in actual life. There dwelt the things one might have felt,

had there been cause; the perfect happiness of which here we taste the fragment; the beauty seen here in

flying glimpses only. No doubt much of the furniture of this world was drawn directly from the past, and

even from the England of the Elizabethan age. However the embellishment of this imaginary world might

change, two qualities were constant in it. It was a place where feelings were liberated from the constraint

which the real world puts upon them; and the process of awakenment was always marked by resignation and

a kind of stoical acceptance of facts. She met no acquaintance there, as Denham did, miraculously

transfigured; she played no heroic part. But there certainly she loved some magnanimous hero, and as they

swept together among the leafhung trees of an unknown world, they shared the feelings which came fresh

and fast as the waves on the shore. But the sands of her liberation were running fast; even through the forest

branches came sounds of Rodney moving things on his dressingtable; and Katharine woke herself from this

excursion by shutting the cover of the book she was holding, and replacing it in the bookshelf.

"William," she said, speaking rather faintly at first, like one sending a voice from sleep to reach the living.

Perhaps it was that no man could expect to have the most momentous question of his life settled in a voice so

level, so toneless, so devoid of joy or energy. At any rate William made no answer. She waited stoically. A

moment later he stepped briskly from his dressingroom, and observed that if she wanted to buy more oysters

he thought he knew where they could find a fishmonger's shop still open. She breathed deeply a sigh of relief.

Extract from a letter sent a few days later by Mrs. Hilbery to her sisterinlaw, Mrs. Milvain:

" . . . How stupid of me to forget the name in my telegram. Such a nice, rich, English name, too, and, in

addition, he has all the graces of intellect; he has read literally EVERYTHING. I tell Katharine, I shall always

put him on my right side at dinner, so as to have him by me when people begin talking about characters in

Shakespeare. They won't be rich, but they'll be very, very happy. I was sitting in my room late one night,

feeling that nothing nice would ever happen to me again, when I heard Katharine outside in the passage, and I

thought to myself, 'Shall I call her in?' and then I thought (in that hopeless, dreary way one does think, with

the fire going out and one's birthday just over), 'Why should I lay my troubles on HER?' But my little self

control had its reward, for next moment she tapped at the door and came in, and sat on the rug, and though we

neither of us said anything, I felt so happy all of a second that I couldn't help crying, 'Oh, Katharine, when

you come to my age, how I hope you'll have a daughter, too!' You know how silent Katharine is. She was so

silent, for such a long time, that in my foolish, nervous state I dreaded something, I don't quite know what.

And then she told me how, after all, she had made up her mind. She had written. She expected him

tomorrow. At first I wasn't glad at all. I didn't want her to marry any one; but when she said, 'It will make no

difference. I shall always care for you and father most,' then I saw how selfish I was, and I told her she must

give him everything, everything, everything! I told her I should be thankful to come second. But why, when

everything's turned out just as one always hoped it would turn out, why then can one do nothing but cry,

nothing but feel a desolate old woman whose life's been a failure, and now is nearly over, and age is so cruel?

But Katharine said to me, 'I am happy. I'm very happy.' And then I thought, though it all seemed so

desperately dismal at the time, Katharine had said she was happy, and I should have a son, and it would all

turn out so much more wonderfully than I could possibly imagine, for though the sermons don't say so, I do

believe the world is meant for us to be happy in. She told me that they would live quite near us, and see us

every day; and she would go on with the Life, and we should finish it as we had meant to. And, after all, it

would be far more horrid if she didn't marryor suppose she married some one we couldn't endure? Suppose

"And though one never thinks any one good enough for the people one's fond of, he has the kindest, truest

instincts, I'm sure, and though he seems nervous and his manner is not commanding, I only think these things

because it's Katharine. And now I've written this, it comes over me that, of course, all the time, Katharine has

what he hasn't. She does command, she isn't nervous; it comes naturally to her to rule and control. It's time

that she should give all this to some one who will need her when we aren't there, save in our spirits, for

whatever people say, I'm sure I shall come back to this wonderful world where one's been so happy and so

miserable, where, even now, I seem to see myself stretching out my hands for another present from the great

Fairy Tree whose boughs are still hung with enchanting toys, though they are rarer now, perhaps, and

between the branches one sees no longer the blue sky, but the stars and the tops of the mountains.

"One doesn't know any more, does one? One hasn't any advice to give one's children. One can only hope that

they will have the same vision and the same power to believe, without which life would be so meaningless.

Is Mr. Hilbery at home, or Mrs. Hilbery?" Denham asked, of the parlor maid in Chelsea, a week later.

Ralph had anticipated many answers, but not this one, and now it was unexpectedly made plain to him that it

was the chance of seeing Katharine that had brought him all the way to Chelsea on pretence of seeing her

He made some show of considering the matter, and was taken upstairs to the drawingroom. As upon that

first occasion, some weeks ago, the door closed as if it were a thousand doors softly excluding the world; and

once more Ralph received an impression of a room full of deep shadows, firelight, unwavering silver candle

flames, and empty spaces to be crossed before reaching the round table in the middle of the room, with its

frail burden of silver trays and china teacups. But this time Katharine was there by herself; the volume in her

It might have been due merely to politeness, but Ralph felt that she received him almost with cordiality.

Perhaps she was bored by drinking tea and reading a book all alone; at any rate, she tossed the book on to a

"Is that one of the moderns whom you despise?" he asked, smiling at the carelessness of her gesture.

This was not a very accurate report of their conversation among the relics, perhaps, but Ralph was flattered to

"Or did I confess that I hated all books?" she went on, seeing him look up with an air of inquiry. "I forget"

"It would be absurd to say that I hate all books when I've only read ten, perhaps; but' Here she pulled

"Yes, I do hate books," she continued. "Why do you want to be for ever talking about your feelings? That's

what I can't make out. And poetry's all about feelingsnovels are all about feelings."

She cut a cake vigorously into slices, and providing a tray with bread and butter for Mrs. Hilbery, who was in

Ralph held the door open for her, and then stood with clasped hands in the middle of the room. His eyes were

bright, and, indeed, he scarcely knew whether they beheld dreams or realities. All down the street and on the

doorstep, and while he mounted the stairs, his dream of Katharine possessed him; on the threshold of the

room he had dismissed it, in order to prevent too painful a collision between what he dreamt of her and what

she was. And in five minutes she had filled the shell of the old dream with the flesh of life; looked with fire

out of phantom eyes. He glanced about him with bewilderment at finding himself among her chairs and

tables; they were solid, for he grasped the back of the chair in which Katharine had sat; and yet they were

unreal; the atmosphere was that of a dream. He summoned all the faculties of his spirit to seize what the

minutes had to give him; and from the depths of his mind there rose unchecked a joyful recognition of the

truth that human nature surpasses, in its beauty, all that our wildest dreams bring us hints of.

Katharine came into the room a moment later. He stood watching her come towards him, and thought her

more beautiful and strange than his dream of her; for the real Katharine could speak the words which seemed

to crowd behind the forehead and in the depths of the eyes, and the commonest sentence would be flashed on

by this immortal light. And she overflowed the edges of the dream; he remarked that her softness was like

"My mother wants me to tell you," she said, "that she hopes you have begun your poem. She says every one

ought to write poetry. . . . All my relations write poetry," she went on. "I can't bear to think of it

sometimesbecause, of course, it's none of it any good. But then one needn't read it"

"But you're not a poet, too, are you?" she inquired, turning upon him with a laugh.

"Yes. Because I think you speak the truth," she said, searching him for proof of this apparently, with eyes

now almost impersonally direct. It would be easy, Ralph thought, to worship one so far removed, and yet of

so straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to her, without thought of future pain.

"Are you a poet?" she demanded. He felt that her question had an unexplained weight of meaning behind it,

"No. I haven't written any poetry for years," he replied. "But all the same, I don't agree with you. I think it's

"Why do you say that?" she asked, almost with impatience, tapping her spoon two or three times against the

"Why?" Ralph laid hands on the first words that came to mind. "Because, I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive

A curious change came over her face, as if the flame of her mind were subdued; and she looked at him

ironically and with the expression which he had called sad before, for want of a better name for it.

"But you have them," he replied energetically. "Why do we call them ideals? It's a stupid word. Dreams, I

She followed his words with parted lips, as though to answer eagerly when he had done; but as he said,

"Dreams, I mean," the door of the drawingroom swung open, and so remained for a perceptible instant.

Far off, they heard the rustle of skirts. Then the owner of the skirts appeared in the doorway, which she

almost filled, nearly concealing the figure of a very much smaller lady who accompanied her.

"My aunts!" Katharine murmured, under her breath. Her tone had a hint of tragedy in it, but no less, Ralph

thought, than the situation required. She addressed the larger lady as Aunt Millicent; the smaller was Aunt

Celia, Mrs. Milvain, who had lately undertaken the task of marrying Cyril to his wife. Both ladies, but Mrs.

Cosham (Aunt Millicent) in particular, had that look of heightened, smoothed, incarnadined existence which

is proper to elderly ladies paying calls in London about five o'clock in the afternoon. Portraits by Romney,

seen through glass, have something of their pink, mellow look, their blooming softness, as of apricots

hanging upon a red wall in the afternoon sun. Mrs. Cosham was so appareled with hanging muffs, chains, and

swinging draperies that it was impossible to detect the shape of a human being in the mass of brown and

black which filled the armchair. Mrs. Milvain was a much slighter figure; but the same doubt as to the

precise lines of her contour filled Ralph, as he regarded them, with dismal foreboding. What remark of his

would ever reach these fabulous and fantastic characters?for there was something fantastically unreal in

the curious swayings and noddings of Mrs. Cosham, as if her equipment included a large wire spring. Her

voice had a highpitched, cooing note, which prolonged words and cut them short until the English language

seemed no longer fit for common purposes. In a moment of nervousness, so Ralph thought, Katharine had

turned on innumerable electric lights. But Mrs. Cosham had gained impetus (perhaps her swaying movements

had that end in view) for sustained speech; and she now addressed Ralph deliberately and elaborately.

"I come from Woking, Mr. Popham. You may well ask me, why Woking? and to that I answer, for perhaps

the hundredth time, because of the sunsets. We went there for the sunsets, but that was fiveandtwenty

years ago. Where are the sunsets now? Alas! There is no sunset now nearer than the South Coast." Her rich

and romantic notes were accompanied by a wave of a long white hand, which, when waved, gave off a flash

of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Ralph wondered whether she more resembled an elephant, with a jeweled

headdress, or a superb cockatoo, balanced insecurely upon its perch, and pecking capriciously at a lump of

"Where are the sunsets now?" she repeated. "Do you find sunsets now, Mr. Popham?"

"At Highgate? Yes, Highgate has its charms; your Uncle John lived at Highgate," she jerked in the direction

of Katharine. She sank her head upon her breast, as if for a moment's meditation, which past, she looked up

and observed: "I dare say there are very pretty lanes in Highgate. I can recollect walking with your mother,

Katharine, through lanes blossoming with wild hawthorn. But where is the hawthorn now? You remember

that exquisite description in De Quincey, Mr. Popham? but I forget, you, in your generation, with all your

activity and enlightenment, at which I can only marvel"here she displayed both her beautiful white

hands"do not read De Quincey. You have your Belloc, your Chesterton, your Bernard Shawwhy should

"But I do read De Quincey," Ralph protested, "more than Belloc and Chesterton, anyhow."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Cosham, with a gesture of surprise and relief mingled. "You are, then, a 'rara avis'

Here she hollowed her hand into a screen, and, leaning towards Katharine, inquired, in a very audible

"Mr. Denham," said Katharine, with more than her usual clearness and firmness, "writes for the Review. He

"The cleanshaven lips, showing the expression of the mouth! I recognize them at once. I always feel at

"They used to come about so much in the old days," Mrs. Milvain interposed, the frail, silvery notes of her

"You say you live at Highgate," she continued. "I wonder whether you happen to know if there is an old

"Ah, no; it must have been pulled down by this time, with all the other old houses. There were such pretty

lanes in those days. That was how your uncle met your Aunt Emily, you know," she addressed Katharine.

"And next Sunday he had violets in his buttonhole. And that was how we guessed."

Katharine laughed. She looked at Ralph. His eyes were meditative, and she wondered what he found in this

old gossip to make him ponder so contentedly. She felt, she hardly knew why, a curious pity for him.

"Uncle Johnyes, 'poor John,' you always called him. Why was that?" she asked, to make them go on

"That was what his father, old Sir Richard, always called him. Poor John, or the fool of the family," Mrs.

Milvain hastened to inform them. "The other boys were so brilliant, and he could never pass his

examinations, so they sent him to Indiaa long voyage in those days, poor fellow. You had your own room,

you know, and you did it up. But he will get his knighthood and a pension, I believe," she said, turning to

"No," Mrs. Cosham confirmed her, "it is not England. In those days we thought an Indian Judgeship about

equal to a countycourt judgeship at home. His Honora pretty title, but still, not at the top of the tree.

However," she sighed, "if you have a wife and seven children, and people nowadays very quickly forget your

"And I fancy," Mrs. Milvain resumed, lowering her voice rather confidentially, "that John would have done

more if it hadn't been for his wife, your Aunt Emily. She was a very good woman, devoted to him, of course,

but she was not ambitious for him, and if a wife isn't ambitious for her husband, especially in a profession

like the law, clients soon get to know of it. In our young days, Mr. Denham, we used to say that we knew

which of our friends would become judges, by looking at the girls they married. And so it was, and so, I

fancy, it always will be. I don't think," she added, summing up these scattered remarks, "that any man is

Mrs. Cosham approved of this sentiment with more ponderous sagacity from her side of the teatable, in the

"No, men are not the same as women. I fancy Alfred Tennyson spoke the truth about that as about many other

things. How I wish he'd lived to write 'The Prince'a sequel to 'The Princess'! I confess I'm almost tired of

Princesses. We want some one to show us what a good man can be. We have Laura and Beatrice, Antigone

and Cordelia, but we have no heroic man. How do you, as a poet, account for that, Mr. Denham?"

"But you write, too?" Mrs. Cosham demanded, afraid lest she should be balked of her priceless discovery, a

"In your spare time!" Mrs. Cosham echoed. "That is a proof of devotion, indeed." She half closed her eyes,

and indulged herself in a fascinating picture of a briefless barrister lodged in a garret, writing immortal novels

by the light of a farthing dip. But the romance which fell upon the figures of great writers and illumined their

pages was no false radiance in her case. She carried her pocket Shakespeare about with her, and met life

fortified by the words of the poets. How far she saw Denham, and how far she confused him with some hero

of fiction, it would be hard to say. Literature had taken possession even of her memories. She was matching

him, presumably, with certain characters in the old novels, for she came out, after a pause, with:

"UmumPendennisWarringtonI could never forgive Laura," she pronounced energetically, "for not

marrying George, in spite of everything. George Eliot did the very same thing; and Lewes was a little

frogfaced man, with the manner of a dancing master. But Warrington, now, had everything in his favor;

intellect, passion, romance, distinction, and the connection was a mere piece of undergraduate folly. Arthur, I

confess, has always seemed to me a bit of a fop; I can't imagine how Laura married him. But you say you're a

solicitor, Mr. Denham. Now there are one or two things I should like to ask youabout Shakespeare" She

drew out her small, worn volume with some difficulty, opened it, and shook it in the air. "They say,

nowadays, that Shakespeare was a lawyer. They say, that accounts for his knowledge of human nature.

There's a fine example for you, Mr. Denham. Study your clients, young man, and the world will be the richer

one of these days, I have no doubt. Tell me, how do we come out of it, now; better or worse than you

Thus called upon to sum up the worth of human nature in a few words, Ralph answered unhesitatingly:

"Worse, Mrs. Cosham, a good deal worse. I'm afraid the ordinary man is a bit of a rascal"

Ah, dear me, I've no doubt that's very true, very true." Mrs. Cosham sighed. "Swift would have agreed with

you, anyhow" She looked at him, and thought that there were signs of distinct power in his brow. He

"Charles Lavington, you remember, was a solicitor," Mrs. Milvain interposed, rather resenting the waste of

time involved in talking about fictitious people when you might be talking about real people. "But you

"Mr. Lavington? Oh, yes, I do," said Katharine, waking from other thoughts with her little start. "The summer

we had a house near Tenby. I remember the field and the pond with the tadpoles, and making haystacks with

"She is right. There WAS a pond with tadpoles," Mrs. Cosham corroborated. "Millais made studies of it for

"And I remember the dog chained up in the yard, and the dead snakes hanging in the toolhouse."

"It was at Tenby that you were chased by the bull," Mrs. Milvain continued. "But that you couldn't remember,

though it's true you were a wonderful child. Such eyes she had, Mr. Denham! I used to say to her father,

'She's watching us, and summing us all up in her little mind.' And they had a nurse in those days," she went

on, telling her story with charming solemnity to Ralph, "who was a good woman, but engaged to a sailor.

When she ought to have been attending to the baby, her eyes were on the sea. And Mrs. Hilbery allowed this

girlSusan her name wasto have him to stay in the village. They abused her goodness, I'm sorry to say,

and while they walked in the lanes, they stood the perambulator alone in a field where there was a bull. The

animal became enraged by the red blanket in the perambulator, and Heaven knows what might have

happened if a gentleman had not been walking by in the nick of time, and rescued Katharine in his arms!"

"My darling, it was a great red Devonshire bull, and not long after it gored a man to death and had to be

"Maggie's sympathies were entirely with Susan and the sailor, I am sure," said Mrs. Cosham, rather tartly.

"My sisterinlaw," she continued, "has laid her burdens upon Providence at every crisis in her life, and

"Yes," said Katharine, with a laugh, for she liked the rashness which irritated the rest of the family. "My

"Well," said Mrs. Milvain, "I'm glad you have some one to protect you from bulls now."

It happened that Mrs. Cosham had once more produced her pocket volume of Shakespeare, and was

consulting Ralph upon an obscure passage in "Measure for Measure." He did not at once seize the meaning of

what Katharine and her aunt were saying; William, he supposed, referred to some small cousin, for he now

saw Katharine as a child in a pinafore; but, nevertheless, he was so much distracted that his eye could hardly

follow the words on the paper. A moment later he heard them speak distinctly of an engagement ring.

"To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world. . .

Mrs. Cosham intoned; at the same instant "Rodney" fitted itself to "William" in Ralph's mind. He felt

convinced that Katharine was engaged to Rodney. His first sensation was one of violent rage with her for

having deceived him throughout the visit, fed him with pleasant old wives' tales, let him see her as a child

playing in a meadow, shared her youth with him, while all the time she was a stranger entirely, and engaged

But was it possible? Surely it was not possible. For in his eyes she was still a child. He paused so long over

This convinced him of the truth of the monstrous idea. He looked up at once and said:

His voice had changed so much, he spoke with such curtness and even with such contempt, that Mrs. Cosham

looked at him fairly puzzled. Happily she belonged to a generation which expected uncouthness in its men,

and she merely felt convinced that this Mr. Denham was very, very clever. She took back her Shakespeare, as

Denham seemed to have no more to say, and secreted it once more about her person with the infinitely

"Katharine's engaged to William Rodney," she said, by way of filling in the pause; "a very old friend of ours.

He has a wonderful knowledge of literature, toowonderful." She nodded her head rather vaguely. "You

Denham's one wish was to leave the house as soon as he could; but the elderly ladies had risen, and were

proposing to visit Mrs. Hilbery in her bedroom, so that any move on his part was impossible. At the same

time, he wished to say something, but he knew not what, to Katharine alone. She took her aunts upstairs, and

returned, coming towards him once more with an air of innocence and friendliness that amazed him.

"My father will be back," she said. "Won't you sit down?" and she laughed, as if now they might share a

"I must congratulate you," he said. "It was news to me." He saw her face change, but only to become graver

Ralph remained standing with his hand on the back of a chair in absolute silence. Abysses seemed to plunge

into darkness between them. He looked at her, but her face showed that she was not thinking of him. No

Ralph strode with extreme swiftness along the Embankment. Every muscle was taut and braced as if to resist

some sudden attack from outside. For the moment it seemed as if the attack were about to be directed against

his body, and his brain thus was on the alert, but without understanding. Finding himself, after a few minutes,

no longer under observation, and no attack delivered, he slackened his pace, the pain spread all through him,

took possession of every governing seat, and met with scarcely any resistance from powers exhausted by their

first effort at defence. He took his way languidly along the river embankment, away from home rather than

towards it. The world had him at its mercy. He made no pattern out of the sights he saw. He felt himself now,

as he had often fancied other people, adrift on the stream, and far removed from control of it, a man with no

grasp upon circumstances any longer. Old battered men loafing at the doors of publichouses now seemed to

be his fellows, and he felt, as he supposed them to feel, a mingling of envy and hatred towards those who

passed quickly and certainly to a goal of their own. They, too, saw things very thin and shadowy, and were

wafted about by the lightest breath of wind. For the substantial world, with its prospect of avenues leading on

and on to the invisible distance, had slipped from him, since Katharine was engaged. Now all his life was

visible, and the straight, meager path had its ending soon enough. Katharine was engaged, and she had

deceived him, too. He felt for corners of his being untouched by his disaster; but there was no limit to the

flood of damage; not one of his possessions was safe now. Katharine had deceived him; she had mixed

herself with every thought of his, and reft of her they seemed false thoughts which he would blush to think

He sat himself down, in spite of the chilly fog which obscured the farther bank and left its lights suspended

upon a blank surface, upon one of the riverside seats, and let the tide of disillusionment sweep through him.

For the time being all bright points in his life were blotted out; all prominences leveled. At first he made

himself believe that Katharine had treated him badly, and drew comfort from the thought that, left alone, she

would recollect this, and think of him and tender him, in silence, at any rate, an apology. But this grain of

comfort failed him after a second or two, for, upon reflection, he had to admit that Katharine owed him

nothing. Katharine had promised nothing, taken nothing; to her his dreams had meant nothing. This, indeed,

was the lowest pitch of his despair. If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned

in those feelings, what reality is left us? The old romance which had warmed his days for him, the thoughts of

Katharine which had painted every hour, were now made to appear foolish and enfeebled. He rose, and

looked into the river, whose swift race of duncolored waters seemed the very spirit of futility and oblivion.

"In what can one trust, then?" he thought, as he leant there. So feeble and insubstantial did he feel himself

"In what can one trust? Not in men and women. Not in one's dreams about them. There's nothingnothing,

Now Denham had reason to know that he could bring to birth and keep alive a fine anger when he chose.

Rodney provided a good target for that emotion. And yet at the moment, Rodney and Katharine herself

seemed disembodied ghosts. He could scarcely remember the look of them. His mind plunged lower and

lower. Their marriage seemed of no importance to him. All things had turned to ghosts; the whole mass of the

world was insubstantial vapor, surrounding the solitary spark in his mind, whose burning point he could

remember, for it burnt no more. He had once cherished a belief, and Katharine had embodied this belief, and

she did so no longer. He did not blame her; he blamed nothing, nobody; he saw the truth. He saw the

duncolored race of waters and the blank shore. But life is vigorous; the body lives, and the body, no doubt,

dictated the reflection, which now urged him to movement, that one may cast away the forms of human

beings, and yet retain the passion which seemed inseparable from their existence in the flesh. Now this

passion burnt on his horizon, as the winter sun makes a greenish pane in the west through thinning clouds.

His eyes were set on something infinitely far and remote; by that light he felt he could walk, and would, in

future, have to find his way. But that was all there was left to him of a populous and teeming world.

The lunch hour in the office was only partly spent by Denham in the consumption of food. Whether fine or

wet, he passed most of it pacing the gravel paths in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The children got to know his figure,

and the sparrows expected their daily scattering of bread crumbs. No doubt, since he often gave a copper

and almost always a handful of bread, he was not as blind to his surroundings as he thought himself.

He thought that these winter days were spent in long hours before white papers radiant in electric light; and in

short passages through fogdimmed streets. When he came back to his work after lunch he carried in his

head a picture of the Strand, scattered with omnibuses, and of the purple shapes of leaves pressed flat upon

the gravel, as if his eyes had always been bent upon the ground. His brain worked incessantly, but his thought

was attended with so little joy that he did not willingly recall it; but drove ahead, now in this direction, now

Mary Datchet, coming from the Strand at lunchtime, saw him one day taking his turn, closely buttoned in an

overcoat, and so lost in thought that he might have been sitting in his own room.

She was overcome by something very like awe by the sight of him; then she felt much inclined to laugh,

although her pulse beat faster. She passed him, and he never saw her. She came back and touched him on the

"Yes. You looked as if you were walking in your sleep," she said. "Are you arranging some terrible love

"I wasn't thinking about my work," Ralph replied, rather hastily. "And, besides, that sort of thing's not in my

The morning was fine, and they had still some minutes of leisure to spend. They had not met for two or three

weeks, and Mary had much to say to Ralph; but she was not certain how far he wished for her company.

However, after a turn or two, in which a few facts were communicated, he suggested sitting down, and she

took the seat beside him. The sparrows came fluttering about them, and Ralph produced from his pocket the

"No," said Ralph. "The sparrows in Hyde Park aren't as tame as this. If we keep perfectly still, I'll get one to

Mary felt that she could have forgone this display of animal good temper, but seeing that Ralph, for some

curious reason, took a pride in the sparrows, she bet him sixpence that he would not succeed.

"Done!" he said; and his eye, which had been gloomy, showed a spark of light. His conversation was now

addressed entirely to a bald cock sparrow, who seemed bolder than the rest; and Mary took the opportunity

of looking at him. She was not satisfied; his face was worn, and his expression stern. A child came bowling

its hoop through the concourse of birds, and Ralph threw his last crumbs of bread into the bushes with a snort

"That's what always happensjust as I've almost got him," he said. "Here's your sixpence, Mary. But you've

only got it thanks to that brute of a boy. They oughtn't to be allowed to bowl hoops here"

"You always say that," he complained; "and it isn't nonsense. What's the point of having a garden if one can't

watch birds in it? The street does all right for hoops. And if children can't be trusted in the streets, their

She leant back on the seat and looked about her at the great houses breaking the soft grayblue sky with their

"Ah, well," she said, "London's a fine place to live in. I believe I could sit and watch people all day long. I

"Yes, I think so, when you come to know them," she added, as if his disagreement had been spoken.

"That's just when I don't like them," he replied. "Still, I don't see why you shouldn't cherish that illusion, if it

pleases you." He spoke without much vehemence of agreement or disagreement. He seemed chilled.

"Wake up, Ralph! You're half asleep!" Mary cried, turning and pinching his sleeve. "What have you been

"Well," Mary remarked, "I've a great deal to say to you, but I must go onwe have a committee." She rose,

but hesitated, looking down upon him rather gravely. "You don't look happy, Ralph," she said. "Is it anything,

He did not immediately answer her, but rose, too, and walked with her towards the gate. As usual, he did not

speak to her without considering whether what he was about to say was the sort of thing that he could say to

"I've been bothered," he said at length. "Partly by work, and partly by family troubles. Charles has been

"Well, there's something to be said for that," said Mary; and they passed the gate, and walked slowly round

the Fields again, discussing difficulties which, as a matter of fact, were more or less chronic in the Denham

family, and only now brought forward to appease Mary's sympathy, which, however, soothed Ralph more

than he was aware of. She made him at least dwell upon problems which were real in the sense that they were

capable of solution; and the true cause of his melancholy, which was not susceptible to such treatment, sank

Mary was attentive; she was helpful. Ralph could not help feeling grateful to her, the more so, perhaps,

because he had not told her the truth about his state; and when they reached the gate again he wished to make

some affectionate objection to her leaving him. But his affection took the rather uncouth form of

"What d'you want to sit on a committee for?" he asked. "It's waste of your time, Mary."

"I agree with you that a country walk would benefit the world more," she said. "Look here," she added

suddenly, "why don't you come to us at Christmas? It's almost the best time of year."

"Yes. We won't interfere with you. But you can tell me later," she said, rather hastily, and then started off in

the direction of Russell Square. She had invited him on the impulse of the moment, as a vision of the country

came before her; and now she was annoyed with herself for having done so, and then she was annoyed at

"If I can't face a walk in a field alone with Ralph," she reasoned, "I'd better buy a cat and live in a lodging at

She shook her head. She really did not know what he had meant. She never felt quite certain; but now she

was more than usually baffled. Was he concealing something from her? His manner had been odd; his deep

absorption had impressed her; there was something in him that she had not fathomed, and the mystery of his

nature laid more of a spell upon her than she liked. Moreover, she could not prevent herself from doing now

what she had often blamed others of her sex for doingfrom endowing her friend with a kind of heavenly

Under this process, the committee rather dwindled in importance; the Suffrage shrank; she vowed she would

work harder at the Italian language; she thought she would take up the study of birds. But this program for a

perfect life threatened to become so absurd that she very soon caught herself out in the evil habit, and was

rehearsing her speech to the committee by the time the chestnutcolored bricks of Russell Square came in

sight. Indeed, she never noticed them. She ran upstairs as usual, and was completely awakened to reality by

the sight of Mrs. Seal, on the landing outside the office, inducing a very large dog to drink water out of a

"Miss Markham has already arrived," Mrs. Seal remarked, with due solemnity, "and this is her dog."

"Yes. A magnificent fellow, Mrs. Seal agreed. "A kind of St. Bernard, she tells meso like Kit to have a St.

Bernard. And you guard your mistress well, don't you, Sailor? You see that wicked men don't break into her

larder when she's out at HER workhelping poor souls who have lost their way. . . . But we're latewe

must begin!" and scattering the rest of the water indiscriminately over the floor, she hurried Mary into the

Mr. Clacton was in his glory. The machinery which he had perfected and controlled was now about to turn

out its bimonthly product, a committee meeting; and his pride in the perfect structure of these assemblies

was great. He loved the jargon of committeerooms; he loved the way in which the door kept opening as the

clock struck the hour, in obedience to a few strokes of his pen on a piece of paper; and when it had opened

sufficiently often, he loved to issue from his inner chamber with documents in his hands, visibly important,

with a preoccupied expression on his face that might have suited a Prime Minister advancing to meet his

Cabinet. By his orders the table had been decorated beforehand with six sheets of blottingpaper, with six

pens, six inkpots, a tumbler and a jug of water, a bell, and, in deference to the taste of the lady members, a

vase of hardy chrysanthemums. He had already surreptitiously straightened the sheets of blottingpaper in

relation to the inkpots, and now stood in front of the fire engaged in conversation with Miss Markham. But

his eye was on the door, and when Mary and Mrs. Seal entered, he gave a little laugh and observed to the

So speaking, he took his seat at the head of the table, and arranging one bundle of papers upon his right and

another upon his left, called upon Miss Datchet to read the minutes of the previous meeting. Mary obeyed. A

keen observer might have wondered why it was necessary for the secretary to knit her brows so closely over

the tolerably matteroffact statement before her. Could there be any doubt in her mind that it had been

resolved to circularize the provinces with Leaflet No. 3, or to issue a statistical diagram showing the

proportion of married women to spinsters in New Zealand; or that the net profits of Mrs. Hipsley's Bazaar

Could any doubt as to the perfect sense and propriety of these statements be disturbing her? No one could

have guessed, from the look of her, that she was disturbed at all. A pleasanter and saner woman than Mary

Datchet was never seen within a committeeroom. She seemed a compound of the autumn leaves and the

winter sunshine; less poetically speaking, she showed both gentleness and strength, an indefinable promise of

soft maternity blending with her evident fitness for honest labor. Nevertheless, she had great difficulty in

reducing her mind to obedience; and her reading lacked conviction, as if, as was indeed the case, she had lost

the power of visualizing what she read. And directly the list was completed, her mind floated to Lincoln's Inn

Fields and the fluttering wings of innumerable sparrows. Was Ralph still enticing the baldheaded

cocksparrow to sit upon his hand? Had he succeeded? Would he ever succeed? She had meant to ask him

why it is that the sparrows in Lincoln's Inn Fields are tamer than the sparrows in Hyde Parkperhaps it is

that the passersby are rarer, and they come to recognize their benefactors. For the first halfhour of the

committee meeting, Mary had thus to do battle with the skeptical presence of Ralph Denham, who threatened

to have it all his own way. Mary tried half a dozen methods of ousting him. She raised her voice, she

articulated distinctly, she looked firmly at Mr. Clacton's bald head, she began to write a note. To her

annoyance, her pencil drew a little round figure on the blottingpaper, which, she could not deny, was really

a baldheaded cocksparrow. She looked again at Mr. Clacton; yes, he was bald, and so are cocksparrows.

Never was a secretary tormented by so many unsuitable suggestions, and they all came, alas! with something

ludicrously grotesque about them, which might, at any moment, provoke her to such flippancy as would

shock her colleagues for ever. The thought of what she might say made her bite her lips, as if her lips would

But all these suggestions were but flotsam and jetsam cast to the surface by a more profound disturbance,

which, as she could not consider it at present, manifested its existence by these grotesque nods and

beckonings. Consider it, she must, when the committee was over. Meanwhile, she was behaving

scandalously; she was looking out of the window, and thinking of the color of the sky, and of the decorations

on the Imperial Hotel, when she ought to have been shepherding her colleagues, and pinning them down to

the matter in hand. She could not bring herself to attach more weight to one project than to another. Ralph

had saidshe could not stop to consider what he had said, but he had somehow divested the proceedings of

all reality. And then, without conscious effort, by some trick of the brain, she found herself becoming

interested in some scheme for organizing a newspaper campaign. Certain articles were to be written; certain

editors approached. What line was it advisable to take? She found herself strongly disapproving of what Mr.

Clacton was saying. She committed herself to the opinion that now was the time to strike hard. Directly she

had said this, she felt that she had turned upon Ralph's ghost; and she became more and more in earnest, and

anxious to bring the others round to her point of view. Once more, she knew exactly and indisputably what is

right and what is wrong. As if emerging from a mist, the old foes of the public good loomed ahead of

hercapitalists, newspaper proprietors, antisuffragists, and, in some ways most pernicious of all, the

masses who take no interest one way or anotheramong whom, for the time being, she certainly discerned

the features of Ralph Denham. Indeed, when Miss Markham asked her to suggest the names of a few friends

"My friends think all this kind of thing useless." She felt that she was really saying that to Ralph himself.

"Oh, they're that sort, are they?" said Miss Markham, with a little laugh; and with renewed vigor their legions

Mary's spirits had been low when she entered the committeeroom; but now they were considerably

improved. She knew the ways of this world; it was a shapely, orderly place; she felt convinced of its right and

its wrong; and the feeling that she was fit to deal a heavy blow against her enemies warmed her heart and

kindled her eye. In one of those flights of fancy, not characteristic of her but tiresomely frequent this

afternoon, she envisaged herself battered with rotten eggs upon a platform, from which Ralph vainly begged

"What do I matter compared with the cause?" she said, and so on. Much to her credit, however teased by

foolish fancies, she kept the surface of her brain moderate and vigilant, and subdued Mrs. Seal very tactfully

more than once when she demanded, "Action!everywhere!at once!" as became her father's daughter.

The other members of the committee, who were all rather elderly people, were a good deal impressed by

Mary, and inclined to side with her and against each other, partly, perhaps, because of her youth. The feeling

that she controlled them all filled Mary with a sense of power; and she felt that no work can equal in

importance, or be so exciting as, the work of making other people do what you want them to do. Indeed,

when she had won her point she felt a slight degree of contempt for the people who had yielded to her.

The committee now rose, gathered together their papers, shook them straight, placed them in their

attachecases, snapped the locks firmly together, and hurried away, having, for the most part, to catch trains,

in order to keep other appointments with other committees, for they were all busy people. Mary, Mrs. Seal,

and Mr. Clacton were left alone; the room was hot and untidy, the pieces of pink blottingpaper were lying at

different angles upon the table, and the tumbler was half full of water, which some one had poured out and

Mrs. Seal began preparing the tea, while Mr. Clacton retired to his room to file the fresh accumulation of

documents. Mary was too much excited even to help Mrs. Seal with the cups and saucers. She flung up the

window and stood by it, looking out. The street lamps were already lit; and through the mist in the square one

could see little figures hurrying across the road and along the pavement, on the farther side. In her absurd

mood of lustful arrogance, Mary looked at the little figures and thought, "If I liked I could make you go in

there or stop short; I could make you walk in single file or in double file; I could do what I liked with you."

"Oughtn't you to put something round your shoulders, Sally?" Mary asked, in rather a condescending tone of

voice, feeling a sort of pity for the enthusiastic ineffective little woman. But Mrs. Seal paid no attention to the

Mrs. Seal drew a deep breath, restrained herself, and then burst out, looking out, too, upon Russell Square

and Southampton Row, and at the passersby, "Ah, if only one could get every one of those people into this

room, and make them understand for five minutes! But they MUST see the truth some day. . . . If only one

Mary knew herself to be very much wiser than Mrs. Seal, and when Mrs. Seal said anything, even if it was

what Mary herself was feeling, she automatically thought of all that there was to be said against it. On this

"Let's have our tea," she said, turning back from the window and pulling down the blind. "It was a good

meetingdidn't you think so, Sally?" she let fall, casually, as she sat down at the table. Surely Mrs. Seal

"You can afford to laugh," said Sally, with another shake of her head, "but I can't. I'm fiftyfive, and I dare

"It'll be such a great day," said Mrs. Seal, with a toss of her locks. "A great day, not only for us, but for

civilization. That's what I feel, you know, about these meetings. Each one of them is a step onwards in the

great marchhumanity, you know. We do want the people after us to have a better time of itand so many

She was carrying plates and cups from the cupboard as she spoke, so that her sentences were more than

usually broken apart. Mary could not help looking at the odd little priestess of humanity with something like

admiration. While she had been thinking about herself, Mrs. Seal had thought of nothing but her vision.

"You mustn't wear yourself out, Sally, if you want to see the great day," she said, rising and trying to take a

"My dear child, what else is my old body good for?" she exclaimed, clinging more tightly than before to her

plate of biscuits. "Shouldn't I be proud to give everything I have to the cause?for I'm not an intelligence

like you. There were domestic circumstancesI'd like to tell you one of these daysso I say foolish things.

I lose my head, you know. You don't. Mr. Clacton doesn't. It's a great mistake, to lose one's head. But my

heart's in the right place. And I'm so glad Kit has a big dog, for I didn't think her looking well."

They had their tea, and went over many of the points that had been raised in the committee rather more

intimately than had been possible then; and they all felt an agreeable sense of being in some way behind the

scenes; of having their hands upon strings which, when pulled, would completely change the pageant

exhibited daily to those who read the newspapers. Although their views were very different, this sense united

Mary, however, left the teaparty rather early, desiring both to be alone, and then to hear some music at the

Queen's Hall. She fully intended to use her loneliness to think out her position with regard to Ralph; but

although she walked back to the Strand with this end in view, she found her mind uncomfortably full of

different trains of thought. She started one and then another. They seemed even to take their color from the

street she happened to be in. Thus the vision of humanity appeared to be in some way connected with

Bloomsbury, and faded distinctly by the time she crossed the main road; then a belated organgrinder in

Holborn set her thoughts dancing incongruously; and by the time she was crossing the great misty square of

Lincoln's Inn Fields, she was cold and depressed again, and horribly clearsighted. The dark removed the

stimulus of human companionship, and a tear actually slid down her cheek, accompanying a sudden

conviction within her that she loved Ralph, and that he didn't love her. All dark and empty now was the path

where they had walked that morning, and the sparrows silent in the bare trees. But the lights in her own

building soon cheered her; all these different states of mind were submerged in the deep flood of desires,

thoughts, perceptions, antagonisms, which washed perpetually at the base of her being, to rise into

prominence in turn when the conditions of the upper world were favorable. She put off the hour of clear

thought until Christmas, saying to herself, as she lit her fire, that it is impossible to think anything out in

London; and, no doubt, Ralph wouldn't come at Christmas, and she would take long walks into the heart of

the country, and decide this question and all the others that puzzled her. Meanwhile, she thought, drawing her

feet up on to the fender, life was full of complexity; life was a thing one must love to the last fiber of it.

She had sat there for five minutes or so, and her thoughts had had time to grow dim, when there came a ring

at her bell. Her eye brightened; she felt immediately convinced that Ralph had come to visit her. Accordingly,

she waited a moment before opening the door; she wanted to feel her hands secure upon the reins of all the

troublesome emotions which the sight of Ralph would certainly arouse. She composed herself unnecessarily,

however, for she had to admit, not Ralph, but Katharine and William Rodney. Her first impression was that

they were both extremely well dressed. She felt herself shabby and slovenly beside them, and did not know

how she should entertain them, nor could she guess why they had come. She had heard nothing of their

engagement. But after the first disappointment, she was pleased, for she felt instantly that Katharine was a

"We were passing and saw a light in your window, so we came up," Katharine explained, standing and

"We have been to see some pictures," said William. "Oh, dear," he exclaimed, looking about him, "this room

reminds me of one of the worst hours in my existencewhen I read a paper, and you all sat round and jeered

at me. Katharine was the worst. I could feel her gloating over every mistake I made. Miss Datchet was kind.

Sitting down, he drew off his light yellow gloves, and began slapping his knees with them. His vitality was

pleasant, Mary thought, although he made her laugh. The very look of him was inclined to make her laugh.

His rather prominent eyes passed from one young woman to the other, and his lips perpetually formed words

"We have been seeing old masters at the Grafton Gallery," said Katharine, apparently paying no attention to

William, and accepting a cigarette which Mary offered her. She leant back in her chair, and the smoke which

"Would you believe it, Miss Datchet," William continued, "Katharine doesn't like Titian. She doesn't like

apricots, she doesn't like peaches, she doesn't like green peas. She likes the Elgin marbles, and gray days

without any sun. She's a typical example of the cold northern nature. I come from Devonshire"

Had they been quarreling, Mary wondered, and had they, for that reason, sought refuge in her room, or were

Katharine now reappeared from her veil of smoke, knocked the ash from her cigarette into the fireplace, and

"Perhaps, Mary," she said tentatively, "you wouldn't mind giving us some tea? We did try to get some, but

the shop was so crowded, and in the next one there was a band playing; and most of the pictures, at any rate,

were very dull, whatever you may say, William." She spoke with a kind of guarded gentleness.

"What in the world are they after?" she asked of her own reflection in the little lookingglass which hung

there. She was not left to doubt much longer, for, on coming back into the sittingroom with the tea things,

Katharine informed her, apparently having been instructed so to do by William, of their engagement.

"William," she said, "thinks that perhaps you don't know. We are going to be married."

Mary found herself shaking William's hand, and addressing her congratulations to him, as if Katharine were

"Let me see," Katharine said, "one puts hot water into the cups first, doesn't one? You have some dodge of

Mary was half inclined to suspect that this was said in order to conceal nervousness, but if so, the

concealment was unusually perfect. Talk of marriage was dismissed. Katharine might have been seated in her

own drawingroom, controlling a situation which presented no sort of difficulty to her trained mind. Rather

to her surprise, Mary found herself making conversation with William about old Italian pictures, while

Katharine poured out tea, cut cake, kept William's plate supplied, without joining more than was necessary in

the conversation. She seemed to have taken possession of Mary's room, and to handle the cups as if they

belonged to her. But it was done so naturally that it bred no resentment in Mary; on the contrary, she found

herself putting her hand on Katharine's knee, affectionately, for an instant. Was there something maternal in

this assumption of control? And thinking of Katharine as one who would soon be married, these maternal airs

filled Mary's mind with a new tenderness, and even with awe. Katharine seemed very much older and more

Meanwhile Rodney talked. If his appearance was superficially against him, it had the advantage of making

his solid merits something of a surprise. He had kept notebooks; he knew a great deal about pictures. He

could compare different examples in different galleries, and his authoritative answers to intelligent questions

gained not a little, Mary felt, from the smart taps which he dealt, as he delivered them, upon the lumps of

And then it struck Mary that Katharine, in the shade of her broadbrimmed hat, and in the midst of the

smoke, and in the obscurity of her character, was, perhaps, smiling to herself, not altogether in the maternal

spirit. What she said was very simple, but her words, even "Your tea, William," were set down as gently and

cautiously and exactly as the feet of a Persian cat stepping among China ornaments. For the second time that

day Mary felt herself baffled by something inscrutable in the character of a person to whom she felt herself

much attracted. She thought that if she were engaged to Katharine, she, too, would find herself very soon

using those fretful questions with which William evidently teased his bride. And yet Katharine's voice was

"I wonder how you find the time to know all about pictures as well as books?" she asked.

"How do I find the time?" William answered, delighted, Mary guessed, at this little compliment. "Why, I

always travel with a notebook. And I ask my way to the picture gallery the very first thing in the morning.

And then I meet men, and talk to them. There's a man in my office who knows all about the Flemish school. I

was telling Miss Datchet about the Flemish school. I picked up a lot of it from him it's a way men

haveGibbons, his name is. You must meet him. We'll ask him to lunch. And this not caring about art," he

explained, turning to Mary, "it's one of Katharine's poses, Miss Datchet. Did you know she posed? She

pretends that she's never read Shakespeare. And why should she read Shakespeare, since she IS

ShakespeareRosalind, you know," and he gave his queer little chuckle. Somehow this compliment

appeared very oldfashioned and almost in bad taste. Mary actually felt herself blush, as if he had said "the

sex" or "the ladies." Constrained, perhaps, by nervousness, Rodney continued in the same vein.

"She knows enoughenough for all decent purposes. What do you women want with learning, when you

have so much elseeverything, I should sayeverything. Leave us something, eh, Katharine?"

"Leave you something?" said Katharine, apparently waking from a brown study. "I was thinking we must be

"Is it tonight that Lady Ferrilby dines with us? No, we mustn't be late," said Rodney, rising. "D'you know

the Ferrilbys, Miss Datchet? They own Trantem Abbey," he added, for her information, as she looked

doubtful. "And if Katharine makes herself very charming tonight, perhaps'll lend it to us for the

"I agree that may be a reason. Otherwise she's a dull woman," said Katharine. "At least," she added, as if to

"Because you expect every one else to take all the trouble. I've seen her sit silent a whole evening," he said,

turning to Mary, as he had frequently done already. "Don't you find that, too? Sometimes when we're alone,

I've counted the time on my watch"here he took out a large gold watch, and tapped the glass"the time

between one remark and the next. And once I counted ten minutes and twenty seconds, and then, if you'll

"I'm sure I'm sorry," Katharine apologized. "I know it's a bad habit, but then, you see, at home"

The rest of her excuse was cut short, so far as Mary was concerned, by the closing of the door. She fancied

she could hear William finding fresh fault on the stairs. A moment later, the doorbell rang again, and

Katharine reappeared, having left her purse on a chair. She soon found it, and said, pausing for a moment at

"I think being engaged is very bad for the character." She shook her purse in her hand until the coins jingled,

as if she alluded merely to this example of her forgetfulness. But the remark puzzled Mary; it seemed to refer

to something else; and her manner had changed so strangely, now that William was out of hearing, that she

could not help looking at her for an explanation. She looked almost stern, so that Mary, trying to smile at her,

As the door shut for the second time, she sank on to the floor in front of the fire, trying, now that their bodies

were not there to distract her, to piece together her impressions of them as a whole. And, though priding

herself, with all other men and women, upon an infallible eye for character, she could not feel at all certain

that she knew what motives inspired Katharine Hilbery in life. There was something that carried her on

smoothly, out of reachsomething, yes, but what?something that reminded Mary of Ralph. Oddly

enough, he gave her the same feeling, too, and with him, too, she felt baffled. Oddly enough, for no two

people, she hastily concluded, were more unlike. And yet both had this hidden impulse, this incalculable

The village of Disham lies somewhere on the rolling piece of cultivated ground in the neighborhood of

Lincoln, not so far inland but that a sound, bringing rumors of the sea, can be heard on summer nights or

when the winter storms fling the waves upon the long beach. So large is the church, and in particular the

church tower, in comparison with the little street of cottages which compose the village, that the traveler is

apt to cast his mind back to the Middle Ages, as the only time when so much piety could have been kept

alive. So great a trust in the Church can surely not belong to our day, and he goes on to conjecture that every

one of the villagers has reached the extreme limit of human life. Such are the reflections of the superficial

stranger, and his sight of the population, as it is represented by two or three men hoeing in a turnipfield, a

small child carrying a jug, and a young woman shaking a piece of carpet outside her cottage door, will not

lead him to see anything very much out of keeping with the Middle Ages in the village of Disham as it is

today. These people, though they seem young enough, look so angular and so crude that they remind him of

the little pictures painted by monks in the capital letters of their manuscripts. He only half understands what

they say, and speaks very loud and clearly, as though, indeed, his voice had to carry through a hundred years

or more before it reached them. He would have a far better chance of understanding some dweller in Paris or

Rome, Berlin or Madrid, than these countrymen of his who have lived for the last two thousand years not two

The Rectory stands about half a mile beyond the village. It is a large house, and has been growing steadily for

some centuries round the great kitchen, with its narrow red tiles, as the Rector would point out to his guests

on the first night of their arrival, taking his brass candlestick, and bidding them mind the steps up and the

steps down, and notice the immense thickness of the walls, the old beams across the ceiling, the staircases as

steep as ladders, and the attics, with their deep, tentlike roofs, in which swallows bred, and once a white

owl. But nothing very interesting or very beautiful had resulted from the different additions made by the

The house, however, was surrounded by a garden, in which the Rector took considerable pride. The lawn,

which fronted the drawingroom windows, was a rich and uniform green, unspotted by a single daisy, and on

the other side of it two straight paths led past beds of tall, standing flowers to a charming grassy walk, where

the Rev. Wyndham Datchet would pace up and down at the same hour every morning, with a sundial to

measure the time for him. As often as not, he carried a book in his hand, into which he would glance, then

shut it up, and repeat the rest of the ode from memory. He had most of Horace by heart, and had got into the

habit of connecting this particular walk with certain odes which he repeated duly, at the same time noting the

condition of his flowers, and stooping now and again to pick any that were withered or overblown. On wet

days, such was the power of habit over him, he rose from his chair at the same hour, and paced his study for

the same length of time, pausing now and then to straighten some book in the bookcase, or alter the position

of the two brass crucifixes standing upon cairns of serpentine stone upon the mantelpiece. His children had a

great respect for him, credited him with far more learning than he actually possessed, and saw that his habits

were not interfered with, if possible. Like most people who do things methodically, the Rector himself had

more strength of purpose and power of selfsacrifice than of intellect or of originality. On cold and windy

nights he rode off to visit sick people, who might need him, without a murmur; and by virtue of doing dull

duties punctually, he was much employed upon committees and local Boards and Councils; and at this period

of his life (he was sixtyeight) he was beginning to be commiserated by tender old ladies for the extreme

leanness of his person, which, they said, was worn out upon the roads when it should have been resting

before a comfortable fire. His elder daughter, Elizabeth, lived with him and managed the house, and already

much resembled him in dry sincerity and methodical habit of mind; of the two sons one, Richard, was an

estate agent, the other, Christopher, was reading for the Bar. At Christmas, naturally, they met together; and

for a month past the arrangement of the Christmas week had been much in the mind of mistress and maid,

who prided themselves every year more confidently upon the excellence of their equipment. The late Mrs.

Datchet had left an excellent cupboard of linen, to which Elizabeth had succeeded at the age of nineteen,

when her mother died, and the charge of the family rested upon the shoulders of the eldest daughter. She kept

a fine flock of yellow chickens, sketched a little, certain rosetrees in the garden were committed specially to

her care; and what with the care of the house, the care of the chickens, and the care of the poor, she scarcely

knew what it was to have an idle minute. An extreme rectitude of mind, rather than any gift, gave her weight

in the family. When Mary wrote to say that she had asked Ralph Denham to stay with them, she added, out of

deference to Elizabeth's character, that he was very nice, though rather queer, and had been overworking

himself in London. No doubt Elizabeth would conclude that Ralph was in love with her, but there could be no

doubt either that not a word of this would be spoken by either of them, unless, indeed, some catastrophe made

Mary went down to Disham without knowing whether Ralph intended to come; but two or three days before

Christmas she received a telegram from Ralph, asking her to take a room for him in the village. This was

followed by a letter explaining that he hoped he might have his meals with them; but quiet, essential for his

Mary was walking in the garden with Elizabeth, and inspecting the roses, when the letter arrived.

"But that's absurd," said Elizabeth decidedly, when the plan was explained to her. "There are five spare

rooms, even when the boys are here. Besides, he wouldn't get a room in the village. And he oughtn't to work

"But perhaps he doesn't want to see so much of us," Mary thought to herself, although outwardly she

assented, and felt grateful to Elizabeth for supporting her in what was, of course, her desire. They were

"If Ralph were here, he'd find this very dull," Mary thought, with a little shiver of irritation, which led her to

place her rose the wrong way in the basket. Meanwhile, they had come to the end of the path, and while

Elizabeth straightened some flowers, and made them stand upright within their fence of string, Mary looked

at her father, who was pacing up and down, with his hand behind his back and his head bowed in meditation.

Obeying an impulse which sprang from some desire to interrupt this methodical marching, Mary stepped on

"Eh, dear?" said Mr. Datchet, taking the flower, and holding it at an angle which suited his bad eyesight,

"Where does this fellow come from? One of Elizabeth's rosesI hope you asked her leave. Elizabeth doesn't

He had a habit, Mary remarked, and she had never noticed it so clearly before, of letting his sentences tail

away in a continuous murmur, whereupon he passed into a state of abstraction, presumed by his children to

"What?" said Mary, interrupting, for the first time in her life, perhaps, when the murmur ceased. He made no

reply. She knew very well that he wished to be left alone, but she stuck to his side much as she might have

stuck to some sleepwalker, whom she thought it right gradually to awaken. She could think of nothing to

"Yes, yes, yes," said Mr. Datchet, running his words together in the same abstracted manner, and sinking his

head yet lower upon his breast. And suddenly, as they turned their steps to retrace their way, he jerked out:

"The traffic's very much increased, you know. More rollingstock needed already. Forty trucks went down

yesterday by the 12.15counted them myself. They've taken off the 9.3, and given us an 8.30 instead

suits the business men, you know. You came by the old 3.10 yesterday, I suppose?"

She said "Yes," as he seemed to wish for a reply, and then he looked at his watch, and made off down the

path towards the house, holding the rose at the same angle in front of him. Elizabeth had gone round to the

side of the house, where the chickens lived, so that Mary found herself alone, holding Ralph's letter in her

hand. She was uneasy. She had put off the season for thinking things out very successfully, and now that

Ralph was actually coming, the next day, she could only wonder how her family would impress him. She

thought it likely that her father would discuss the train service with him; Elizabeth would be bright and

sensible, and always leaving the room to give messages to the servants. Her brothers had already said that

they would give him a day's shooting. She was content to leave the problem of Ralph's relations to the young

men obscure, trusting that they would find some common ground of masculine agreement. But what would

he think of HER? Would he see that she was different from the rest of the family? She devised a plan for

taking him to her sittingroom, and artfully leading the talk towards the English poets, who now occupied

prominent places in her little bookcase. Moreover, she might give him to understand, privately, that she, too,

thought her family a queer one queer, yes, but not dull. That was the rock past which she was bent on

steering him. And she thought how she would draw his attention to Edward's passion for Jorrocks, and the

enthusiasm which led Christopher to collect moths and butterflies though he was now twenty two. Perhaps

Elizabeth's sketching, if the fruits were invisible, might lend color to the general effect which she wished to

produce of a family, eccentric and limited, perhaps, but not dull. Edward, she perceived, was rolling the lawn,

for the sake of exercise; and the sight of him, with pink cheeks, bright little brown eyes, and a general

resemblance to a clumsy young carthorse in its winter coat of dusty brown hair, made Mary violently

ashamed of her ambitious scheming. She loved him precisely as he was; she loved them all; and as she

walked by his side, up and down, and down and up, her strong moral sense administered a sound drubbing to

the vain and romantic element aroused in her by the mere thought of Ralph. She felt quite certain that, for

Sitting in the corner of a thirdclass railway carriage, on the afternoon of the following day, Ralph made

several inquiries of a commercial traveler in the opposite corner. They centered round a village called

Lampsher, not three miles, he understood, from Lincoln; was there a big house in Lampsher, he asked,

The traveler knew nothing, but rolled the name of Otway on his tongue, reflectively, and the sound of it

gratified Ralph amazingly. It gave him an excuse to take a letter from his pocket in order to verify the

"You'll find somebody to direct you at Lincoln," said the man; and Ralph had to confess that he was not

"I've got to walk over from Disham," he said, and in the heart of him could not help marveling at the pleasure

which he derived from making a bagman in a train believe what he himself did not believe. For the letter,

though signed by Katharine's father, contained no invitation or warrant for thinking that Katharine herself

was there; the only fact it disclosed was that for a fortnight this address would be Mr. Hilbery's address. But

when he looked out of the window, it was of her he thought; she, too, had seen these gray fields, and,

perhaps, she was there where the trees ran up a slope, and one yellow light shone now, and then went out

again, at the foot of the hill. The light shone in the windows of an old gray house, he thought. He lay back in

his corner and forgot the commercial traveler altogether. The process of visualizing Katharine stopped short

at the old gray manorhouse; instinct warned him that if he went much further with this process reality would

soon force itself in; he could not altogether neglect the figure of William Rodney. Since the day when he had

heard from Katharine's lips of her engagement, he had refrained from investing his dream of her with the

details of real life. But the light of the late afternoon glowed green behind the straight trees, and became a

symbol of her. The light seemed to expand his heart. She brooded over the gray fields, and was with him now

in the railway carriage, thoughtful, silent, and infinitely tender; but the vision pressed too close, and must be

dismissed, for the train was slackening. Its abrupt jerks shook him wide awake, and he saw Mary Datchet, a

sturdy russet figure, with a dash of scarlet about it, as the carriage slid down the platform. A tall youth who

accompanied her shook him by the hand, took his bag, and led the way without uttering one articulate word.

Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to

issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day. Such an edge was there in Mary's voice

when she greeted him. About her seemed to hang the mist of the winter hedges, and the clear red of the

bramble leaves. He felt himself at once stepping on to the firm ground of an entirely different world, but he

did not allow himself to yield to the pleasure of it directly. They gave him his choice of driving with Edward

or of walking home across the fields with Marynot a shorter way, they explained, but Mary thought it a

nicer way. He decided to walk with her, being conscious, indeed, that he got comfort from her presence.

What could be the cause of her cheerfulness, he wondered, half ironically, and half enviously, as the

ponycart started briskly away, and the dusk swam between their eyes and the tall form of Edward, standing

up to drive, with the reins in one hand and the whip in the other. People from the village, who had been to the

market town, were climbing into their gigs, or setting off home down the road together in little parties. Many

salutations were addressed to Mary, who shouted back, with the addition of the speaker's name. But soon she

led the way over a stile, and along a path worn slightly darker than the dim green surrounding it. In front of

them the sky now showed itself of a reddishyellow, like a slice of some semilucent stone behind which a

lamp burnt, while a fringe of black trees with distinct branches stood against the light, which was obscured in

one direction by a hump of earth, in all other directions the land lying flat to the very verge of the sky. One of

the swift and noiseless birds of the winter's night seemed to follow them across the field, circling a few feet in

Mary had gone this walk many hundred times in the course of her life, generally alone, and at different stages

the ghosts of past moods would flood her mind with a whole scene or train of thought merely at the sight of

three trees from a particular angle, or at the sound of the pheasant clucking in the ditch. But tonight the

circumstances were strong enough to oust all other scenes; and she looked at the field and the trees with an

"Well, Ralph," she said, "this is better than Lincoln's Inn Fields, isn't it? Look, there's a bird for you! Oh,

you've brought glasses, have you? Edward and Christopher mean to make you shoot. Can you shoot? I

"Look here, you must explain," said Ralph. "Who are these young men? Where am I staying?"

"You are staying with us, of course," she said boldly. "Of course, you're staying with usyou don't mind

"If I had, I shouldn't have come," he said sturdily. They walked on in silence; Mary took care not to break it

for a time. She wished Ralph to feel, as she thought he would, all the fresh delights of the earth and air. She

"This is the sort of country I thought you'd live in, Mary," he said, pushing his hat back on his head, and

He snuffed the air, and felt more keenly than he had done for many weeks the pleasure of owning a body.

"Now we have to find our way through a hedge," said Mary. In the gap of the hedge Ralph tore up a poacher's

"It's quite right that they should poach," said Mary, watching him tugging at the wire. "I wonder whether it

was Alfred Duggins or Sid Rankin? How can one expect them not to, when they only make fifteen shillings a

week? Fifteen shillings a week," she repeated, coming out on the other side of the hedge, and running her

fingers through her hair to rid herself of a bramble which had attached itself to her. "I could live on fifteen

"Oh yes. They have a cottage thrown in, and a garden where one can grow vegetables. It wouldn't be half

"I sometimes think it's the only thing one would never get tired of," she replied.

The idea of a cottage where one grew one's own vegetables and lived on fifteen shillings a week, filled Ralph

"But wouldn't it be on the main road, or next door to a woman with six squalling children, who'd always be

"Oh, there are other things in the world besides the Suffrage," she replied, in an offhand manner which was

Ralph fell silent. It annoyed him that she should have plans of which he knew nothing; but he felt that he had

no right to press her further. His mind settled upon the idea of life in a country cottage. Conceivably, for he

could not examine into it now, here lay a tremendous possibility; a solution of many problems. He struck his

"Well, of course," said Mary. "What d'you take me for?a Cockney like you?" She then told him exactly

"It's my native land, this," she said. "I could smell my way about it blindfold."

As if to prove this boast, she walked a little quicker, so that Ralph found it difficult to keep pace with her. At

the same time, he felt drawn to her as he had never been before; partly, no doubt, because she was more

independent of him than in London, and seemed to be attached firmly to a world where he had no place at all.

Now the dusk had fallen to such an extent that he had to follow her implicitly, and even lean his hand on her

shoulder when they jumped a bank into a very narrow lane. And he felt curiously shy of her when she began

to shout through her hands at a spot of light which swung upon the mist in a neighboring field. He shouted,

She introduced him to Ralph, who could see only a tall figure in gaiters, rising from a fluttering circle of soft

feathery bodies, upon whom the light fell in wavering discs, calling out now a bright spot of yellow, now one

of greenishblack and scarlet. Mary dipped her hand in the bucket he carried, and was at once the center of a

circle also; and as she cast her grain she talked alternately to the birds and to her brother, in the same

clucking, halfinarticulate voice, as it sounded to Ralph, standing on the outskirts of the fluttering feathers in

He had removed his overcoat by the time they sat round the dinner table, but nevertheless he looked very

strange among the others. A country life and breeding had preserved in them all a look which Mary hesitated

to call either innocent or youthful, as she compared them, now sitting round in an oval, softly illuminated by

candlelight; and yet it was something of the kind, yes, even in the case of the Rector himself. Though

superficially marked with lines, his face was a clear pink, and his blue eyes had the longsighted, peaceful

expression of eyes seeking the turn of the road, or a distant light through rain, or the darkness of winter. She

looked at Ralph. He had never appeared to her more concentrated and full of purpose; as if behind his

forehead were massed so much experience that he could choose for himself which part of it he would display

and which part he would keep to himself. Compared with that dark and stern countenance, her brothers' faces,

"You came by the 3.10, Mr. Denham?" said the Reverend Wyndham Datchet, tucking his napkin into his

collar, so that almost the whole of his body was concealed by a large white diamond. "They treat us very

well, on the whole. Considering the increase of traffic, they treat us very well indeed. I have the curiosity

sometimes to count the trucks on the goods' trains, and they're well over fiftywell over fifty, at this season

The old gentleman had been roused agreeably by the presence of this attentive and wellinformed young

man, as was evident by the care with which he finished the last words in his sentences, and his slight

exaggeration in the number of trucks on the trains. Indeed, the chief burden of the talk fell upon him, and he

sustained it tonight in a manner which caused his sons to look at him admiringly now and then; for they felt

shy of Denham, and were glad not to have to talk themselves. The store of information about the present and

past of this particular corner of Lincolnshire which old Mr. Datchet produced really surprised his children, for

though they knew of its existence, they had forgotten its extent, as they might have forgotten the amount of

family plate stored in the platechest, until some rare celebration brought it forth.

After dinner, parish business took the Rector to his study, and Mary proposed that they should sit in the

"It's not the kitchen really," Elizabeth hastened to explain to her guest, "but we call it so"

"It's got the old rests by the side of the fireplace, where the men hung their guns," said Elizabeth, leading the

way, with a tall brass candlestick in her hand, down a passage. "Show Mr. Denham the steps, Christopher. . . .

When the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were here two years ago they said this was the most interesting part

of the house. These narrow bricks prove that it is five hundred years oldfive hundred years, I thinkthey

may have said six." She, too, felt an impulse to exaggerate the age of the bricks, as her father had exaggerated

the number of trucks. A big lamp hung down from the center of the ceiling and, together with a fine log fire,

illuminated a large and lofty room, with rafters running from wall to wall, a floor of red tiles, and a

substantial fireplace built up of those narrow red bricks which were said to be five hundred years old. A few

rugs and a sprinkling of armchairs had made this ancient kitchen into a sittingroom. Elizabeth, after

pointing out the gunracks, and the hooks for smoking hams, and other evidence of incontestable age, and

explaining that Mary had had the idea of turning the room into a sittingroomotherwise it was used for

hanging out the wash and for the men to change in after shootingconsidered that she had done her duty as

hostess, and sat down in an upright chair directly beneath the lamp, beside a very long and narrow oak table.

She placed a pair of horn spectacles upon her nose, and drew towards her a basketful of threads and wools. In

a few minutes a smile came to her face, and remained there for the rest of the evening.

"Will you come out shooting with us tomorrow?" said Christopher, who had, on the whole, formed a

"Don't you care about shooting?" asked Edward, whose suspicions were not yet laid to rest.

"I've never shot in my life," said Ralph, turning and looking him in the face, because he was not sure how this

"You wouldn't have much chance in London, I suppose," said Christopher. "But won't you find it rather

"I can show you the place for watching birds," said Edward, "if that's what you like doing. I know a fellow

who comes down from London about this time every year to watch them. It's a great place for the wild geese

and the ducks. I've heard this man say that it's one of the best places for birds in the country."

"It's about the best place in England," Ralph replied. They were all gratified by this praise of their native

county; and Mary now had the pleasure of hearing these short questions and answers lose their undertone of

suspicious inspection, so far as her brothers were concerned, and develop into a genuine conversation about

the habits of birds which afterwards turned to a discussion as to the habits of solicitors, in which it was

scarcely necessary for her to take part. She was pleased to see that her brothers liked Ralph, to the extent, that

is, of wishing to secure his good opinion. Whether or not he liked them it was impossible to tell from his kind

but experienced manner. Now and then she fed the fire with a fresh log, and as the room filled with the fine,

dry heat of burning wood, they all, with the exception of Elizabeth, who was outside the range of the fire, felt

less and less anxious about the effect they were making, and more and more inclined for sleep. At this

"All the same, I shall have to get up," Christopher grumbled. He let in the dog, and stood for a moment by the

door, which opened into the garden, to revive himself with a draught of the black, starlit air.

"We shall have a fine day tomorrow," said Christopher with complacency, and he sat himself on the floor at

her feet, and leant his back against her knees, and stretched out his long stockinged legs to the fireall signs

that he felt no longer any restraint at the presence of the stranger. He was the youngest of the family, and

Mary's favorite, partly because his character resembled hers, as Edward's character resembled Elizabeth's.

She made her knees a comfortable rest for his head, and ran her fingers through his hair.

"I should like Mary to stroke my head like that," Ralph thought to himself suddenly, and he looked at

Christopher, almost affectionately, for calling forth his sister's caresses. Instantly he thought of Katharine, the

thought of her being surrounded by the spaces of night and the open air; and Mary, watching him, saw the

lines upon his forehead suddenly deepen. He stretched out an arm and placed a log upon the fire, constraining

himself to fit it carefully into the frail red scaffolding, and also to limit his thoughts to this one room.

Mary had ceased to stroke her brother's head; he moved it impatiently between her knees, and, much as

though he were a child, she began once more to part the thick, reddishcolored locks this way and that. But a

far stronger passion had taken possession of her soul than any her brother could inspire in her, and, seeing

Ralph's change of expression, her hand almost automatically continued its movements, while her mind

Into that same black night, almost, indeed, into the very same layer of starlit air, Katharine Hilbery was now

gazing, although not with a view to the prospects of a fine day for duck shooting on the morrow. She was

walking up and down a gravel path in the garden of Stogdon House, her sight of the heavens being partially

intercepted by the light leafless hoops of a pergola. Thus a spray of clematis would completely obscure

Cassiopeia, or blot out with its black pattern myriads of miles of the Milky Way. At the end of the pergola,

however, there was a stone seat, from which the sky could be seen completely swept clear of any earthly

interruption, save to the right, indeed, where a line of elmtrees was beautifully sprinkled with stars, and a

low stable building had a full drop of quivering silver just issuing from the mouth of the chimney. It was a

moonless night, but the light of the stars was sufficient to show the outline of the young woman's form, and

the shape of her face gazing gravely, indeed almost sternly, into the sky. She had come out into the winter's

night, which was mild enough, not so much to look with scientific eyes upon the stars, as to shake herself free

from certain purely terrestrial discontents. Much as a literary person in like circumstances would begin,

absentmindedly, pulling out volume after volume, so she stepped into the garden in order to have the stars at

hand, even though she did not look at them. Not to be happy, when she was supposed to be happier than she

would ever be againthat, as far as she could see, was the origin of a discontent which had begun almost as

soon as she arrived, two days before, and seemed now so intolerable that she had left the family party, and

come out here to consider it by herself. It was not she who thought herself unhappy, but her cousins, who

thought it for her. The house was full of cousins, much of her age, or even younger, and among them they had

some terribly bright eyes. They seemed always on the search for something between her and Rodney, which

they expected to find, and yet did not find; and when they searched, Katharine became aware of wanting what

she had not been conscious of wanting in London, alone with William and her parents. Or, if she did not want

it, she missed it. And this state of mind depressed her, because she had been accustomed always to give

complete satisfaction, and her selflove was now a little ruffled. She would have liked to break through the

reserve habitual to her in order to justify her engagement to some one whose opinion she valued. No one had

spoken a word of criticism, but they left her alone with William; not that that would have mattered, if they

had not left her alone so politely; and, perhaps, that would not have mattered if they had not seemed so

queerly silent, almost respectful, in her presence, which gave way to criticism, she felt, out of it.

Looking now and then at the sky, she went through the list of her cousins' names: Eleanor, Humphrey,

Marmaduke, Silvia, Henry, Cassandra, Gilbert, and MostynHenry, the cousin who taught the young ladies

of Bungay to play upon the violin, was the only one in whom she could confide, and as she walked up and

down beneath the hoops of the pergola, she did begin a little speech to him, which ran something like this:

"To begin with, I'm very fond of William. You can't deny that. I know him better than any one, almost. But

why I'm marrying him is, partly, I admitI'm being quite honest with you, and you mustn't tell any

onepartly because I want to get married. I want to have a house of my own. It isn't possible at home. It's all

very well for you, Henry; you can go your own way. I have to be there always. Besides, you know what our

house is. You wouldn't be happy either, if you didn't do something. It isn't that I haven't the time at

homeit's the atmosphere." Here, presumably, she imagined that her cousin, who had listened with his usual

Even in this purely imaginary dialogue, Katharine found it difficult to confide her ambition to an imaginary

"I should like," she began, and hesitated quite a long time before she forced herself to add, with a change of

Henry was clearly amazed, but too kind to express all his doubts; he only said something about the

difficulties of mathematics, and remarked that very little was known about the stars.

"I don't care much whether I ever get to know anythingbut I want to work out something in

figuressomething that hasn't got to do with human beings. I don't want people particularly. In some ways,

Henry, I'm a humbugI mean, I'm not what you all take me for. I'm not domestic, or very practical or

sensible, really. And if I could calculate things, and use a telescope, and have to work out figures, and know

to a fraction where I was wrong, I should be perfectly happy, and I believe I should give William all he

Having reached this point, instinct told her that she had passed beyond the region in which Henry's advice

could be of any good; and, having rid her mind of its superficial annoyance, she sat herself upon the stone

seat, raised her eyes unconsciously and thought about the deeper questions which she had to decide, she

knew, for herself. Would she, indeed, give William all he wanted? In order to decide the question, she ran her

mind rapidly over her little collection of significant sayings, looks, compliments, gestures, which had marked

their intercourse during the last day or two. He had been annoyed because a box, containing some clothes

specially chosen by him for her to wear, had been taken to the wrong station, owing to her neglect in the

matter of labels. The box had arrived in the nick of time, and he had remarked, as she came downstairs on the

first night, that he had never seen her look more beautiful. She outshone all her cousins. He had discovered

that she never made an ugly movement; he also said that the shape of her head made it possible for her,

unlike most women, to wear her hair low. He had twice reproved her for being silent at dinner; and once for

never attending to what he said. He had been surprised at the excellence of her French accent, but he thought

it was selfish of her not to go with her mother to call upon the Middletons, because they were old family

friends and very nice people. On the whole, the balance was nearly even; and, writing down a kind of

conclusion in her mind which finished the sum for the present, at least, she changed the focus of her eyes, and

Tonight they seemed fixed with unusual firmness in the blue, and flashed back such a ripple of light into her

eyes that she found herself thinking that tonight the stars were happy. Without knowing or caring more for

Church practices than most people of her age, Katharine could not look into the sky at Christmas time

without feeling that, at this one season, the Heavens bend over the earth with sympathy, and signal with

immortal radiance that they, too, take part in her festival. Somehow, it seemed to her that they were even now

beholding the procession of kings and wise men upon some road on a distant part of the earth. And yet, after

gazing for another second, the stars did their usual work upon the mind, froze to cinders the whole of our

short human history, and reduced the human body to an apelike, furry form, crouching amid the brushwood

of a barbarous clod of mud. This stage was soon succeeded by another, in which there was nothing in the

universe save stars and the light of stars; as she looked up the pupils of her eyes so dilated with starlight that

the whole of her seemed dissolved in silver and spilt over the ledges of the stars for ever and ever indefinitely

through space. Somehow simultaneously, though incongruously, she was riding with the magnanimous hero

upon the shore or under forest trees, and so might have continued were it not for the rebuke forcibly

administered by the body, which, content with the normal conditions of life, in no way furthers any attempt

on the part of the mind to alter them. She grew cold, shook herself, rose, and walked towards the house.

By the light of the stars, Stogdon House looked pale and romantic, and about twice its natural size. Built by a

retired admiral in the early years of the nineteenth century, the curving bow windows of the front, now filled

with reddishyellow light, suggested a portly threedecker, sailing seas where those dolphins and narwhals

who disport themselves upon the edges of old maps were scattered with an impartial hand. A semicircular

flight of shallow steps led to a very large door, which Katharine had left ajar. She hesitated, cast her eyes over

the front of the house, marked that a light burnt in one small window upon an upper floor, and pushed the

door open. For a moment she stood in the square hall, among many horned skulls, sallow globes, cracked

oilpaintings, and stuffed owls, hesitating, it seemed, whether she should open the door on her right, through

which the stir of life reached her ears. Listening for a moment, she heard a sound which decided her,

apparently, not to enter; her uncle, Sir Francis, was playing his nightly game of whist; it appeared probable

She went up the curving stairway, which represented the one attempt at ceremony in the otherwise rather

dilapidated mansion, and down a narrow passage until she came to the room whose light she had seen from

the garden. Knocking, she was told to come in. A young man, Henry Otway, was reading, with his feet on the

fender. He had a fine head, the brow arched in the Elizabethan manner, but the gentle, honest eyes were

rather skeptical than glowing with the Elizabethan vigor. He gave the impression that he had not yet found

He turned, put down his book, and looked at her. He noticed her rather pale, dewdrenched look, as of one

whose mind is not altogether settled in the body. He had often laid his difficulties before her, and guessed, in

some ways hoped, that perhaps she now had need of him. At the same time, she carried on her life with such

"You have fled, too, then?" he said, looking at her cloak. Katharine had forgotten to remove this token of her

"Fled?" she asked. "From whom d'you mean? Oh, the family party. Yes, it was hot down there, so I went into

"And aren't you very cold?" Henry inquired, placing coal on the fire, drawing a chair up to the grate, and

laying aside her cloak. Her indifference to such details often forced Henry to act the part generally taken by

"I'm not here. I'm at Bungay," he replied. "I'm giving a music lesson to Harold and Julia. That was why I had

to leave the table with the ladiesI'm spending the night there, and I shan't be back till late on Christmas

"How I wish" Katharine began, and stopped short. "I think these parties are a great mistake," she added

Her sigh made him look at her. Should he venture to ask her why she sighed? Was her reticence about her

own affairs as inviolable as it had often been convenient for rather an egoistical young man to think it? But

since her engagement to Rodney, Henry's feeling towards her had become rather complex; equally divided

between an impulse to hurt her and an impulse to be tender to her; and all the time he suffered a curious

irritation from the sense that she was drifting away from him for ever upon unknown seas. On her side,

directly Katharine got into his presence, and the sense of the stars dropped from her, she knew that any

intercourse between people is extremely partial; from the whole mass of her feelings, only one or two could

be selected for Henry's inspection, and therefore she sighed. Then she looked at him, and their eyes meeting,

much more seemed to be in common between them than had appeared possible. At any rate they had a

grandfather in common; at any rate there was a kind of loyalty between them sometimes found between

"Well, what's the date of the wedding?" said Henry, the malicious mood now predominating.

She lay back in her armchair, her feet high upon the side of the grate, and in front of her, presumably to

screen her eyes, she held a newspaper from which she picked up a sentence or two now and again. Observing

At this she lowered the newspaper an inch or two, but said nothing. Indeed, she sat quite silent for over a

"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?" she said

"I don't think I ever do consider things like the stars," Henry replied. "I'm not sure that that's not the

"I doubt whether there is an explanation," she replied rather hurriedly, not clearly understanding what he

"That certainly seems to explain some of your actions," Henry thought to himself.

"One thing's about as good as another, and one's got to do something," he said aloud, expressing what he

supposed to be her attitude, much in her accent. Perhaps she detected the imitation, for looking gently at him,

"What about the stars?" he asked a moment later. "I understand that you rule your life by the stars?"

She let this pass, either because she did not attend to it, or because the tone was not to her liking.

"But do you always understand why you do everything? Ought one to understand? People like my mother

understand," she reflected. "Now I must go down to them, I suppose, and see what's happening."

"Oh, they may want to settle something," she replied vaguely, putting her feet on the ground, resting her chin

on her hands, and looking out of her large dark eyes contemplatively at the fire.

"Don't let's talk about coalmines, Katharine," he protested. "We shall probably never see each other again.

Henry could not pretend that he was altogether ignorant of her meaning, though, certainly, he had never

guessed that she minded the teasing. But before he knew what to say, her eyes were clear again, and the

She seemed to consider, looking once more into the red of the fire, and decided to refrain from any

"Yes, I promise that," she said at length, and Henry felt himself gratified by her complete sincerity, and began

They were, indeed, descending the shaft in a small cage, and could hear the picks of the miners, something

like the gnawing of rats, in the earth beneath them, when the door was burst open, without any knocking.

"Well, here you are!" Rodney exclaimed. Both Katharine and Henry turned round very quickly and rather

guiltily. Rodney was in evening dress. It was clear that his temper was ruffled.

Rodney found it hard to be unreasonable in the presence of another man, and did not answer him.

"They don't like it," he said. "It isn't kind to old people to leave them alonealthough I've no doubt it's much

"Yes. But we were talking about much more interesting things before that," said Katharine.

From the apparent determination to hurt him with which she spoke, Henry thought that some sort of

"I can quite understand that," said Rodney, with his little chuckle, leaning over the back of his chair and

tapping the woodwork lightly with his fingers. They were all silent, and the silence was acutely

"Was it very dull, William?" Katharine suddenly asked, with a complete change of tone and a little gesture of

She rose as she spoke, and as she turned to leave the room, she laid her hand, with a curiously caressing

gesture, upon Rodney's shoulder. Instantly Rodney clasped her hand in his, with such an impulse of emotion

"I shall come down with you," said William, as she drew back her hand, and made as if to pass him.

"Yes, do," said Henry, shutting up his book again. His invitation was polite, without being precisely cordial.

Rodney evidently hesitated as to the course he should pursue, but seeing Katharine at the door, he exclaimed:

She looked back, and said in a very commanding tone, and with an expression of authority upon her face:

She nodded to them both, but Henry could not help noticing that her last nod was in his direction. Rodney sat

His mortification was so obvious that Henry scarcely liked to open the conversation with some remark of a

literary character. On the other hand, unless he checked him, Rodney might begin to talk about his feelings,

and irreticence is apt to be extremely painful, at any rate in prospect. He therefore adopted a middle course;

that is to say, he wrote a note upon the flyleaf of his book, which ran, "The situation is becoming most

uncomfortable." This he decorated with those flourishes and decorative borders which grow of themselves

upon these occasions; and as he did so, he thought to himself that whatever Katharine's difficulties might be,

they did not justify her behavior. She had spoken with a kind of brutality which suggested that, whether it is

The penciling of this note gave Rodney time to recover himself. Perhaps, for he was a very vain man, he was

more hurt that Henry had seen him rebuffed than by the rebuff itself. He was in love with Katharine, and

vanity is not decreased but increased by love; especially, one may hazard, in the presence of one's own sex.

But Rodney enjoyed the courage which springs from that laughable and lovable defect, and when he had

mastered his first impulse, in some way to make a fool of himself, he drew inspiration from the perfect fit of

his evening dress. He chose a cigarette, tapped it on the back of his hand, displayed his exquisite pumps on

"You've several big estates round here, Otway," he began. "Any good hunting? Let me see, what pack would

"Sir William Budge, the sugar king, has the biggest estate. He bought out poor Stanham, who went

"Alfred. . . . I don't hunt myself. You're a great huntsman, aren't you? You have a great reputation as a

horseman, anyhow," he added, desiring to help Rodney in his effort to recover his complacency.

"Oh, I love riding," Rodney replied. "Could I get a horse down here? Stupid of me! I forgot to bring any

To tell the truth, Henry labored under the same difficulty; he did not wish to introduce Katharine's name, and,

therefore, he replied vaguely that he had always heard that Rodney was a great rider. In truth, he had heard

very little about him, one way or another, accepting him as a figure often to be found in the background at his

"I don't care much for shooting," Rodney continued; "but one has to do it, unless one wants to be altogether

out of things. I dare say there's some very pretty country round here. I stayed once at Bolham Hall. Young

Cranthorpe was up with you, wasn't he? He married old Lord Bolham's daughter. Very nice peoplein their

"I don't mix in that society," Henry remarked, rather shortly. But Rodney, now started on an agreeable current

of reflection, could not resist the temptation of pursuing it a little further. He appeared to himself as a man

who moved easily in very good society, and knew enough about the true values of life to be himself above it.

"Oh, but you should," he went on. "It's well worth staying there, anyhow, once a year. They make one very

"The women?" Henry thought to himself, with disgust. "What could any woman see in you?" His tolerance

was rapidly becoming exhausted, but he could not help liking Rodney nevertheless, and this appeared to him

strange, for he was fastidious, and such words in another mouth would have condemned the speaker

irreparably. He began, in short, to wonder what kind of creature this man who was to marry his cousin might

be. Could any one, except a rather singular character, afford to be so ridiculously vain?

"I don't think I should get on in that society," he replied. "I don't think I should know what to say to Lady

"I don't find any difficulty," Rodney chuckled. "You talk to them about their children, if they have any, or

their accomplishments painting, gardening, poetrythey're so delightfully sympathetic. Seriously, you

know I think a woman's opinion of one's poetry is always worth having. Don't ask them for their reasons. Just

"Katharine," said Henry, with an emphasis upon the name, almost as if he resented Rodney's use of it,

"Quite," Rodney agreed. "She is" He seemed about to describe her, and he hesitated for a long time. "She's

looking very well," he stated, or rather almost inquired, in a different tone from that in which he had been

"Not Katharine," Rodney repeated, as if he weighed the meaning of the words. "No, perhaps you're right. But

her engagement has changed her. Naturally," he added, "one would expect that to be so." He waited for

"Katharine has had a difficult life, in some ways," he continued. "I expect that marriage will be good for her.

Rodney had completely dropped his pose as a man of the world, and seemed to be asking Henry to help him

"D'you think childrena householdthat sort of thingd'you think that'll satisfy her? Mind, I'm out all

"Oh, she's wonderfully competent," said Rodney. "ButI get absorbed in my poetry. Well, Katharine hasn't

got that. She admires my poetry, you know, but that wouldn't be enough for her?"

"No," said Henry. He paused. "I think you're right," he added, as if he were summing up his thoughts.

"Katharine hasn't found herself yet. Life isn't altogether real to her yetI sometimes think"

"Yes?" Rodney inquired, as if he were eager for Henry to continue. "That is what I" he was going on, as

Henry remained silent, but the sentence was not finished, for the door opened, and they were interrupted by

Henry's younger brother Gilbert, much to Henry's relief, for he had already said more than he liked.

When the sun shone, as it did with unusual brightness that Christmas week, it revealed much that was faded

and not altogether wellkeptup in Stogdon House and its grounds. In truth, Sir Francis had retired from

service under the Government of India with a pension that was not adequate, in his opinion, to his services, as

it certainly was not adequate to his ambitions. His career had not come up to his expectations, and although

he was a very fine, whitewhiskered, mahoganycolored old man to look at, and had laid down a very choice

cellar of good reading and good stories, you could not long remain ignorant of the fact that some

thunderstorm had soured them; he had a grievance. This grievance dated back to the middle years of the last

century, when, owing to some official intrigue, his merits had been passed over in a disgraceful manner in

The rights and wrongs of the story, presuming that they had some existence in fact, were no longer clearly

known to his wife and children; but this disappointment had played a very large part in their lives, and had

poisoned the life of Sir Francis much as a disappointment in love is said to poison the whole life of a woman.

Long brooding on his failure, continual arrangement and rearrangement of his deserts and rebuffs, had made

Sir Francis much of an egoist, and in his retirement his temper became increasingly difficult and exacting.

His wife now offered so little resistance to his moods that she was practically useless to him. He made his

daughter Eleanor into his chief confidante, and the prime of her life was being rapidly consumed by her

father. To her he dictated the memoirs which were to avenge his memory, and she had to assure him

constantly that his treatment had been a disgrace. Already, at the age of thirtyfive, her cheeks were

whitening as her mother's had whitened, but for her there would be no memories of Indian suns and Indian

rivers, and clamor of children in a nursery; she would have very little of substance to think about when she

sat, as Lady Otway now sat, knitting white wool, with her eyes fixed almost perpetually upon the same

embroidered bird upon the same firescreen. But then Lady Otway was one of the people for whom the great

makebelieve game of English social life has been invented; she spent most of her time in pretending to

herself and her neighbors that she was a dignified, important, muchoccupied person, of considerable social

standing and sufficient wealth. In view of the actual state of things this game needed a great deal of skill; and,

perhaps, at the age she had reachedshe was over sixtyshe played far more to deceive herself than to

deceive any one else. Moreover, the armor was wearing thin; she forgot to keep up appearances more and

The worn patches in the carpets, and the pallor of the drawingroom, where no chair or cover had been

renewed for some years, were due not only to the miserable pension, but to the wear and tear of twelve

children, eight of whom were sons. As often happens in these large families, a distinct dividingline could be

traced, about halfway in the succession, where the money for educational purposes had run short, and the

six younger children had grown up far more economically than the elder. If the boys were clever, they won

scholarships, and went to school; if they were not clever, they took what the family connection had to offer

them. The girls accepted situations occasionally, but there were always one or two at home, nursing sick

animals, tending silkworms, or playing the flute in their bedrooms. The distinction between the elder children

and the younger corresponded almost to the distinction between a higher class and a lower one, for with only

a haphazard education and insufficient allowances, the younger children had picked up accomplishments,

friends, and points of view which were not to be found within the walls of a public school or of a

Government office. Between the two divisions there was considerable hostility, the elder trying to patronize

the younger, the younger refusing to respect the elder; but one feeling united them and instantly closed any

risk of a breach their common belief in the superiority of their own family to all others. Henry was the

eldest of the younger group, and their leader; he bought strange books and joined odd societies; he went

without a tie for a whole year, and had six shirts made of black flannel. He had long refused to take a seat

either in a shipping office or in a teamerchant's warehouse; and persisted, in spite of the disapproval of

uncles and aunts, in practicing both violin and piano, with the result that he could not perform professionally

upon either. Indeed, for thirtytwo years of life he had nothing more substantial to show than a manuscript

book containing the score of half an opera. In this protest of his, Katharine had always given him her support,

and as she was generally held to be an extremely sensible person, who dressed too well to be eccentric, he

had found her support of some use. Indeed, when she came down at Christmas she usually spent a great part

of her time in private conferences with Henry and with Cassandra, the youngest girl, to whom the silkworms

belonged. With the younger section she had a great reputation for common sense, and for something that they

despised but inwardly respected and called knowledge of the worldthat is to say, of the way in which

respectable elderly people, going to their clubs and dining out with ministers, think and behave. She had more

than once played the part of ambassador between Lady Otway and her children. That poor lady, for instance,

consulted her for advice when, one day, she opened Cassandra's bedroom door on a mission of discovery, and

found the ceiling hung with mulberryleaves, the windows blocked with cages, and the tables stacked with

"I wish you could help her to take an interest in something that other people are interested in, Katharine," she

observed, rather plaintively, detailing her grievances. "It's all Henry's doing, you know, giving up her parties

and taking to these nasty insects. It doesn't follow that if a man can do a thing a woman may too."

The morning was sufficiently bright to make the chairs and sofas in Lady Otway's private sittingroom

appear more than usually shabby, and the gallant gentlemen, her brothers and cousins, who had defended the

Empire and left their bones on many frontiers, looked at the world through a film of yellow which the

morning light seemed to have drawn across their photographs. Lady Otway sighed, it may be at the faded

relics, and turned, with resignation, to her balls of wool, which, curiously and characteristically, were not an

ivorywhite, but rather a tarnished yellowwhite. She had called her niece in for a little chat. She had always

trusted her, and now more than ever, since her engagement to Rodney, which seemed to Lady Otway

extremely suitable, and just what one would wish for one's own daughter. Katharine unwittingly increased

"It's so very pleasant," said Lady Otway, "to knit while one's talking. And now, my dear Katharine, tell me

The emotions of the night before, which she had suppressed in such a way as to keep her awake till dawn, had

left Katharine a little jaded, and thus more matteroffact than usual. She was quite ready to discuss her

planshouses and rents, servants and economywithout feeling that they concerned her very much. As she

spoke, knitting methodically meanwhile, Lady Otway noted, with approval, the upright, responsible bearing

of her niece, to whom the prospect of marriage had brought some gravity most becoming in a bride, and yet,

"What a perfect daughter, or daughterinlaw!" she thought to herself, and could not help contrasting her

"Yes," she continued, glancing at Katharine, with the round, greenish eyes which were as inexpressive as

moist marbles, "Katharine is like the girls of my youth. We took the serious things of life seriously." But just

as she was deriving satisfaction from this thought, and was producing some of the hoarded wisdom which

none of her own daughters, alas! seemed now to need, the door opened, and Mrs. Hilbery came in, or rather,

did not come in, but stood in the doorway and smiled, having evidently mistaken the room.

"I never SHALL know my way about this house!" she exclaimed. "I'm on my way to the library, and I don't

The presence of her sisterinlaw made Lady Otway slightly uneasy. How could she go on with what she

was saying in Maggie's presence? for she was saying something that she had never said, all these years, to

"I was telling Katharine a few little commonplaces about marriage," she said, with a little laugh. "Are none of

"Marriage," said Mrs. Hilbery, coming into the room, and nodding her head once or twice, "I always say

marriage is a school. And you don't get the prizes unless you go to school. Charlotte has won all the prizes,"

she added, giving her sisterinlaw a little pat, which made Lady Otway more uncomfortable still. She half

"Aunt Charlotte was saying that it's no good being married unless you submit to your husband," said

Katharine, framing her aunt's words into a far more definite shape than they had really worn; and when she

spoke thus she did not appear at all oldfashioned. Lady Otway looked at her and paused for a moment.

"Well, I really don't advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married," she said,

Mrs. Hilbery knew something of the circumstances which, as she thought, had inspired this remark. In a

moment her face was clouded with sympathy which she did not quite know how to express.

"What a shame it was!" she exclaimed, forgetting that her train of thought might not be obvious to her

listeners. "But, Charlotte, it would have been much worse if Frank had disgraced himself in any way. And it

isn't what our husbands GET, but what they ARE. I used to dream of white horses and palanquins, too; but

still, I like the inkpots best. And who knows?" she concluded, looking at Katharine, "your father may be

Lady Otway, who was Mr. Hilbery's sister, knew quite well that, in private, the Hilberys called Sir Francis

"that old Turk," and though she did not follow the drift of Mrs. Hilbery's remarks, she knew what prompted

"But if you can give way to your husband," she said, speaking to Katharine, as if there were a separate

understanding between them, "a happy marriage is the happiest thing in the world."

"Yes," said Katharine, "but" She did not mean to finish her sentence, she merely wished to induce her

mother and her aunt to go on talking about marriage, for she was in the mood to feel that other people could

help her if they would. She went on knitting, but her fingers worked with a decision that was oddly unlike the

smooth and contemplative sweep of Lady Otway's plump hand. Now and then she looked swiftly at her

mother, then at her aunt. Mrs. Hilbery held a book in her hand, and was on her way, as Katharine guessed, to

the library, where another paragraph was to be added to that varied assortment of paragraphs, the Life of

Richard Alardyce. Normally, Katharine would have hurried her mother downstairs, and seen that no excuse

for distraction came her way. Her attitude towards the poet's life, however, had changed with other changes;

and she was content to forget all about her scheme of hours. Mrs. Hilbery was secretly delighted. Her relief at

finding herself excused manifested itself in a series of sidelong glances of sly humor in her daughter's

direction, and the indulgence put her in the best of spirits. Was she to be allowed merely to sit and talk? It

was so much pleasanter to sit in a nice room filled with all sorts of interesting odds and ends which she hadn't

looked at for a year, at least, than to seek out one date which contradicted another in a dictionary.

"We've all had perfect husbands," she concluded, generously forgiving Sir Francis all his faults in a lump.

"Not that I think a bad temper is really a fault in a man. I don't mean a bad temper," she corrected herself,

with a glance obviously in the direction of Sir Francis. "I should say a quick, impatient temper. Most, in fact

ALL great men have had bad tempersexcept your grandfather, Katharine," and here she sighed, and

"But in the ordinary marriage, is it necessary to give way to one's husband?" said Katharine, taking no notice

of her mother's suggestion, blind even to the depression which had now taken possession of her at the thought

"I should say yes, certainly," said Lady Otway, with a decision most unusual for her.

"Then one ought to make up one's mind to that before one is married," Katharine mused, seeming to address

Mrs. Hilbery was not much interested in these remarks, which seemed to have a melancholy tendency, and to

revive her spirits she had recourse to an infallible remedyshe looked out of the window.

"Do look at that lovely little blue bird!" she exclaimed, and her eye looked with extreme pleasure at the soft

sky. at the trees, at the green fields visible behind those trees, and at the leafless branches which surrounded

"Most women know by instinct whether they can give it or not," Lady Otway slipped in quickly, in rather a

low voice, as if she wanted to get this said while her sisterinlaw's attention was diverted. "And if

"Oh, but marriage is the happiest life for a woman," said Mrs. Hilbery, catching the word marriage, as she

brought her eyes back to the room again. Then she turned her mind to what she had said.

"It's the most INTERESTING life," she corrected herself. She looked at her daughter with a look of vague

alarm. It was the kind of maternal scrutiny which suggests that, in looking at her daughter a mother is really

looking at herself. She was not altogether satisfied; but she purposely made no attempt to break down the

reserve which, as a matter of fact, was a quality she particularly admired and depended upon in her daughter.

But when her mother said that marriage was the most interesting life, Katharine felt, as she was apt to do

suddenly, for no definite reason, that they understood each other, in spite of differing in every possible way.

Yet the wisdom of the old seems to apply more to feelings which we have in common with the rest of the

human race than to our feelings as individuals, and Katharine knew that only some one of her own age could

follow her meaning. Both these elderly women seemed to her to have been content with so little happiness,

and at the moment she had not sufficient force to feel certain that their version of marriage was the wrong

one. In London, certainly, this temperate attitude toward her own marriage had seemed to her just. Why had

she now changed? Why did it now depress her? It never occurred to her that her own conduct could be

anything of a puzzle to her mother, or that elder people are as much affected by the young as the young are by

them. And yet it was true that lovepassion whatever one chose to call it, had played far less part in Mrs.

Hilbery's life than might have seemed likely, judging from her enthusiastic and imaginative temperament.

She had always been more interested by other things. Lady Otway, strange though it seemed, guessed more

"Why don't we all live in the country?" exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, once more looking out of the window. "I'm

sure one would think such beautiful things if one lived in the country. No horrid slum houses to depress one,

no trams or motorcars; and the people all looking so plump and cheerful. Isn't there some little cottage near

you, Charlotte, which would do for us, with a spare room, perhaps, in case we asked a friend down? And we

"Yes. You would find it very nice for a week or two, no doubt," said Lady Otway. "But what hour would you

"Katharine shall decide," said Mrs. Hilbery, feeling herself unable to prefer one hour to another. "And I was

just going to tell you, Katharine, how, when I woke this morning, everything seemed so clear in my head that

if I'd had a pencil I believe I could have written quite a long chapter. When we're out on our drive I shall find

us a house. A few trees round it, and a little garden, a pond with a Chinese duck, a study for your father, a

study for me, and a sitting room for Katharine, because then she'll be a married lady."

At this Katharine shivered a little, drew up to the fire, and warmed her hands by spreading them over the

topmost peak of the coal. She wished to bring the talk back to marriage again, in order to hear Aunt

"Let me look at your engagementring, Aunt Charlotte," she said, noticing her own.

She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round and round, but she did not know what to say next.

"That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me when I first had it," Lady Otway mused. "I'd set my heart

on a diamond ring, but I never liked to tell Frank, naturally. He bought it at Simla."

Katharine turned the ring round once more, and gave it back to her aunt without speaking. And while she

turned it round her lips set themselves firmly together, and it seemed to her that she could satisfy William as

these women had satisfied their husbands; she could pretend to like emeralds when she preferred diamonds.

Having replaced her ring, Lady Otway remarked that it was chilly, though not more so than one must expect

at this time of year. Indeed, one ought to be thankful to see the sun at all, and she advised them both to dress

warmly for their drive. Her aunt's stock of commonplaces, Katharine sometimes suspected, had been laid in

on purpose to fill silences with, and had little to do with her private thoughts. But at this moment they seemed

terribly in keeping with her own conclusions, so that she took up her knitting again and listened, chiefly with

a view to confirming herself in the belief that to be engaged to marry some one with whom you are not in

love is an inevitable step in a world where the existence of passion is only a traveller's story brought from the

heart of deep forests and told so rarely that wise people doubt whether the story can be true. She did her best

to listen to her mother asking for news of John, and to her aunt replying with the authentic history of Hilda's

engagement to an officer in the Indian Army, but she cast her mind alternately towards forest paths and starry

blossoms, and towards pages of neatly written mathematical signs. When her mind took this turn her

marriage seemed no more than an archway through which it was necessary to pass in order to have her desire.

At such times the current of her nature ran in its deep narrow channel with great force and with an alarming

lack of consideration for the feelings of others. Just as the two elder ladies had finished their survey of the

family prospects, and Lady Otway was nervously anticipating some general statement as to life and death

from her sisterinlaw, Cassandra burst into the room with the news that the carriage was at the door.

"Why didn't Andrews tell me himself?" said Lady Otway, peevishly, blaming her servants for not living up to

When Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine arrived in the hall, ready dressed for their drive, they found that the usual

discussion was going forward as to the plans of the rest of the family. In token of this, a great many doors

were opening and shutting, two or three people stood irresolutely on the stairs, now going a few steps up, and

now a few steps down, and Sir Francis himself had come out from his study, with the "Times" under his arm,

and a complaint about noise and draughts from the open door which, at least, had the effect of bundling the

people who did not want to go into the carriage, and sending those who did not want to stay back to their

rooms. It was decided that Mrs. Hilbery, Katharine, Rodney, and Henry should drive to Lincoln, and any one

else who wished to go should follow on bicycles or in the pony cart. Every one who stayed at Stogdon

House had to make this expedition to Lincoln in obedience to Lady Otway's conception of the right way to

entertain her guests, which she had imbibed from reading in fashionable papers of the behavior of Christmas

parties in ducal houses. The carriage horses were both fat and aged, still they matched; the carriage was shaky

and uncomfortable, but the Otway arms were visible on the panels. Lady Otway stood on the topmost step,

wrapped in a white shawl, and waved her hand almost mechanically until they had turned the corner under

the laurelbushes, when she retired indoors with a sense that she had played her part, and a sigh at the

The carriage bowled along smoothly over the gently curving road. Mrs. Hilbery dropped into a pleasant,

inattentive state of mind, in which she was conscious of the running green lines of the hedges, of the swelling

ploughland, and of the mild blue sky, which served her, after the first five minutes, for a pastoral background

to the drama of human life; and then she thought of a cottage garden, with the flash of yellow daffodils

against blue water; and what with the arrangement of these different prospects, and the shaping of two or

three lovely phrases, she did not notice that the young people in the carriage were almost silent. Henry,

indeed, had been included against his wish, and revenged himself by observing Katharine and Rodney with

disillusioned eyes; while Katharine was in a state of gloomy selfsuppression which resulted in complete

apathy. When Rodney spoke to her she either said "Hum!" or assented so listlessly that he addressed his next

remark to her mother. His deference was agreeable to her, his manners were exemplary; and when the church

towers and factory chimneys of the town came into sight, she roused herself, and recalled memories of the

fair summer of 1853, which fitted in harmoniously with what she was dreaming of the future.

But other passengers were approaching Lincoln meanwhile by other roads on foot. A county town draws the

inhabitants of all vicarages, farms, country houses, and wayside cottages, within a radius of ten miles at least,

once or twice a week to its streets; and among them, on this occasion, were Ralph Denham and Mary

Datchet. They despised the roads, and took their way across the fields; and yet, from their appearance, it did

not seem as if they cared much where they walked so long as the way did not actually trip them up. When

they left the Vicarage, they had begun an argument which swung their feet along so rhythmically in time with

it that they covered the ground at over four miles an hour, and saw nothing of the hedgerows, the swelling

plowland, or the mild blue sky. What they saw were the Houses of Parliament and the Government Offices in

Whitehall. They both belonged to the class which is conscious of having lost its birthright in these great

structures and is seeking to build another kind of lodging for its own notion of law and government.

Purposely, perhaps, Mary did not agree with Ralph; she loved to feel her mind in conflict with his, and to be

certain that he spared her female judgment no ounce of his male muscularity. He seemed to argue as fiercely

with her as if she were his brother. They were alike, however, in believing that it behooved them to take in

hand the repair and reconstruction of the fabric of England. They agreed in thinking that nature has not been

generous in the endowment of our councilors. They agreed, unconsciously, in a mute love for the muddy field

through which they tramped, with eyes narrowed close by the concentration of their minds. At length they

drew breath, let the argument fly away into the limbo of other good arguments, and, leaning over a gate,

opened their eyes for the first time and looked about them. Their feet tingled with warm blood and their

breath rose in steam around them. The bodily exercise made them both feel more direct and less

selfconscious than usual, and Mary, indeed, was overcome by a sort of lightheadedness which made it

seem to her that it mattered very little what happened next. It mattered so little, indeed, that she felt herself on

"I love you; I shall never love anybody else. Marry me or leave me; think what you like of meI don't care a

straw." At the moment, however, speech or silence seemed immaterial, and she merely clapped her hands

together, and looked at the distant woods with the rustlike bloom on their brown, and the green and blue

landscape through the steam of her own breath. It seemed a mere tossup whether she said, "I love you," or

Her indifference must have been superficial, for it disappeared at once. Indeed, she lost sight of the trees, and

saw her own hand upon the topmost bar of the gate with extreme distinctness, while he went on:

"I've made up my mind to chuck my work and live down here. I want you to tell me about that cottage you

spoke of. However, I suppose there'll be no difficulty about getting a cottage, will there?" He spoke with an

She still waited, as if for him to continue; she was convinced that in some roundabout way he approached the

"I can't stand the office any longer," he proceeded. "I don't know what my family will say; but I'm sure I'm

"Some old woman would do for me, I suppose," he replied. "I'm sick of the whole thing," he went on, and

opened the gate with a jerk. They began to cross the next field walking side by side.

"I tell you, Mary, it's utter destruction, working away, day after day, at stuff that doesn't matter a damn to any

one. I've stood eight years of it, and I'm not going to stand it any longer. I suppose this all seems to you mad,

"Yes," said Ralph, slackening his pace and remembering Katharine and her engagement, the purple leaves

stamped into the path, the white paper radiant under the electric light, and the hopelessness which seemed to

"You're right, Mary," he said, with something of an effort, "though I don't know how you guessed it."

She was silent, hoping that he might tell her the reason of his unhappiness, for his excuses had not deceived

"I was unhappyvery unhappy," he repeated. Some six weeks separated him from that afternoon when he

had sat upon the Embankment watching his visions dissolve in mist as the waters swam past and the sense of

his desolation still made him shiver. He had not recovered in the least from that depression. Here was an

opportunity for making himself face it, as he felt that he ought to; for, by this time, no doubt, it was only a

sentimental ghost, better exorcised by ruthless exposure to such an eye as Mary's, than allowed to underlie all

his actions and thoughts as had been the case ever since he first saw Katharine Hilbery pouring out tea. He

must begin, however, by mentioning her name, and this he found it impossible to do. He persuaded himself

that he could make an honest statement without speaking her name; he persuaded himself that his feeling had

"Unhappiness is a state of mind," he said, "by which I mean that it is not necessarily the result of any

This rather stilted beginning did not please him, and it became more and more obvious to him that, whatever

"I began to find my life unsatisfactory," he started afresh. "It seemed to me meaningless." He paused again,

but felt that this, at any rate, was true, and that on these lines he could go on.

"All this moneymaking and working ten hours a day in an office, what's it FOR? When one's a boy, you see,

one's head is so full of dreams that it doesn't seem to matter what one does. And if you're ambitious, you're all

right; you've got a reason for going on. Now my reasons ceased to satisfy me. Perhaps I never had any. That's

very likely now I come to think of it. (What reason is there for anything, though?) Still, it's impossible, after a

certain age, to take oneself in satisfactorily. And I know what carried me on"for a good reason now

occurred to him"I wanted to be the savior of my family and all that kind of thing. I wanted them to get on

in the world. That was a lie, of coursea kind of selfglorification, too. Like most people, I suppose, I've

lived almost entirely among delusions, and now I'm at the awkward stage of finding it out. I want another

There were two reasons that kept Mary very silent during this speech, and drew curiously straight lines upon

her face. In the first place, Ralph made no mention of marriage; in the second, he was not speaking the truth.

"I don't think it will be difficult to find a cottage," she said, with cheerful hardness, ignoring the whole of this

statement. "You've got a little money, haven't you? Yes," she concluded, "I don't see why it shouldn't be a

They crossed the field in complete silence. Ralph was surprised by her remark and a little hurt, and yet, on the

whole, rather pleased. He had convinced himself that it was impossible to lay his case truthfully before Mary,

and, secretly, he was relieved to find that he had not parted with his dream to her. She was, as he had always

found her, the sensible, loyal friend, the woman he trusted; whose sympathy he could count upon, provided

he kept within certain limits. He was not displeased to find that those limits were very clearly marked. When

"Yes, Ralph, it's time you made a break. I've come to the same conclusion myself. Only it won't be a country

cottage in my case; it'll be America. America!" she cried. "That's the place for me! They'll teach me

something about organizing a movement there, and I'll come back and show you how to do it."

If she meant consciously or unconsciously to belittle the seclusion and security of a country cottage, she did

not succeed; for Ralph's determination was genuine. But she made him visualize her in her own character, so

that he looked quickly at her, as she walked a little in front of him across the plowed field; for the first time

that morning he saw her independently of him or of his preoccupation with Katharine. He seemed to see her

marching ahead, a rather clumsy but powerful and independent figure, for whose courage he felt the greatest

"That's what you said before, Ralph," she returned, without looking at him. "You want to go away yourself

"Mary," he cried, stung by the remembrance of his exacting and dictatorial ways with her, "what a brute I've

It took all her strength to keep the tears from springing, and to thrust back her assurance that she would

forgive him till Doomsday if he chose. She was preserved from doing so only by a stubborn kind of respect

for herself which lay at the root of her nature and forbade surrender, even in moments of almost

overwhelming passion. Now, when all was tempest and highrunning waves, she knew of a land where the

sun shone clear upon Italian grammars and files of docketed papers. Nevertheless, from the skeleton pallor of

that land and the rocks that broke its surface, she knew that her life there would be harsh and lonely almost

beyond endurance. She walked steadily a little in front of him across the plowed field. Their way took them

round the verge of a wood of thin trees standing at the edge of a steep fold in the land. Looking between the

treetrunks, Ralph saw laid out on the perfectly flat and richly green meadow at the bottom of the hill a small

gray manorhouse, with ponds, terraces, and clipped hedges in front of it, a farm building or so at the side,

and a screen of firtrees rising behind, all perfectly sheltered and selfsufficient. Behind the house the hill

rose again, and the trees on the farther summit stood upright against the sky, which appeared of a more

intense blue between their trunks. His mind at once was filled with a sense of the actual presence of

Katharine; the gray house and the intense blue sky gave him the feeling of her presence close by. He leant

"Katharine, Katharine," he said aloud, and then, looking round, saw Mary walking slowly away from him,

tearing a long spray of ivy from the trees as she passed them. She seemed so definitely opposed to the vision

"Katharine, Katharine," he repeated, and seemed to himself to be with her. He lost his sense of all that

surrounded him; all substantial thingsthe hour of the day, what we have done and are about to do, the

presence of other people and the support we derive from seeing their belief in a common realityall this

slipped from him. So he might have felt if the earth had dropped from his feet, and the empty blue had hung

all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of one woman. The chirp of a robin on the bough

above his head awakened him, and his awakenment was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world in which

he had lived; here the plowed field, the high road yonder, and Mary, stripping ivy from the trees. When he

There was a brotherly kindness in his voice which seemed to her magnanimous, when she reflected that she

had cut short his explanations and shown little interest in his change of plan. She gave him her reasons for

thinking that she might profit by such a journey, omitting the one reason which had set all the rest in motion.

He listened attentively, and made no attempt to dissuade her. In truth, he found himself curiously eager to

make certain of her good sense, and accepted each fresh proof of it with satisfaction, as though it helped him

to make up his mind about something. She forgot the pain he had caused her, and in place of it she became

conscious of a steady tide of wellbeing which harmonized very aptly with the tramp of their feet upon the

dry road and the support of his arm. The comfort was the more glowing in that it seemed to be the reward of

her determination to behave to him simply and without attempting to be other than she was. Instead of

making out an interest in the poets, she avoided them instinctively, and dwelt rather insistently upon the

In a practical way she asked for particulars of his cottage, which hardly existed in his mind, and corrected his

"You must see that there's water," she insisted, with an exaggeration of interest. She avoided asking him what

he meant to do in this cottage, and, at last, when all the practical details had been thrashed out as much as

"One of the rooms," he said, "must be my study, for, you see, Mary, I'm going to write a book." Here he

withdrew his arm from hers, lit his pipe, and they tramped on in a sagacious kind of comradeship, the most

"And what's your book to be about?" she said, as boldly as if she had never come to grief with Ralph in

talking about books. He told her unhesitatingly that he meant to write the history of the English village from

Saxon days to the present time. Some such plan had lain as a seed in his mind for many years; and now that

he had decided, in a flash, to give up his profession, the seed grew in the space of twenty minutes both tall

and lusty. He was surprised himself at the positive way in which he spoke. It was the same with the question

of his cottage. That had come into existence, too, in an unromantic shape a square white house standing

just off the high road, no doubt, with a neighbor who kept a pig and a dozen squalling children; for these

plans were shorn of all romance in his mind, and the pleasure he derived from thinking of them was checked

directly it passed a very sober limit. So a sensible man who has lost his chance of some beautiful inheritance

might tread out the narrow bounds of his actual dwellingplace, and assure himself that life is supportable

within its demesne, only one must grow turnips and cabbages, not melons and pomegranates. Certainly Ralph

took some pride in the resources of his mind, and was insensibly helped to right himself by Mary's trust in

him. She wound her ivy spray round her ashplant, and for the first time for many days, when alone with

Ralph, set no spies upon her motives, sayings, and feelings, but surrendered herself to complete happiness.

Thus talking, with easy silences and some pauses to look at the view over the hedge and to decide upon the

species of a little graybrown bird slipping among the twigs, they walked into Lincoln, and after strolling up

and down the main street, decided upon an inn where the rounded window suggested substantial fare, nor

were they mistaken. For over a hundred and fifty years hot joints, potatoes, greens, and apple puddings had

been served to generations of country gentlemen, and now, sitting at a table in the hollow of the bow window,

Ralph and Mary took their share of this perennial feast. Looking across the joint, halfway through the meal,

Mary wondered whether Ralph would ever come to look quite like the other people in the room. Would he be

absorbed among the round pink faces, pricked with little white bristles, the calves fitted in shiny brown

leather, the blackandwhite check suits, which were sprinkled about in the same room with them? She half

hoped so; she thought that it was only in his mind that he was different. She did not wish him to be too

different from other people. The walk had given him a ruddy color, too, and his eyes were lit up by a steady,

honest light, which could not make the simplest farmer feel ill at ease, or suggest to the most devout of

clergymen a disposition to sneer at his faith. She loved the steep cliff of his forehead, and compared it to the

brow of a young Greek horseman, who reins his horse back so sharply that it half falls on its haunches. He

always seemed to her like a rider on a spirited horse. And there was an exaltation to her in being with him,

because there was a risk that he would not be able to keep to the right pace among other people. Sitting

opposite him at the little table in the window, she came back to that state of careless exaltation which had

overcome her when they halted by the gate, but now it was accompanied by a sense of sanity and security, for

she felt that they had a feeling in common which scarcely needed embodiment in words. How silent he was!

leaning his forehead on his hand, now and then, and again looking steadily and gravely at the backs of the

two men at the next table, with so little self consciousness that she could almost watch his mind placing one

thought solidly upon the top of another; she thought that she could feel him thinking, through the shade of her

fingers, and she could anticipate the exact moment when he would put an end to his thought and turn a little

"Well, Mary?" inviting her to take up the thread of thought where he had dropped it.

She laughed, and she explained her laugh on the spur of the moment by the look of the people in the street

below. There was a motorcar with an old lady swathed in blue veils, and a lady's maid on the seat opposite,

holding a King Charles's spaniel; there was a countrywoman wheeling a perambulator full of sticks down

the middle of the road; there was a bailiff in gaiters discussing the state of the cattle market with a dissenting

She ran over this list without any fear that her companion would think her trivial. Indeed, whether it was due

to the warmth of the room or to the good roast beef, or whether Ralph had achieved the process which is

called making up one's mind, certainly he had given up testing the good sense, the independent character, the

intelligence shown in her remarks. He had been building one of those piles of thought, as ramshackle and

fantastic as a Chinese pagoda, half from words let fall by gentlemen in gaiters, half from the litter in his own

mind, about duck shooting and legal history, about the Roman occupation of Lincoln and the relations of

country gentlemen with their wives, when, from all this disconnected rambling, there suddenly formed itself

in his mind the idea that he would ask Mary to marry him. The idea was so spontaneous that it seemed to

shape itself of its own accord before his eyes. It was then that he turned round and made use of his old,

As it presented itself to him at first, the idea was so new and interesting that he was half inclined to address it,

without more ado, to Mary herself. His natural instinct to divide his thoughts carefully into two different

classes before he expressed them to her prevailed. But as he watched her looking out of the window and

describing the old lady, the woman with the perambulator, the bailiff and the dissenting minister, his eyes

filled involuntarily with tears. He would have liked to lay his head on her shoulder and sob, while she parted

"There, there. Don't cry! Tell me why you're crying"; and they would clasp each other tight, and her arms

would hold him like his mother's. He felt that he was very lonely, and that he was afraid of the other people in

"What are you talking about?" she replied, rather vaguely, still looking out of the window.

He resented this divided attention more than, perhaps, he knew, and he thought how Mary would soon be on

"Mary," he said, "I want to talk to you. Haven't we nearly done? Why don't they take away these plates?"

Mary felt his agitation without looking at him; she felt convinced that she knew what it was that he wished to

"They'll come all in good time," she said; and felt it necessary to display her extreme calmness by lifting a

"I want to apologize," Ralph continued, not quite knowing what he was about to say, but feeling some curious

instinct which urged him to commit himself irrevocably, and to prevent the moment of intimacy from

"I think I've treated you very badly. That is, I've told you lies. Did you guess that I was lying to you? Once in

Lincoln's Inn Fields and again today on our walk. I am a liar, Mary. Did you know that? Do you think you

"It's true I don't want you to go to America," he said, looking fixedly at the tablecloth. "In fact, my feelings

towards you seem to be utterly and damnably bad," he said energetically, although forced to keep his voice

"If I weren't a selfish beast I should tell you to have nothing more to do with me. And yet, Mary, in spite of

the fact that I believe what I'm saying, I also believe that it's good we should know each other the world

being what it is, you see" and by a nod of his head he indicated the other occupants of the room, "for, of

course, in an ideal state of things, in a decent community even, there's no doubt you shouldn't have anything

"You forget that I'm not an ideal character, either," said Mary, in the same low and very earnest tones, which,

in spite of being almost inaudible, surrounded their table with an atmosphere of concentration which was

quite perceptible to the other diners, who glanced at them now and then with a queer mixture of kindness,

"I'm much more selfish than I let on, and I'm worldly a littlemore than you think, anyhow. I like bossing

thingsperhaps that's my greatest fault. I've none of your passion for" here she hesitated, and glanced at

him, as if to ascertain what his passion was for"for the truth," she added, as if she had found what she

"Oh, in little things, I dare say," she said impatiently. "But not in real ones, and that's what matters. I dare say

I'm more truthful than you are in small ways. But I could never care"she was surprised to find herself

speaking the word, and had to force herself to speak it out"for any one who was a liar in that way. I love

the truth a certain amounta considerable amountbut not in the way you love it." Her voice sank, became

"Good heavens!" Ralph exclaimed to himself. "She loves me! Why did I never see it before? She's going to

The certainty overwhelmed him so that he scarcely knew what he was doing; the blood rushed to his cheeks,

and although he had quite made up his mind to ask her to marry him, the certainty that she loved him seemed

to change the situation so completely that he could not do it. He did not dare to look at her. If she cried, he

did not know what he should do. It seemed to him that something of a terrible and devastating nature had

In his agitation Ralph rose, turned his back upon Mary, and looked out of the window. The people in the

street seemed to him only a dissolving and combining pattern of black particles; which, for the moment,

represented very well the involuntary procession of feelings and thoughts which formed and dissolved in

rapid succession in his own mind. At one moment he exulted in the thought that Mary loved him; at the next,

it seemed that he was without feeling for her; her love was repulsive to him. Now he felt urged to marry her

at once; now to disappear and never see her again. In order to control this disorderly race of thought he forced

himself to read the name on the chemist's shop directly opposite him; then to examine the objects in the shop

windows, and then to focus his eyes exactly upon a little group of women looking in at the great windows of

a large draper's shop. This discipline having given him at least a superficial control of himself, he was about

to turn and ask the waiter to bring the bill, when his eye was caught by a tall figure walking quickly along the

opposite pavementa tall figure, upright, dark, and commanding, much detached from her surroundings.

She held her gloves in her left hand, and the left hand was bare. All this Ralph noticed and enumerated and

recognized before he put a name to the wholeKatharine Hilbery. She seemed to be looking for somebody.

Her eyes, in fact, scanned both sides of the street, and for one second were raised directly to the bow window

in which Ralph stood; but she looked away again instantly without giving any sign that she had seen him.

This sudden apparition had an extraordinary effect upon him. It was as if he had thought of her so intensely

that his mind had formed the shape of her, rather than that he had seen her in the flesh outside in the street.

And yet he had not been thinking of her at all. The impression was so intense that he could not dismiss it, nor

even think whether he had seen her or merely imagined her. He sat down at once, and said, briefly and

"Katharine Hilbery? What do you mean?" she asked, hardly understanding from his manner whether he had

"Katharine Hilbery!" Mary thought, in an instant of blinding revelation; "I've always known it was Katharine

After a moment of downcast stupor, she raised her eyes, looked steadily at Ralph, and caught his fixed and

dreamy gaze leveled at a point far beyond their surroundings, a point that she had never reached in all the

time that she had known him. She noticed the lips just parted, the fingers loosely clenched, the whole attitude

of rapt contemplation, which fell like a veil between them. She noticed everything about him; if there had

been other signs of his utter alienation she would have sought them out, too, for she felt that it was only by

heaping one truth upon another that she could keep herself sitting there, upright. The truth seemed to support

her; it struck her, even as she looked at his face, that the light of truth was shining far away beyond him; the

light of truth, she seemed to frame the words as she rose to go, shines on a world not to be shaken by our

Ralph handed her her coat and her stick. She took them, fastened the coat securely, grasped the stick firmly.

The ivy spray was still twisted about the handle; this one sacrifice, she thought, she might make to

sentimentality and personality, and she picked two leaves from the ivy and put them in her pocket before she

disencumbered her stick of the rest of it. She grasped the stick in the middle, and settled her fur cap closely

upon her head, as if she must be in trim for a long and stormy walk. Next, standing in the middle of the road,

she took a slip of paper from her purse, and read out loud a list of commissions entrusted to herfruit,

butter, string, and so on; and all the time she never spoke directly to Ralph or looked at him.

Ralph heard her giving orders to attentive, rosychecked men in white aprons, and in spite of his own

preoccupation, he commented upon the determination with which she made her wishes known. Once more he

began, automatically, to take stock of her characteristics. Standing thus, superficially observant and stirring

the sawdust on the floor meditatively with the toe of his boot, he was roused by a musical and familiar voice

"I'm not mistaken? Surely Mr. Denham? I caught a glimpse of your coat through the window, and I felt sure

that I knew your coat. Have you seen Katharine or William? I'm wandering about Lincoln looking for the

It was Mrs. Hilbery; her entrance created some stir in the shop; many people looked at her.

"First of all, tell me where I am," she demanded, but, catching sight of the attentive shopman, she appealed to

him. "The ruinsmy party is waiting for me at the ruins. The Roman ruinsor Greek, Mr. Denham? Your

town has a great many beautiful things in it, but I wish it hadn't so many ruins. I never saw such delightful

little pots of honey in my lifeare they made by your own bees? Please give me one of those little pots, and

"And now," she continued, having received the information and the pot of honey, having been introduced to

Mary, and having insisted that they should accompany her back to the ruins, since in a town with so many

turnings, such prospects, such delightful little halfnaked boys dabbling in pools, such Venetian canals, such

old blue china in the curiosity shops, it was impossible for one person all alone to find her way to the ruins.

"Now," she exclaimed, "please tell me what you're doing here, Mr. Denhamfor you ARE Mr. Denham,

aren't you?" she inquired, gazing at him with a sudden suspicion of her own accuracy. "The brilliant young

man who writes for the Review, I mean? Only yesterday my husband was telling me he thought you one of

the cleverest young men he knew. Certainly, you've been the messenger of Providence to me, for unless I'd

They had reached the Roman arch when Mrs. Hilbery caught sight of her own party, standing like sentinels

facing up and down the road so as to intercept her if, as they expected, she had got lodged in some shop.

"I've found something much better than ruins!" she exclaimed. "I've found two friends who told me how to

find you, which I could never have done without them. They must come and have tea with us. What a pity

Katharine, who had gone a few steps by herself down the road, and was investigating the window of an

ironmonger, as if her mother might have got herself concealed among mowingmachines and gardenshears,

turned sharply on hearing her voice, and came towards them. She was a great deal surprised to see Denham

and Mary Datchet. Whether the cordiality with which she greeted them was merely that which is natural to a

surprise meeting in the country, or whether she was really glad to see them both, at any rate she exclaimed

"I never knew you lived here. Why didn't you say so, and we could have met? And are you staying with

Thus confronted at a distance of only a few feet by the real body of the woman about whom he had dreamt so

many million dreams, Ralph stammered; he made a clutch at his selfcontrol; the color either came to his

cheeks or left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to face her and track down in the cold light of

day whatever vestige of truth there might be in his persistent imaginations. He did not succeed in saying

anything. It was Mary who spoke for both of them. He was struck dumb by finding that Katharine was quite

different, in some strange way, from his memory, so that he had to dismiss his old view in order to accept the

new one. The wind was blowing her crimson scarf across her face; the wind had already loosened her hair,

which looped across the corner of one of the large, dark eyes which, so he used to think, looked sad; now

they looked bright with the brightness of the sea struck by an unclouded ray; everything about her seemed

rapid, fragmentary, and full of a kind of racing speed. He realized suddenly that he had never seen her in the

Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in search of ruins as they had intended; and the whole

"Do you know," said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance of the rest with Ralph, "I thought I saw you this

morning, standing at a window. But I decided that it couldn't be you. And it must have been you all the

This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled to her memory so many difficult speeches and

abortive meetings that she was jerked directly back to the London drawingroom, the family relics, and the

teatable; and at the same time recalled some halffinished or interrupted remark which she had wanted to

"I expect it was me," she said. "I was looking for my mother. It happens every time we come to Lincoln. In

fact, there never was a family so unable to take care of itself as ours is. Not that it very much matters, because

some one always turns up in the nick of time to help us out of our scrapes. Once I was left in a field with a

bull when I was a babybut where did we leave the carriage? Down that street or the next? The next, I

think." She glanced back and saw that the others were following obediently, listening to certain memories of

Lincoln upon which Mrs. Hilbery had started. "But what are you doing here?" she asked.

"I'm buying a cottage. I'm going to live hereas soon as I can find a cottage, and Mary tells me there'll be no

"But," she exclaimed, almost standing still in her surprise, "you will give up the Bar, then?" It flashed across

"But why?" she asked. She answered herself at once, with a curious change from rapid speech to an almost

melancholy tone. "I think you're very wise to give it up. You will be much happier."

At this very moment, when her words seemed to be striking a path into the future for him, they stepped into

the yard of an inn, and there beheld the family coach of the Otways, to which one sleek horse was already

"I don't know what one means by happiness," he said briefly, having to step aside in order to avoid a groom

with a bucket. "Why do you think I shall be happy? I don't expect to be anything of the kind. I expect to be

rather less unhappy. I shall write a book and curse my charwoman if happiness consists in that. What do

She could not answer because they were immediately surrounded by other members of the partyby Mrs.

"Henry is going to drive home with your mother, and I suggest that they should put us down halfway and let

"Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might have given you a lift," he continued to Denham. His

manner was unusually peremptory; he seemed anxious to hasten the departure, and Katharine looked at him

from time to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of inquiry, half of annoyance. She at once

"I want to see you. Are you going back to London at once? I will write." She half smiled at Ralph, but her

look was a little overcast by something she was thinking, and in a very few minutes the Otway carriage rolled

out of the stable yard and turned down the high road leading to the village of Lampsher.

The return drive was almost as silent as the drive from home had been in the morning; indeed, Mrs. Hilbery

leant back with closed eyes in her corner, and either slept or feigned sleep, as her habit was in the intervals

between the seasons of active exertion, or continued the story which she had begun to tell herself that

About two miles from Lampsher the road ran over the rounded summit of the heath, a lonely spot marked by

an obelisk of granite, setting forth the gratitude of some great lady of the eighteenth century who had been set

upon by highwaymen at this spot and delivered from death just as hope seemed lost. In summer it was a

pleasant place, for the deep woods on either side murmured, and the heather, which grew thick round the

granite pedestal, made the light breeze taste sweetly; in winter the sighing of the trees was deepened to a

hollow sound, and the heath was as gray and almost as solitary as the empty sweep of the clouds above it.

Here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Katharine to alight. Henry, too, gave her his hand, and fancied

that she pressed it very slightly in parting as if she sent him a message. But the carriage rolled on

immediately, without wakening Mrs. Hilbery, and left the couple standing by the obelisk. That Rodney was

angry with her and had made this opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she was neither

glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what to expect, and thus remained silent. The

carriage grew smaller and smaller upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, she thought,

he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappeared beneath the curve of the road and they were left

entirely alone. To cloak their silence she read the writing on the obelisk, to do which she had to walk

completely round it. She was murmuring a word to two of the pious lady's thanks above her breath when

Rodney joined her. In silence they set out along the carttrack which skirted the verge of the trees.

To break the silence was exactly what Rodney wished to do, and yet could not do to his own satisfaction. In

company it was far easier to approach Katharine; alone with her, the aloofness and force of her character

checked all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she had behaved very badly to him, but each

separate instance of unkindness seemed too petty to be advanced when they were alone together.

"There's no need for us to race," he complained at last; upon which she immediately slackened her pace, and

walked too slowly to suit him. In desperation he said the first thing he thought of, very peevishly and without

"No one enjoys being made a fool of before other people," he blurted out, for his irritation rose as she spoke,

"Every day since we've been here you've done something to make me appear ridiculous," he went on. "Of

course, so long as it amuses you, you're welcome; but we have to remember that we are going to spend our

lives together. I asked you, only this morning, for example, to come out and take a turn with me in the

garden. I was waiting for you ten minutes, and you never came. Every one saw me waiting. The stableboys

saw me. I was so ashamed that I went in. Then, on the drive you hardly spoke to me. Henry noticed it. Every

She noted these various complaints and determined philosophically to answer none of them, although the last

stung her to considerable irritation. She wished to find out how deep his grievance lay.

"In themselves they don't seem to me to matter; if they hurt you, of course they matter," she corrected herself

scrupulously. Her tone of consideration touched him, and he walked on in silence for a space.

"And we might be so happy, Katharine!" he exclaimed impulsively, and drew her arm through his. She

The harshness, which Henry had noticed, was again unmistakable in her manner. William flinched and was

silent. Such severity, accompanied by something indescribably cold and impersonal in her manner, had

constantly been meted out to him during the last few days, always in the company of others. He had recouped

himself by some ridiculous display of vanity which, as he knew, put him still more at her mercy. Now that he

was alone with her there was no stimulus from outside to draw his attention from his injury. By a

considerable effort of selfcontrol he forced himself to remain silent, and to make himself distinguish what

part of his pain was due to vanity, what part to the certainty that no woman really loving him could speak

"What do I feel about Katharine?" he thought to himself. It was clear that she had been a very desirable and

distinguished figure, the mistress of her little section of the world; but more than that, she was the person of

all others who seemed to him the arbitress of life, the woman whose judgment was naturally right and steady,

as his had never been in spite of all his culture. And then he could not see her come into a room without a

sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that

"If she were callous all the time and had only led me on to laugh at me I couldn't have felt that about her," he

thought. "I'm not a fool, after all. I can't have been utterly mistaken all these years. And yet, when she speaks

to me like that! The truth of it is," he thought, "that I've got such despicable faults that no one could help

speaking to me like that. Katharine is quite right. And yet those are not my serious feelings, as she knows

quite well. How can I change myself? What would make her care for me?" He was terribly tempted here to

break the silence by asking Katharine in what respects he could change himself to suit her; but he sought

consolation instead by running over the list of his gifts and acquirements, his knowledge of Greek and Latin,

his knowledge of art and literature, his skill in the management of meters, and his ancient westcountry

blood. But the feeling that underlay all these feelings and puzzled him profoundly and kept him silent was the

certainty that he loved Katharine as sincerely as he had it in him to love any one. And yet she could speak to

him like that! In a sort of bewilderment he lost all desire to speak, and would quite readily have taken up

some different topic of conversation if Katharine had started one. This, however, she did not do.

He glanced at her, in case her expression might help him to understand her behavior. As usual, she had

quickened her pace unconsciously, and was now walking a little in front of him; but he could gain little

information from her eyes, which looked steadily at the brown heather, or from the lines drawn seriously

upon her forehead. Thus to lose touch with her, for he had no idea what she was thinking, was so unpleasant

to him that he began to talk about his grievances again, without, however, much conviction in his voice.

"If you have no feeling for me, wouldn't it be kinder to say so to me in private?"

"Oh, William," she burst out, as if he had interrupted some absorbing train of thought, "how you go on about

feelings! Isn't it better not to talk so much, not to be worrying always about small things that don't really

"That's the question precisely," he exclaimed. "I only want you to tell me that they don't matter. There are

times when you seem indifferent to everything. I'm vain, I've a thousand faults; but you know they're not

"Say it, Katharine! Say it as if you meant it! Make me feel that you care for me!"

She could not force herself to speak a word. The heather was growing dim around them, and the horizon was

blotted out by white mist. To ask her for passion or for certainty seemed like asking that damp prospect for

He went on now to tell her of his love for her, in words which bore, even to her critical senses, the stamp of

truth; but none of this touched her, until, coming to a gate whose hinge was rusty, he heaved it open with his

shoulder, still talking and taking no account of his effort. The virility of this deed impressed her; and yet,

normally, she attached no value to the power of opening gates. The strength of muscles has nothing to do on

the face of it with the strength of affections; nevertheless, she felt a sudden concern for this power running to

waste on her account, which, combined with a desire to keep possession of that strangely attractive masculine

Why should she not simply tell him the truthwhich was that she had accepted him in a misty state of mind

when nothing had its right shape or size? that it was deplorable, but that with clearer eyesight marriage was

out of the question? She did not want to marry any one. She wanted to go away by herself, preferably to some

bleak northern moor, and there study mathematics and the science of astronomy. Twenty words would

explain the whole situation to him. He had ceased to speak; he had told her once more how he loved her and

why. She summoned her courage, fixed her eyes upon a lightningsplintered ashtree, and, almost as if she

"I was wrong to get engaged to you. I shall never make you happy. I have never loved you."

"No, never," she repeated obstinately. "Not rightly. Don't you see, I didn't know what I was doing?"

"There is some one," he persisted. "There has been a change in the last few weeks. You owe it to me to be

Why, indeed? A moment of pessimism, a sudden conviction of the undeniable prose of life, a lapse of the

illusion which sustains youth midway between heaven and earth, a desperate attempt to reconcile herself with

factsshe could only recall a moment, as of waking from a dream, which now seemed to her a moment of

surrender. But who could give reasons such as these for doing what she had done? She shook her head very

"But you're not a childyou're not a woman of moods," Rodney persisted. "You couldn't have accepted me

A sense of her own misbehavior, which she had succeeded in keeping from her by sharpening her

consciousness of Rodney's faults, now swept over her and almost overwhelmed her. What were his faults in

comparison with the fact that he cared for her? What were her virtues in comparison with the fact that she did

not care for him? In a flash the conviction that not to care is the uttermost sin of all stamped itself upon her

He had taken her arm, and held her hand firmly in his, nor had she the force to resist what now seemed to her

his enormously superior strength. Very well; she would submit, as her mother and her aunt and most women,

perhaps, had submitted; and yet she knew that every second of such submission to his strength was a second

"I did say I would marry you, but it was wrong," she forced herself to say, and she stiffened her arm as if to

annul even the seeming submission of that separate part of her; "for I don't love you, William; you've noticed

it, every one's noticed it; why should we go on pretending? When I told you I loved you, I was wrong. I said

As none of her words seemed to her at all adequate to represent what she felt, she repeated them, and

emphasized them without realizing the effect that they might have upon a man who cared for her. She was

completely taken aback by finding her arm suddenly dropped; then she saw his face most strangely contorted;

was he laughing, it flashed across her? In another moment she saw that he was in tears. In her bewilderment

at this apparition she stood aghast for a second. With a desperate sense that this horror must, at all costs, be

stopped, she then put her arms about him, drew his head for a moment upon her shoulder, and led him on,

murmuring words of consolation, until he heaved a great sigh. They held fast to each other; her tears, too, ran

down her cheeks; and were both quite silent. Noticing the difficulty with which he walked, and feeling the

same extreme lassitude in her own limbs, she proposed that they should rest for a moment where the bracken

was brown and shriveled beneath an oaktree. He assented. Once more he gave a great sigh, and wiped his

eyes with a childlike unconsciousness, and began to speak without a trace of his previous anger. The idea

came to her that they were like the children in the fairy tale who were lost in a wood, and with this in her

mind she noticed the scattering of dead leaves all round them which had been blown by the wind into heaps, a

"When did you begin to feel this, Katharine?" he said; "for it isn't true to say that you've always felt it. I admit

I was unreasonable the first night when you found that your clothes had been left behind. Still, where's the

fault in that? I could promise you never to interfere with your clothes again. I admit I was cross when I found

you upstairs with Henry. Perhaps I showed it too openly. But that's not unreasonable either when one's

engaged. Ask your mother. And now this terrible thing" He broke off, unable for the moment to proceed

any further. "This decision you say you've come tohave you discussed it with any one? Your mother, for

"No, no, of course not," she said, stirring the leaves with her hand. "But you don't understand me,

"You don't understand, I mean, my real feelings; how could you? I've only now faced them myself. But I

haven't got the sort of feelinglove, I meanI don't know what to call it"she looked vaguely towards the

"How a farce?" he asked. "But this kind of analysis is disastrous!" he exclaimed.

"You make yourself think things you don't think," he continued, becoming demonstrative with his hands, as

his manner was. "Believe me, Katharine, before we came here we were perfectly happy. You were full of

plans for our housethe chaircovers, don't you remember?like any other woman who is about to be

married. Now, for no reason whatever, you begin to fret about your feeling and about my feeling, with the

usual result. I assure you, Katharine, I've been through it all myself. At one time I was always asking myself

absurd questions which came to nothing either. What you want, if I may say so, is some occupation to take

you out of yourself when this morbid mood comes on. If it hadn't been for my poetry, I assure you, I should

often have been very much in the same state myself. To let you into a secret," he continued, with his little

chuckle, which now sounded almost assured, "I've often gone home from seeing you in such a state of nerves

that I had to force myself to write a page or two before I could get you out of my head. Ask Denham; he'll tell

Katharine started with displeasure at the mention of Ralph's name. The thought of the conversation in which

her conduct had been made a subject for discussion with Denham roused her anger; but, as she instantly felt,

she had scarcely the right to grudge William any use of her name, seeing what her fault against him had been

from first to last. And yet Denham! She had a view of him as a judge. She figured him sternly weighing

instances of her levity in this masculine court of inquiry into feminine morality and gruffly dismissing both

her and her family with some halfsarcastic, halftolerant phrase which sealed her doom, as far as he was

concerned, for ever. Having met him so lately, the sense of his character was strong in her. The thought was

not a pleasant one for a proud woman, but she had yet to learn the art of subduing her expression. Her eyes

fixed upon the ground, her brows drawn together, gave William a very fair picture of the resentment that she

was forcing herself to control. A certain degree of apprehension, occasionally culminating in a kind of fear,

had always entered into his love for her, and had increased, rather to his surprise, in the greater intimacy of

their engagement. Beneath her steady, exemplary surface ran a vein of passion which seemed to him now

perverse, now completely irrational, for it never took the normal channel of glorification of him and his

doings; and, indeed, he almost preferred the steady good sense, which had always marked their relationship,

to a more romantic bond. But passion she had, he could not deny it, and hitherto he had tried to see it

employed in his thoughts upon the lives of the children who were to be born to them.

"She will make a perfect mothera mother of sons," he thought; but seeing her sitting there, gloomy and

silent, he began to have his doubts on this point. "A farce, a farce," he thought to himself. "She said that our

marriage would be a farce," and he became suddenly aware of their situation, sitting upon the ground, among

the dead leaves, not fifty yards from the main road, so that it was quite possible for some one passing to see

and recognize them. He brushed off his face any trace that might remain of that unseemly exhibition of

emotion. But he was more troubled by Katharine's appearance, as she sat rapt in thought upon the ground,

than by his own; there was something improper to him in her selfforgetfulness. A man naturally alive to the

conventions of society, he was strictly conventional where women were concerned, and especially if the

women happened to be in any way connected with him. He noticed with distress the long strand of dark hair

touching her shoulder and two or three dead beechleaves attached to her dress; but to recall her mind in their

present circumstances to a sense of these details was impossible. She sat there, seeming unconscious of

everything. He suspected that in her silence she was reproaching herself; but he wished that she would think

of her hair and of the dead beechleaves, which were of more immediate importance to him than anything

else. Indeed, these trifles drew his attention strangely from his own doubtful and uneasy state of mind; for

relief, mixing itself with pain, stirred up a most curious hurry and tumult in his breast, almost concealing his

first sharp sense of bleak and overwhelming disappointment. In order to relieve this restlessness and close a

distressingly illordered scene, he rose abruptly and helped Katharine to her feet. She smiled a little at the

minute care with which he tidied her and yet, when he brushed the dead leaves from his own coat, she

The afternoon was already growing dark when the two other wayfarers, Mary and Ralph Denham, came out

on the high road beyond the outskirts of Lincoln. The high road, as they both felt, was better suited to this

return journey than the open country, and for the first mile or so of the way they spoke little. In his own mind

Ralph was following the passage of the Otway carriage over the heath; he then went back to the five or ten

minutes that he had spent with Katharine, and examined each word with the care that a scholar displays upon

the irregularities of an ancient text. He was determined that the glow, the romance, the atmosphere of this

meeting should not paint what he must in future regard as sober facts. On her side Mary was silent, not

because her thoughts took much handling, but because her mind seemed empty of thought as her heart of

feeling. Only Ralph's presence, as she knew, preserved this numbness, for she could foresee a time of

loneliness when many varieties of pain would beset her. At the present moment her effort was to preserve

what she could of the wreck of her selfrespect, for such she deemed that momentary glimpse of her love so

involuntarily revealed to Ralph. In the light of reason it did not much matter, perhaps, but it was her instinct

to be careful of that vision of herself which keeps pace so evenly beside every one of us, and had been

damaged by her confession. The gray night coming down over the country was kind to her; and she thought

that one of these days she would find comfort in sitting upon the earth, alone, beneath a tree. Looking through

the darkness, she marked the swelling ground and the tree. Ralph made her start by saying abruptly;

"What I was going to say when we were interrupted at lunch was that if you go to America I shall come, too.

It can't be harder to earn a living there than it is here. However, that's not the point. The point is, Mary, that I

want to marry you. Well, what do you say?" He spoke firmly, waited for no answer, and took her arm in his.

"You know me by this time, the good and the bad," he went on. "You know my tempers. I've tried to let you

"In most ways, at least in the important ways, as you said, we know each other and we think alike. I believe

you are the only person in the world I could live with happily. And if you feel the same about meas you

do, don't you, Mary?we should make each other happy." Here he paused, and seemed to be in no hurry for

"Yes, but I'm afraid I couldn't do it," Mary said at last. The casual and rather hurried way in which she spoke,

together with the fact that she was saying the exact opposite of what he expected her to say, baffled him so

much that he instinctively loosened his clasp upon her arm and she withdrew it quietly.

"Well, Mary," he said, with a curious laugh, "I must be an arrant fool, for I thought you did." They walked for

a minute or two in silence, and suddenly he turned to her, looked at her, and exclaimed: "I don't believe you,

"I'm too tired to argue, Ralph," she replied, turning her head away from him. "I ask you to believe what I say.

The voice in which she stated this was so evidently the voice of one in some extremity of anguish that Ralph

had no course but to obey her. And as soon as the tone of her voice had died out, and the surprise faded from

his mind, he found himself believing that she had spoken the truth, for he had but little vanity, and soon her

refusal seemed a natural thing to him. He slipped through all the grades of despondency until he reached a

bottom of absolute gloom. Failure seemed to mark the whole of his life; he had failed with Katharine, and

now he had failed with Mary. Up at once sprang the thought of Katharine, and with it a sense of exulting

freedom, but this he checked instantly. No good had ever come to him from Katharine; his whole relationship

with her had been made up of dreams; and as he thought of the little substance there had been in his dreams

"Haven't I always been thinking of Katharine while I was with Mary? I might have loved Mary if it hadn't

been for that idiocy of mine. She cared for me once, I'm certain of that, but I tormented her so with my

humors that I let my chances slip, and now she won't risk marrying me. And this is what I've made of my

The tramp of their boots upon the dry road seemed to asseverate nothing, nothing, nothing. Mary thought that

this silence was the silence of relief; his depression she ascribed to the fact that he had seen Katharine and

parted from her, leaving her in the company of William Rodney. She could not blame him for loving

Katharine, but that, when he loved another, he should ask her to marry himthat seemed to her the cruellest

treachery. Their old friendship and its firm base upon indestructible qualities of character crumbled, and her

whole past seemed foolish, herself weak and credulous, and Ralph merely the shell of an honest man. Oh, the

pastso much made up of Ralph; and now, as she saw, made up of something strange and false and other

than she had thought it. She tried to recapture a saying she had made to help herself that morning, as Ralph

paid the bill for luncheon; but she could see him paying the bill more vividly than she could remember the

phrase. Something about truth was in it; how to see the truth is our great chance in this world.

"If you don't want to marry me," Ralph now began again, without abruptness, with diffidence rather, "there is

no need why we should cease to see each other, is there? Or would you rather that we should keep apart for

"Tell me one thing, Mary," he resumed; "have I done anything to make you change your mind about me?"

She was immensely tempted to give way to her natural trust in him, revived by the deep and now melancholy

tones of his voice, and to tell him of her love, and of what had changed it. But although it seemed likely that

she would soon control her anger with him, the certainty that he did not love her, confirmed by every word of

his proposal, forbade any freedom of speech. To hear him speak and to feel herself unable to reply, or

constrained in her replies, was so painful that she longed for the time when she should be alone. A more

pliant woman would have taken this chance of an explanation, whatever risks attached to it; but to one of

Mary's firm and resolute temperament there was degradation in the idea of selfabandonment; let the waves

of emotion rise ever so high, she could not shut her eyes to what she conceived to be the truth. Her silence

puzzled Ralph. He searched his memory for words or deeds that might have made her think badly of him. In

his present mood instances came but too quickly, and on top of them this culminating proof of his

basenessthat he had asked her to marry him when his reasons for such a proposal were selfish and

"You needn't answer," he said grimly. "There are reasons enough, I know. But must they kill our friendship,

"Oh," she thought to herself, with a sudden rush of anguish which threatened disaster to her selfrespect, "it

"I shall want your friendship," he said. He added, "If you find it possible, let me see you as often as you can.

She promised this, and they went on to talk calmly of things that had no reference to their feelingsa talk

One more reference was made to the state of things between them late that night, when Elizabeth had gone to

her room, and the two young men had stumbled off to bed in such a state of sleep that they hardly felt the

Mary drew her chair a little nearer to the fire, for the logs were burning low, and at this time of night it was

hardly worth while to replenish them. Ralph was reading, but she had noticed for some time that his eyes

instead of following the print were fixed rather above the page with an intensity of gloom that came to weigh

upon her mind. She had not weakened in her resolve not to give way, for reflection had only made her more

bitterly certain that, if she gave way, it would be to her own wish and not to his. But she had determined that

there was no reason why he should suffer if her reticence were the cause of his suffering. Therefore, although

"You asked me if I had changed my mind about you, Ralph," she said. "I think there's only one thing. When

you asked me to marry you, I don't think you meant it. That made me angryfor the moment. Before, you'd

Ralph's book slid down upon his knee and fell upon the floor. He rested his forehead on his hand and looked

into the fire. He was trying to recall the exact words in which he had made his proposal to Mary.

She winced; but she respected him for saying what he did, for this, after all, was a fragment of the truth which

"Well, Mary, I'm not going to press you," he said. "I see you don't want to marry me. But lovedon't we all

talk a great deal of nonsense about it? What does one mean? I believe I care for you more genuinely than nine

men out of ten care for the women they're in love with. It's only a story one makes up in one's mind about

another person, and one knows all the time it isn't true. Of course one knows; why, one's always taking care

not to destroy the illusion. One takes care not to see them too often, or to be alone with them for too long

together. It's a pleasant illusion, but if you're thinking of the risks of marriage, it seems to me that the risk of

"I don't believe a word of that, and what's more you don't, either," she replied with anger. "However, we don't

agree; I only wanted you to understand." She shifted her position, as if she were about to go. An instinctive

desire to prevent her from leaving the room made Ralph rise at this point and begin pacing up and down the

nearly empty kitchen, checking his desire, each time he reached the door, to open it and step out into the

garden. A moralist might have said that at this point his mind should have been full of selfreproach for the

suffering he had caused. On the contrary, he was extremely angry, with the confused impotent anger of one

who finds himself unreasonably but efficiently frustrated. He was trapped by the illogicality of human life.

The obstacles in the way of his desire seemed to him purely artificial, and yet he could see no way of

removing them. Mary's words, the tone of her voice even, angered him, for she would not help him. She was

part of the insanely jumbled muddle of a world which impedes the sensible life. He would have liked to slam

the door or break the hind legs of a chair, for the obstacles had taken some such curiously substantial shape in

"I doubt that one human being ever understands another," he said, stopping in his march and confronting

"Such damned liars as we all are, how can we? But we can try. If you don't want to marry me, don't; but the

position you take up about love, and not seeing each otherisn't that mere sentimentality? You think I've

behaved very badly," he continued, as she did not speak. "Of course I behave badly; but you can't judge

people by what they do. You can't go through life measuring right and wrong with a footrule. That's what

She saw herself in the Suffrage Office, delivering judgment, meting out right and wrong, and there seemed to

her to be some justice in the charge, although it did not affect her main position.

"I'm not angry with you," she said slowly. "I will go on seeing you, as I said I would."

It was true that she had promised that much already, and it was difficult for him to say what more it was that

he wantedsome intimacy, some help against the ghost of Katharine, perhaps, something that he knew he

had no right to ask; and yet, as he sank into his chair and looked once more at the dying fire it seemed to him

that he had been defeated, not so much by Mary as by life itself. He felt himself thrown back to the beginning

of life again, where everything has yet to be won; but in extreme youth one has an ignorant hope. He was no

Happily for Mary Datchet she returned to the office to find that by some obscure Parliamentary maneuver the

vote had once more slipped beyond the attainment of women. Mrs. Seal was in a condition bordering upon

frenzy. The duplicity of Ministers, the treachery of mankind, the insult to womanhood, the setback to

civilization, the ruin of her life's work, the feelings of her father's daughterall these topics were discussed

in turn, and the office was littered with newspaper cuttings branded with the blue, if ambiguous, marks of her

"The simple elementary acts of justice," she said, waving her hand towards the window, and indicating the

footpassengers and omnibuses then passing down the far side of Russell Square, "are as far beyond them as

they ever were. We can only look upon ourselves, Mary, as pioneers in a wilderness. We can only go on

patiently putting the truth before them. It isn't THEM," she continued, taking heart from her sight of the

traffic, "it's their leaders. It's those gentlemen sitting in Parliament and drawing four hundred a year of the

people's money. If we had to put our case to the people, we should soon have justice done to us. I have

always believed in the people, and I do so still. But" She shook her head and implied that she would give

them one more chance, and if they didn't take advantage of that she couldn't answer for the consequences.

Mr. Clacton's attitude was more philosophical and better supported by statistics. He came into the room after

Mrs. Seal's outburst and pointed out, with historical illustrations, that such reverses had happened in every

political campaign of any importance. If anything, his spirits were improved by the disaster. The enemy, he

said, had taken the offensive; and it was now up to the Society to outwit the enemy. He gave Mary to

understand that he had taken the measure of their cunning, and had already bent his mind to the task which,

so far as she could make out, depended solely upon him. It depended, so she came to think, when invited into

his room for a private conference, upon a systematic revision of the cardindex, upon the issue of certain new

lemoncolored leaflets, in which the facts were marshaled once more in a very striking way, and upon a large

scale map of England dotted with little pins tufted with differently colored plumes of hair according to their

geographical position. Each district, under the new system, had its flag, its bottle of ink, its sheaf of

documents tabulated and filed for reference in a drawer, so that by looking under M or S, as the case might

be, you had all the facts with respect to the Suffrage organizations of that county at your fingers' ends. This

"We must try to consider ourselves rather in the light of a telephone exchangefor the exchange of ideas,

Miss Datchet," he said; and taking pleasure in his image, he continued it. "We should consider ourselves the

center of an enormous system of wires, connecting us up with every district of the country. We must have our

fingers upon the pulse of the community; we want to know what people all over England are thinking; we

want to put them in the way of thinking rightly." The system, of course, was only roughly sketched so

"When you ought to have been taking a rest, Mr. Clacton," said Mary dutifully, but her tone was flat and

"We learn to do without holidays, Miss Datchet," said Mr. Clacton, with a spark of satisfaction in his eye.

He wished particularly to have her opinion of the lemoncolored leaflet. According to his plan, it was to be

distributed in immense quantities immediately, in order to stimulate and generate, "to generate and

stimulate," he repeated, "right thoughts in the country before the meeting of Parliament."

"We have to take the enemy by surprise," he said. "They don't let the grass grow under their feet. Have you

seen Bingham's address to his constituents? That's a hint of the sort of thing we've got to meet, Miss

He handed her a great bundle of newspaper cuttings, and, begging her to give him her views upon the yellow

leaflet before lunchtime, he turned with alacrity to his different sheets of paper and his different bottles of

Mary shut the door, laid the documents upon her table, and sank her head on her hands. Her brain was

curiously empty of any thought. She listened, as if, perhaps, by listening she would become merged again in

the atmosphere of the office. From the next room came the rapid spasmodic sounds of Mrs. Seal's erratic

typewriting; she, doubtless, was already hard at work helping the people of England, as Mr. Clacton put it, to

think rightly; "generating and stimulating," those were his words. She was striking a blow against the enemy,

no doubt, who didn't let the grass grow beneath their feet. Mr. Clacton's words repeated themselves

accurately in her brain. She pushed the papers wearily over to the farther side of the table. It was no use,

though; something or other had happened to her braina change of focus so that near things were indistinct

again. The same thing had happened to her once before, she remembered, after she had met Ralph in the

gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields; she had spent the whole of a committee meeting in thinking about sparrows

and colors, until, almost at the end of the meeting, her old convictions had all come back to her. But they had

only come back, she thought with scorn at her feebleness, because she wanted to use them to fight against

Ralph. They weren't, rightly speaking, convictions at all. She could not see the world divided into separate

compartments of good people and bad people, any more than she could believe so implicitly in the rightness

of her own thought as to wish to bring the population of the British Isles into agreement with it. She looked at

the lemoncolored leaflet, and thought almost enviously of the faith which could find comfort in the issue of

such documents; for herself she would be content to remain silent for ever if a share of personal happiness

were granted her. She read Mr. Clacton's statement with a curious division of judgment, noting its weak and

pompous verbosity on the one hand, and, at the same time, feeling that faith, faith in an illusion, perhaps, but,

at any rate, faith in something, was of all gifts the most to be envied. An illusion it was, no doubt. She looked

curiously round her at the furniture of the office, at the machinery in which she had taken so much pride, and

marveled to think that once the copyingpresses, the cardindex, the files of documents, had all been

shrouded, wrapped in some mist which gave them a unity and a general dignity and purpose independently of

their separate significance. The ugly cumbersomeness of the furniture alone impressed her now. Her attitude

had become very lax and despondent when the typewriter stopped in the next room. Mary immediately drew

up to the table, laid hands on an unopened envelope, and adopted an expression which might hide her state of

mind from Mrs. Seal. Some instinct of decency required that she should not allow Mrs. Seal to see her face.

Shading her eyes with her fingers, she watched Mrs. Seal pull out one drawer after another in her search for

"Do sit down, Sally, and tell me how you manage ithow you manage, that is, to bustle about with perfect

confidence in the necessity of your own activities, which to me seem as futile as the buzzing of a belated

bluebottle." She said nothing of the kind, however, and the presence of industry which she preserved so long

as Mrs. Seal was in the room served to set her brain in motion, so that she dispatched her morning's work

much as usual. At one o'clock she was surprised to find how efficiently she had dealt with the morning. As

she put her hat on she determined to lunch at a shop in the Strand, so as to set that other piece of mechanism,

her body, into action. With a brain working and a body working one could keep step with the crowd and

never be found out for the hollow machine, lacking the essential thing, that one was conscious of being.

She considered her case as she walked down the Charing Cross Road. She put to herself a series of questions.

Would she mind, for example, if the wheels of that motoromnibus passed over her and crushed her to death?

No, not in the least; or an adventure with that disagreeable looking man hanging about the entrance of the

Tube station? No; she could not conceive fear or excitement. Did suffering in any form appall her? No,

suffering was neither good nor bad. And this essential thing? In the eyes of every single person she detected a

flame; as if a spark in the brain ignited spontaneously at contact with the things they met and drove them on.

The young women looking into the milliners' windows had that look in their eyes; and elderly men turning

over books in the secondhand bookshops, and eagerly waiting to hear what the price wasthe very lowest

pricethey had it, too. But she cared nothing at all for clothes or for money either. Books she shrank from,

for they were connected too closely with Ralph. She kept on her way resolutely through the crowd of people,

among whom she was so much of an alien, feeling them cleave and give way before her.

Strange thoughts are bred in passing through crowded streets should the passenger, by chance, have no exact

destination in front of him, much as the mind shapes all kinds of forms, solutions, images when listening

inattentively to music. From an acute consciousness of herself as an individual, Mary passed to a conception

of the scheme of things in which, as a human being, she must have her share. She half held a vision; the

vision shaped and dwindled. She wished she had a pencil and a piece of paper to help her to give a form to

this conception which composed itself as she walked down the Charing Cross Road. But if she talked to any

one, the conception might escape her. Her vision seemed to lay out the lines of her life until death in a way

which satisfied her sense of harmony. It only needed a persistent effort of thought, stimulated in this strange

way by the crowd and the noise, to climb the crest of existence and see it all laid out once and for ever.

Already her suffering as an individual was left behind her. Of this process, which was to her so full of effort,

which comprised infinitely swift and full passages of thought, leading from one crest to another, as she

shaped her conception of life in this world, only two articulate words escaped her, muttered beneath her

She sat down on a seat opposite the statue of one of London's heroes upon the Embankment, and spoke the

words aloud. To her they represented the rare flower or splinter of rock brought down by a climber in proof

that he has stood for a moment, at least, upon the highest peak of the mountain. She had been up there and

seen the world spread to the horizon. It was now necessary to alter her course to some extent, according to

her new resolve. Her post should be in one of those exposed and desolate stations which are shunned

naturally by happy people. She arranged the details of the new plan in her mind, not without a grim

Where was he to be placed in the new scale of life? Her exalted mood seemed to make it safe to handle the

question. But she was dismayed to find how quickly her passions leapt forward the moment she sanctioned

this line of thought. Now she was identified with him and rethought his thoughts with complete

selfsurrender; now, with a sudden cleavage of spirit, she turned upon him and denounced him for his

"But I refuseI refuse to hate any one," she said aloud; chose the moment to cross the road with

circumspection, and ten minutes later lunched in the Strand, cutting her meat firmly into small pieces, but

giving her fellowdiners no further cause to judge her eccentric. Her soliloquy crystallized itself into little

fragmentary phrases emerging suddenly from the turbulence of her thought, particularly when she had to

exert herself in any way, either to move, to count money, or to choose a turning. "To know the truthto

accept without bitterness" those, perhaps, were the most articulate of her utterances, for no one could have

made head or tail of the queer gibberish murmured in front of the statue of Francis, Duke of Bedford, save

that the name of Ralph occurred frequently in very strange connections, as if, having spoken it, she wished,

superstitiously, to cancel it by adding some other word that robbed the sentence with his name in it of any

Those champions of the cause of women, Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal, did not perceive anything strange in

Mary's behavior, save that she was almost half an hour later than usual in coming back to the office. Happily,

their own affairs kept them busy, and she was free from their inspection. If they had surprised her they would

have found her lost, apparently, in admiration of the large hotel across the square, for, after writing a few

words, her pen rested upon the paper, and her mind pursued its own journey among the sunblazoned

windows and the drifts of purplish smoke which formed her view. And, indeed, this background was by no

means out of keeping with her thoughts. She saw to the remote spaces behind the strife of the foreground,

enabled now to gaze there, since she had renounced her own demands, privileged to see the larger view, to

share the vast desires and sufferings of the mass of mankind. She had been too lately and too roughly

mastered by facts to take an easy pleasure in the relief of renunciation; such satisfaction as she felt came only

from the discovery that, having renounced everything that made life happy, easy, splendid, individual, there

remained a hard reality, unimpaired by one's personal adventures, remote as the stars, unquenchable as they

While Mary Datchet was undergoing this curious transformation from the particular to the universal, Mrs.

Seal remembered her duties with regard to the kettle and the gasfire. She was a little surprised to find that

Mary had drawn her chair to the window, and, having lit the gas, she raised herself from a stooping posture

and looked at her. The most obvious reason for such an attitude in a secretary was some kind of indisposition.

"I'm frightfully lazy this afternoon," she added, with a glance at her table. "You must really get another

The words were meant to be taken lightly, but something in the tone of them roused a jealous fear which was

always dormant in Mrs. Seal's breast. She was terribly afraid that one of these days Mary, the young woman

who typified so many rather sentimental and enthusiastic ideas, who had some sort of visionary existence in

white with a sheaf of lilies in her hand, would announce, in a jaunty way, that she was about to be married.

"I've not made up my mind about anything," said Marya remark which could be taken as a generalization.

"You're not going to be married, are you?" she asked, pronouncing the words with nervous speed.

"Why are you asking such absurd questions this afternoon, Sally?" Mary asked, not very steadily. "Must we

Mrs. Seal emitted a most peculiar chuckle. She seemed for one moment to acknowledge the terrible side of

life which is concerned with the emotions, the private lives, of the sexes, and then to sheer off from it with all

possible speed into the shades of her own shivering virginity. She was made so uncomfortable by the turn the

conversation had taken, that she plunged her head into the cupboard, and endeavored to abstract some very

"We have our work," she said, withdrawing her head, displaying cheeks more than usually crimson, and

placing a jampot emphatically upon the table. But, for the moment, she was unable to launch herself upon

one of those enthusiastic, but inconsequent, tirades upon liberty, democracy, the rights of the people, and the

iniquities of the Government, in which she delighted. Some memory from her own past or from the past of

her sex rose to her mind and kept her abashed. She glanced furtively at Mary, who still sat by the window

with her arm upon the sill. She noticed how young she was and full of the promise of womanhood. The sight

"Yesenough work to last a lifetime," said Mary, as if concluding some passage of thought.

Mrs. Seal brightened at once. She lamented her lack of scientific training, and her deficiency in the processes

of logic, but she set her mind to work at once to make the prospects of the cause appear as alluring and

important as she could. She delivered herself of an harangue in which she asked a great many rhetorical

"To last a lifetime? My dear child, it will last all our lifetimes. As one falls another steps into the breach. My

father, in his generation, a pioneerI, coming after him, do my little best. What, alas! can one do more? And

now it's you young womenwe look to youthe future looks to you. Ah, my dear, if I'd a thousand lives,

I'd give them all to our cause. The cause of women, d'you say? I say the cause of humanity. And there are

some"she glanced fiercely at the window "who don't see it! There are some who are satisfied to go on,

year after year, refusing to admit the truth. And we who have the vision the kettle boiling over? No, no, let

me see to itwe who know the truth," she continued, gesticulating with the kettle and the teapot. Owing to

these encumbrances, perhaps, she lost the thread of her discourse, and concluded, rather wistfully, "It's all so

SIMPLE." She referred to a matter that was a perpetual source of bewilderment to herthe extraordinary

incapacity of the human race, in a world where the good is so unmistakably divided from the bad, of

distinguishing one from the other, and embodying what ought to be done in a few large, simple Acts of

Parliament, which would, in a very short time, completely change the lot of humanity.

"One would have thought," she said, "that men of University training, like Mr. Asquithone would have

thought that an appeal to reason would not be unheard by them. But reason," she reflected, "what is reason

Doing homage to the phrase, she repeated it once more, and caught the ear of Mr. Clacton, as he issued from

his room; and he repeated it a third time, giving it, as he was in the habit of doing with Mrs. Seal's phrases, a

dryly humorous intonation. He was well pleased with the world, however, and he remarked, in a flattering

manner, that he would like to see that phrase in large letters at the head of a leaflet.

"But, Mrs. Seal, we have to aim at a judicious combination of the two," he added in his magisterial way to

check the unbalanced enthusiasm of the women. "Reality has to be voiced by reason before it can make itself

felt. The weak point of all these movements, Miss Datchet," he continued, taking his place at the table and

turning to Mary as usual when about to deliver his more profound cogitations, "is that they are not based

upon sufficiently intellectual grounds. A mistake, in my opinion. The British public likes a pellet of reason in

its jam of eloquencea pill of reason in its pudding of sentiment," he said, sharpening the phrase to a

His eyes rested, with something of the vanity of an author, upon the yellow leaflet which Mary held in her

hand. She rose, took her seat at the head of the table, poured out tea for her colleagues, and gave her opinion

upon the leaflet. So she had poured out tea, so she had criticized Mr. Clacton's leaflets a hundred times

already; but now it seemed to her that she was doing it in a different spirit; she had enlisted in the army, and

was a volunteer no longer. She had renounced something and was nowhow could she express it?;not

quite "in the running" for life. She had always known that Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal were not in the running,

and across the gulf that separated them she had seen them in the guise of shadow people, flitting in and out of

the ranks of the livingeccentrics, undeveloped human beings, from whose substance some essential part

had been cut away. All this had never struck her so clearly as it did this afternoon, when she felt that her lot

was cast with them for ever. One view of the world plunged in darkness, so a more volatile temperament

might have argued after a season of despair, let the world turn again and show another, more splendid,

perhaps. No, Mary thought, with unflinching loyalty to what appeared to her to be the true view, having lost

what is best, I do not mean to pretend that any other view does instead. Whatever happens, I mean to have no

presences in my life. Her very words had a sort of distinctness which is sometimes produced by sharp, bodily

pain. To Mrs. Seal's secret jubilation the rule which forbade discussion of shop at teatime was overlooked.

Mary and Mr. Clacton argued with a cogency and a ferocity which made the little woman feel that something

very importantshe hardly knew whatwas taking place. She became much excited; one crucifix became

entangled with another, and she dug a considerable hole in the table with the point of her pencil in order to

emphasize the most striking heads of the discourse; and how any combination of Cabinet Ministers could

She could hardly bring herself to remember her own private instrument of justicethe typewriter. The

telephonebell rang, and as she hurried off to answer a voice which always seemed a proof of importance by

itself, she felt that it was at this exact spot on the surface of the globe that all the subterranean wires of

thought and progress came together. When she returned, with a message from the printer, she found that

Mary was putting on her hat firmly; there was something imperious and dominating in her attitude altogether.

"Look, Sally," she said, "these letters want copying. These I've not looked at. The question of the new census

will have to be gone into carefully. But I'm going home now. Good night, Mr. Clacton; good night, Sally."

"We are very fortunate in our secretary, Mr. Clacton," said Mrs. Seal, pausing with her hand on the papers, as

the door shut behind Mary. Mr. Clacton himself had been vaguely impressed by something in Mary's

behavior towards him. He envisaged a time even when it would become necessary to tell her that there could

not be two masters in one officebut she was certainly able, very able, and in touch with a group of very

He signified his assent to Mrs. Seal's remark, but observed, with a glance at the clock, which showed only

"If she takes the work seriously, Mrs. Sealbut that's just what some of your clever young ladies don't do."

So saying he returned to his room, and Mrs. Seal, after a moment's hesitation, hurried back to her labors.

Mary walked to the nearest station and reached home in an incredibly short space of time, just so much,

indeed, as was needed for the intelligent understanding of the news of the world as the "Westminster Gazette"

reported it. Within a few minutes of opening her door, she was in trim for a hard evening's work. She

unlocked a drawer and took out a manuscript, which consisted of a very few pages, entitled, in a forcible

hand, "Some Aspects of the Democratic State." The aspects dwindled out in a criescross of blotted lines in

the very middle of a sentence, and suggested that the author had been interrupted, or convinced of the futility

of proceeding, with her pen in the air. . . . Oh, yes, Ralph had come in at that point. She scored that sheet very

effectively, and, choosing a fresh one, began at a great rate with a generalization upon the structure of human

society, which was a good deal bolder than her custom. Ralph had told her once that she couldn't write

English, which accounted for those frequent blots and insertions; but she put all that behind her, and drove

ahead with such words as came her way, until she had accomplished half a page of generalization and might

legitimately draw breath. Directly her hand stopped her brain stopped too, and she began to listen. A

paperboy shouted down the street; an omnibus ceased and lurched on again with the heave of duty once

more shouldered; the dullness of the sounds suggested that a fog had risen since her return, if, indeed, a fog

has power to deaden sound, of which fact, she could not be sure at the present moment. It was the sort of fact

Ralph Denham knew. At any rate, it was no concern of hers, and she was about to dip a pen when her ear was

caught by the sound of a step upon the stone staircase. She followed it past Mr. Chippen's chambers; past Mr.

Gibson's; past Mr. Turner's; after which it became her sound. A postman, a washerwoman, a circular, a

billshe presented herself with each of these perfectly natural possibilities; but, to her surprise, her mind

rejected each one of them impatiently, even apprehensively. The step became slow, as it was apt to do at the

end of the steep climb, and Mary, listening for the regular sound, was filled with an intolerable nervousness.

Leaning against the table, she felt the knock of her heart push her body perceptibly backwards and

forwardsa state of nerves astonishing and reprehensible in a stable woman. Grotesque fancies took shape.

Alone, at the top of the house, an unknown person approaching nearer and nearerhow could she escape?

There was no way of escape. She did not even know whether that oblong mark on the ceiling was a trapdoor

to the roof or not. And if she got on to the roofwell, there was a drop of sixty feet or so on to the pavement.

But she sat perfectly still, and when the knock sounded, she got up directly and opened the door without

hesitation. She saw a tall figure outside, with something ominous to her eyes in the look of it.

"What do you want?" she said, not recognizing the face in the fitful light of the staircase.

Mary's selfpossession returned almost excessively, and her welcome was decidedly cold, as if she must

recoup herself for this ridiculous waste of emotion. She moved her greenshaded lamp to another table, and

"Why can't they leave me alone?" she thought bitterly, connecting Katharine and Ralph in a conspiracy to

take from her even this hour of solitary study, even this poor little defence against the world. And, as she

smoothed down the sheet of blottingpaper over the manuscript, she braced herself to resist Katharine, whose

presence struck her, not merely by its force, as usual, but as something in the nature of a menace.

"You're working?" said Katharine, with hesitation, perceiving that she was not welcome.

"Nothing that matters," Mary replied, drawing forward the best of the chairs and poking the fire.

"I didn't know you had to work after you had left the office," said Katharine, in a tone which gave the

She had been paying calls with her mother, and in between the calls Mrs. Hilbery had rushed into shops and

bought pillowcases and blottingbooks on no perceptible method for the furnishing of Katharine's house.

Katharine had a sense of impedimenta accumulating on all sides of her. She had left her at length, and had

come on to keep an engagement to dine with Rodney at his rooms. But she did not mean to get to him before

seven o'clock, and so had plenty of time to walk all the way from Bond Street to the Temple if she wished it.

The flow of faces streaming on either side of her had hypnotized her into a mood of profound despondency,

to which her expectation of an evening alone with Rodney contributed. They were very good friends again,

better friends, they both said, than ever before. So far as she was concerned this was true. There were many

more things in him than she had guessed until emotion brought them forthstrength, affection, sympathy.

And she thought of them and looked at the faces passing, and thought how much alike they were, and how

distant, nobody feeling anything as she felt nothing, and distance, she thought, lay inevitably between the

closest, and their intimacy was the worst presence of all. For, "Oh dear," she thought, looking into a

tobacconist's window, "I don't care for any of them, and I don't care for William, and people say this is the

She looked desperately at the smoothbowled pipes, and wondered should she walk on by the Strand or by

the Embankment? It was not a simple question, for it concerned not different streets so much as different

streams of thought. If she went by the Strand she would force herself to think out the problem of the future, or

some mathematical problem; if she went by the river she would certainly begin to think about things that

didn't existthe forest, the ocean beach, the leafy solitudes, the magnanimous hero. No, no, no! A thousand

times no!it wouldn't do; there was something repulsive in such thoughts at present; she must take

something else; she was out of that mood at present. And then she thought of Mary; the thought gave her

confidence, even pleasure of a sad sort, as if the triumph of Ralph and Mary proved that the fault of her

failure lay with herself and not with life. An indistinct idea that the sight of Mary might be of help, combined

with her natural trust in her, suggested a visit; for, surely, her liking was of a kind that implied liking upon

Mary's side also. After a moment's hesitation she decided, although she seldom acted upon impulse, to act

upon this one, and turned down a side street and found Mary's door. But her reception was not encouraging;

clearly Mary didn't want to see her, had no help to impart, and the halfformed desire to confide in her was

quenched immediately. She was slightly amused at her own delusion, looked rather absentminded, and

swung her gloves to and fro, as if doling out the few minutes accurately before she could say goodby.

Those few minutes might very well be spent in asking for information as to the exact position of the Suffrage

Bill, or in expounding her own very sensible view of the situation. But there was a tone in her voice, or a

shade in her opinions, or a swing of her gloves which served to irritate Mary Datchet, whose manner became

increasingly direct, abrupt, and even antagonistic. She became conscious of a wish to make Katharine realize

the importance of this work, which she discussed so coolly, as though she, too, had sacrificed what Mary

herself had sacrificed. The swinging of the gloves ceased, and Katharine, after ten minutes, began to make

movements preliminary to departure. At the sight of this, Mary was awareshe was abnormally aware of

things tonightof another very strong desire; Katharine was not to be allowed to go, to disappear into the

free, happy world of irresponsible individuals. She must be made to realizeto feel.

"I don't quite see," she said, as if Katharine had challenged her explicitly, "how, things being as they are, any

Mary pressed her lips, and smiled ironically; she had Katharine at her mercy; she could, if she liked,

discharge upon her head wagonloads of revolting proof of the state of things ignored by the casual, the

amateur, the lookeron, the cynical observer of life at a distance. And yet she hesitated. As usual, when she

found herself in talk with Katharine, she began to feel rapid alternations of opinion about her, arrows of

sensation striking strangely through the envelope of personality, which shelters us so conveniently from our

fellows. What an egoist, how aloof she was! And yet, not in her words, perhaps, but in her voice, in her face,

in her attitude, there were signs of a soft brooding spirit, of a sensibility unblunted and profound, playing

over her thoughts and deeds, and investing her manner with an habitual gentleness. The arguments and

"You'll be married, and you'll have other things to think of," she said inconsequently, and with an accent of

condescension. She was not going to make Katharine understand in a second, as she would, all she herself

had learnt at the cost of such pain. No. Katharine was to be happy; Katharine was to be ignorant; Mary was to

keep this knowledge of the impersonal life for herself. The thought of her morning's renunciation stung her

conscience, and she tried to expand once more into that impersonal condition which was so lofty and so

painless. She must check this desire to be an individual again, whose wishes were in conflict with those of

Katharine now renewed her signs of leavetaking; she had drawn on one of her gloves, and looked about her

as if in search of some trivial saying to end with. Wasn't there some picture, or clock, or chest of drawers

which might be singled out for notice? something peaceable and friendly to end the uncomfortable interview?

The greenshaded lamp burnt in the corner, and illumined books and pens and blottingpaper. The whole

aspect of the place started another train of thought and struck her as enviably free; in such a room one could

"I think you're very lucky," she observed. "I envy you, living alone and having your own things"and

engaged in this exalted way, which had no recognition or engagementring, she added in her own mind.

Mary's lips parted slightly. She could not conceive in what respects Katharine, who spoke sincerely, could

Katharine remained silent. She gazed into the fire quietly, and without a trace of selfconsciousness. The

hostility which she had divined in Mary's tone had completely disappeared, and she forgot that she had been

"Well, I suppose I have," she said at length. "And yet I sometimes think" She paused; she did not know

"It came over me in the Tube the other day," she resumed, with a smile; "what is it that makes these people

go one way rather than the other? It's not love; it's not reason; I think it must be some idea. Perhaps, Mary,

our affections are the shadow of an idea. Perhaps there isn't any such thing as affection in itself. . . ." She

spoke halfmockingly, asking her question, which she scarcely troubled to frame, not of Mary, or of any one

But the words seemed to Mary Datchet shallow, supercilious, coldblooded, and cynical all in one. All her

"Yes; I know you are," Katharine replied, looking at her as if now she were about, perhaps, to explain

Mary could not help feeling the simplicity and good faith that lay behind Katharine's words.

"Yes," said Katharine, almost sadly. She understood that Mary was thinking of Ralph, and she felt it

impossible to press her to reveal more of this exalted condition; she could only respect the fact that, in some

few cases, life arranged itself thus satisfactorily and pass on. She rose to her feet accordingly. But Mary

exclaimed, with unmistakable earnestness, that she must not go; that they met so seldom; that she wanted to

talk to her so much. . . . Katharine was surprised at the earnestness with which she spoke. It seemed to her

Seating herself "for ten minutes," she said: "By the way, Mr. Denham told me he was going to give up the

Bar and live in the country. Has he gone? He was beginning to tell me about it, when we were interrupted."

"Yes, because he would do something worth while; he would write a book. My father always says that he's

Mary bent low over the fire and stirred the coal between the bars with a poker. Katharine's mention of Ralph

had roused within her an almost irresistible desire to explain to her the true state of the case between herself

and Ralph. She knew, from the tone of her voice, that in speaking of Ralph she had no desire to probe Mary's

secrets, or to insinuate any of her own. Moreover, she liked Katharine; she trusted her; she felt a respect for

her. The first step of confidence was comparatively simple; but a further confidence had revealed itself, as

Katharine spoke, which was not so simple, and yet it impressed itself upon her as a necessity; she must tell

Katharine what it was clear that she had no conception ofshe must tell Katharine that Ralph was in love

"I don't know what he means to do," she said hurriedly, seeking time against the pressure of her own

Katharine reflected that this was odd; perhaps, after all, she had misunderstood the position. She was in the

habit of assuming, however, that she was rather unobservant of the finer shades of feeling, and she noted her

present failure as another proof that she was a practical, abstractminded person, better fitted to deal with

figures than with the feelings of men and women. Anyhow, William Rodney would say so.

"Oh, please stay!" Mary exclaimed, putting out her hand to stop her. Directly Katharine moved she felt,

inarticulately and violently, that she could not bear to let her go. If Katharine went, her only chance of

speaking was lost; her only chance of saying something tremendously important was lost. Half a dozen words

were sufficient to wake Katharine's attention, and put flight and further silence beyond her power. But

although the words came to her lips, her throat closed upon them and drove them back. After all, she

considered, why should she speak? Because it is right, her instinct told her; right to expose oneself without

reservations to other human beings. She flinched from the thought. It asked too much of one already stripped

bare. Something she must keep of her own. But if she did keep something of her own? Immediately she

figured an immured life, continuing for an immense period, the same feelings living for ever, neither

dwindling nor changing within the ring of a thick stone wall. The imagination of this loneliness frightened

her, and yet to speakto lose her loneliness, for it had already become dear to her, was beyond her power.

Her hand went down to the hem of Katharine's skirt, and, fingering a line of fur, she bent her head as if to

"I like this fur," she said, "I like your clothes. And you mustn't think that I'm going to marry Ralph," she

continued, in the same tone, "because he doesn't care for me at all. He cares for some one else." Her head

"It's a shabby old dress," said Katharine, and the only sign that Mary's words had reached her was that she

"No, no," said Katharine; "but you're mistaken, aren't you?" She was, in truth, horribly uncomfortable,

dismayed, indeed, disillusioned. She disliked the turn things had taken quite intensely. The indecency of it

afflicted her. The suffering implied by the tone appalled her. She looked at Mary furtively, with eyes that

were full of apprehension. But if she had hoped to find that these words had been spoken without

understanding of their meaning, she was at once disappointed. Mary lay back in her chair, frowning slightly,

and looking, Katharine thought, as if she had lived fifteen years or so in the space of a few minutes.

"There are some things, don't you think, that one can't be mistaken about?" Mary said, quietly and almost

coldly. "That is what puzzles me about this question of being in love. I've always prided myself upon being

reasonable," she added. "I didn't think I could have felt thisI mean if the other person didn't. I was foolish.

I let myself pretend." Here she paused. "For, you see, Katharine," she proceeded, rousing herself and

speaking with greater energy, "I AM in love. There's no doubt about that. . . . I'm tremendously in love . . .

with Ralph." The little forward shake of her head, which shook a lock of hair, together with her brighter

Katharine thought to herself, "That's how it feels then." She hesitated, with a feeling that it was not for her to

"Yes," said Mary; "I've got that. One wouldn't NOT be in love. . . . But I didn't mean to talk about that; I only

wanted you to know. There's another thing I want to tell you . . ." She paused. "I haven't any authority from

Katharine looked at her again, as if her first glance must have been deluded, for, surely, there must be some

outward sign that Mary was talking in an excited, or bewildered, or fantastic manner. No; she still frowned,

as if she sought her way through the clauses of a difficult argument, but she still looked more like one who

"That proves that you're mistakenutterly mistaken," said Katharine, speaking reasonably, too. She had no

need to verify the mistake by a glance at her own recollections, when the fact was so clearly stamped upon

her mind that if Ralph had any feeling towards her it was one of critical hostility. She did not give the matter

another thought, and Mary, now that she had stated the fact, did not seek to prove it, but tried to explain to

She had nerved herself to do what some large and imperious instinct demanded her doing; she had been

"I've told you," she said, "because I want you to help me. I don't want to be jealous of you. And I amI'm

She hesitated, and groped in her endeavor to make her feelings clear to herself.

"If I tell you, then we can talk; and when I'm jealous, I can tell you. And if I'm tempted to do something

frightfully mean, I can tell you; you could make me tell you. I find talking so difficult; but loneliness

frightens me. I should shut it up in my mind. Yes, that's what I'm afraid of. Going about with something in

my mind all my life that never changes. I find it so difficult to change. When I think a thing's wrong I never

stop thinking it wrong, and Ralph was quite right, I see, when he said that there's no such thing as right and

"Ralph Denham said that?" said Katharine, with considerable indignation. In order to have produced such

suffering in Mary, it seemed to her that he must have behaved with extreme callousness. It seemed to her that

he had discarded the friendship, when it suited his convenience to do so, with some falsely philosophical

theory which made his conduct all the worse. She was going on to express herself thus, had not Mary at once

"No, no," she said; "you don't understand. If there's any fault it's mine entirely; after all, if one chooses to run

Her voice faltered into silence. It was borne in upon her how completely in running her risk she had lost her

prize, lost it so entirely that she had no longer the right, in talking of Ralph, to presume that her knowledge of

him supplanted all other knowledge. She no longer completely possessed her love, since his share in it was

doubtful; and now, to make things yet more bitter, her clear vision of the way to face life was rendered

tremulous and uncertain, because another was witness of it. Feeling her desire for the old unshared intimacy

too great to be borne without tears, she rose, walked to the farther end of the room, held the curtains apart,

and stood there mastered for a moment. The grief itself was not ignoble; the sting of it lay in the fact that she

had been led to this act of treachery against herself. Trapped, cheated, robbed, first by Ralph and then by

Katharine, she seemed all dissolved in humiliation, and bereft of anything she could call her own. Tears of

weakness welled up and rolled down her cheeks. But tears, at least, she could control, and would this instant,

and then, turning, she would face Katharine, and retrieve what could be retrieved of the collapse of her

She turned. Katharine had not moved; she was leaning a little forward in her chair and looking into the fire.

Something in the attitude reminded Mary of Ralph. So he would sit, leaning forward, looking rather fixedly

in front of him, while his mind went far away, exploring, speculating, until he broke off with his, "Well,

Mary?" and the silence, that had been so full of romance to her, gave way to the most delightful talk that

Something unfamiliar in the pose of the silent figure, something still, solemn, significant about it, made her

hold her breath. She paused. Her thoughts were without bitterness. She was surprised by her own quiet and

confidence. She came back silently, and sat once more by Katharine's side. Mary had no wish to speak. In the

silence she seemed to have lost her isolation; she was at once the sufferer and the pitiful spectator of

suffering; she was happier than she had ever been; she was more bereft; she was rejected, and she was

immensely beloved. Attempt to express these sensations was vain, and, moreover, she could not help

believing that, without any words on her side, they were shared. Thus for some time longer they sat silent,

The fact that she would be late in keeping her engagement with William was not the only reason which sent

Katharine almost at racing speed along the Strand in the direction of his rooms. Punctuality might have been

achieved by taking a cab, had she not wished the open air to fan into flame the glow kindled by Mary's

words. For among all the impressions of the evening's talk one was of the nature of a revelation and subdued

"She sat up straight and looked at me, and then she said, 'I'm in love,'" Katharine mused, trying to set the

whole scene in motion. It was a scene to dwell on with so much wonder that not a grain of pity occurred to

her; it was a flame blazing suddenly in the dark; by its light Katharine perceived far too vividly for her

comfort the mediocrity, indeed the entirely fictitious character of her own feelings so far as they pretended to

correspond with Mary's feelings. She made up her mind to act instantly upon the knowledge thus gained, and

cast her mind in amazement back to the scene upon the heath, when she had yielded, heaven knows why, for

reasons which seemed now imperceptible. So in broad daylight one might revisit the place where one has

"It's all so simple," she said to herself. "There can't be any doubt. I've only got to speak now. I've only got to

speak," she went on saying, in time to her own footsteps, and completely forgot Mary Datchet.

William Rodney, having come back earlier from the office than he expected, sat down to pick out the

melodies in "The Magic Flute" upon the piano. Katharine was late, but that was nothing new, and, as she had

no particular liking for music, and he felt in the mood for it, perhaps it was as well. This defect in Katharine

was the more strange, William reflected, because, as a rule, the women of her family were unusually musical.

Her cousin, Cassandra Otway, for example, had a very fine taste in music, and he had charming recollections

of her in a light fantastic attitude, playing the flute in the morningroom at Stogdon House. He recalled with

pleasure the amusing way in which her nose, long like all the Otway noses, seemed to extend itself into the

flute, as if she were some inimitably graceful species of musical mole. The little picture suggested very

happily her melodious and whimsical temperament. The enthusiasms of a young girl of distinguished

upbringing appealed to William, and suggested a thousand ways in which, with his training and

accomplishments, he could be of service to her. She ought to be given the chance of hearing good music, as it

is played by those who have inherited the great tradition. Moreover, from one or two remarks let fall in the

course of conversation, he thought it possible that she had what Katharine professed to lack, a passionate, if

untaught, appreciation of literature. He had lent her his play. Meanwhile, as Katharine was certain to be late,

and "The Magic Flute" is nothing without a voice, he felt inclined to spend the time of waiting in writing a

letter to Cassandra, exhorting her to read Pope in preference to Dostoevsky, until her feeling for form was

more highly developed. He set himself down to compose this piece of advice in a shape which was light and

playful, and yet did no injury to a cause which he had near at heart, when he heard Katharine upon the stairs.

A moment later it was plain that he had been mistaken, it was not Katharine; but he could not settle himself to

his letter. His temper had changed from one of urbane contentmentindeed of delicious expansionto one

of uneasiness and expectation. The dinner was brought in, and had to be set by the fire to keep hot. It was

now a quarter of an hour beyond the specified time. He bethought him of a piece of news which had

depressed him in the earlier part of the day. Owing to the illness of one of his fellowclerks, it was likely that

he would get no holiday until later in the year, which would mean the postponement of their marriage. But

this possibility, after all, was not so disagreeable as the probability which forced itself upon him with every

tick of the clock that Katharine had completely forgotten her engagement. Such things had happened less

frequently since Christmas, but what if they were going to begin to happen again? What if their marriage

should turn out, as she had said, a farce? He acquitted her of any wish to hurt him wantonly, but there was

something in her character which made it impossible for her to help hurting people. Was she cold? Was she

selfabsorbed? He tried to fit her with each of these descriptions, but he had to own that she puzzled him.

"There are so many things that she doesn't understand," he reflected, glancing at the letter to Cassandra which

he had begun and laid aside. What prevented him from finishing the letter which he had so much enjoyed

beginning? The reason was that Katharine might, at any moment, enter the room. The thought, implying his

bondage to her, irritated him acutely. It occurred to him that he would leave the letter lying open for her to

see, and he would take the opportunity of telling her that he had sent his play to Cassandra for her to criticize.

Possibly, but not by any means certainly, this would annoy herand as he reached the doubtful comfort of

this conclusion, there was a knock on the door and Katharine came in. They kissed each other coldly and she

made no apology for being late. Nevertheless, her mere presence moved him strangely; but he was

determined that this should not weaken his resolution to make some kind of stand against her; to get at the

truth about her. He let her make her own disposition of clothes and busied himself with the plates.

"I've got a piece of news for you, Katharine," he said directly they sat down to table; "I shan't get my holiday

He rapped the words out with a certain degree of briskness. Katharine started a little, as if the announcement

"That won't make any difference, will it? I mean the lease isn't signed," she replied. "But why? What has

He told her, in an offhand way, how one of his fellowclerks had broken down, and might have to be away

for months, six months even, in which case they would have to think over their position. He said it in a way

which struck her, at last, as oddly casual. She looked at him. There was no outward sign that he was annoyed

with her. Was she well dressed? She thought sufficiently so. Perhaps she was late? She looked for a clock.

"It'll mean, too, I'm afraid, that I shan't be as free for a considerable time as I have been," he continued. She

had time to reflect that she gained something by all this, though it was too soon to determine what. But the

light which had been burning with such intensity as she came along was suddenly overclouded, as much by

his manner as by his news. She had been prepared to meet opposition, which is simple to encounter compared

withshe did not know what it was that she had to encounter. The meal passed in quiet, wellcontrolled talk

about indifferent things. Music was not a subject about which she knew anything, but she liked him to tell her

things; and could, she mused, as he talked, fancy the evenings of married life spent thus, over the fire; spent

thus, or with a book, perhaps, for then she would have time to read her books, and to grasp firmly with every

muscle of her unused mind what she longed to know. The atmosphere was very free. Suddenly William broke

off. She looked up apprehensively, brushing aside these thoughts with annoyance.

"Where should I address a letter to Cassandra?" he asked her. It was obvious again that William had some

meaning or other tonight, or was in some mood. "We've struck up a friendship," he added.

"They keep her too much at home," said William. "Why don't you ask her to stay with you, and let her hear a

little good music? I'll just finish what I was saying, if you don't mind, because I'm particularly anxious that

Katharine sank back in her chair, and Rodney took the paper on his knees, and went on with his sentence.

"Style, you know, is what we tend to neglect"; but he was far more conscious of Katharine's eye upon him

than of what he was saying about style. He knew that she was looking at him, but whether with irritation or

In truth, she had fallen sufficiently into his trap to feel uncomfortably roused and disturbed and unable to

proceed on the lines laid down for herself. This indifferent, if not hostile, attitude on William's part made it

impossible to break off without animosity, largely and completely. Infinitely preferable was Mary's state, she

thought, where there was a simple thing to do and one did it. In fact, she could not help supposing that some

littleness of nature had a part in all the refinements, reserves, and subtleties of feeling for which her friends

and family were so distinguished. For example, although she liked Cassandra well enough, her fantastic

method of life struck her as purely frivolous; now it was socialism, now it was silkworms, now it was

musicwhich last she supposed was the cause of William's sudden interest in her. Never before had William

wasted the minutes of her presence in writing his letters. With a curious sense of light opening where all,

hitherto, had been opaque, it dawned upon her that, after all, possibly, yes, probably, nay, certainly, the

devotion which she had almost wearily taken for granted existed in a much slighter degree than she had

suspected, or existed no longer. She looked at him attentively as if this discovery of hers must show traces in

his face. Never had she seen so much to respect in his appearance, so much that attracted her by its

sensitiveness and intelligence, although she saw these qualities as if they were those one responds to, dumbly,

in the face of a stranger. The head bent over the paper, thoughtful as usual, had now a composure which

seemed somehow to place it at a distance, like a face seen talking to some one else behind glass.

He wrote on, without raising his eyes. She would have spoken, but could not bring herself to ask him for

signs of affection which she had no right to claim. The conviction that he was thus strange to her filled her

with despondency, and illustrated quite beyond doubt the infinite loneliness of human beings. She had never

felt the truth of this so strongly before. She looked away into the fire; it seemed to her that even physically

they were now scarcely within speaking distance; and spiritually there was certainly no human being with

whom she could claim comradeship; no dream that satisfied her as she was used to be satisfied; nothing

remained in whose reality she could believe, save those abstract ideasfigures, laws, stars, facts, which she

When Rodney owned to himself the folly of this prolonged silence, and the meanness of such devices, and

looked up ready to seek some excuse for a good laugh, or opening for a confession, he was disconcerted by

what he saw. Katharine seemed equally oblivious of what was bad or of what was good in him. Her

expression suggested concentration upon something entirely remote from her surroundings. The carelessness

of her attitude seemed to him rather masculine than feminine. His impulse to break up the constraint was

chilled, and once more the exasperating sense of his own impotency returned to him. He could not help

contrasting Katharine with his vision of the engaging, whimsical Cassandra; Katharine undemonstrative,

inconsiderate, silent, and yet so notable that he could never do without her good opinion.

She veered round upon him a moment later, as if, when her train of thought was ended, she became aware of

"Have you finished your letter?" she asked. He thought he heard faint amusement in her tone, but not a trace

"No, I'm not going to write any more tonight," he said. "I'm not in the mood for it for some reason. I can't

"Cassandra won't know if it's well written or badly written," Katharine remarked.

"I'm not so sure about that. I should say she has a good deal of literary feeling."

"Perhaps," said Katharine indifferently. "You've been neglecting my education lately, by the way. I wish

you'd read something. Let me choose a book." So speaking, she went across to his bookshelves and began

looking in a desultory way among his books. Anything, she thought, was better than bickering or the strange

silence which drove home to her the distance between them. As she pulled one book forward and then

another she thought ironically of her own certainty not an hour ago; how it had vanished in a moment, how

she was merely marking time as best she could, not knowing in the least where they stood, what they felt, or

whether William loved her or not. More and more the condition of Mary's mind seemed to her wonderful and

enviableif, indeed, it could be quite as she figured itif, indeed, simplicity existed for any one of the

"Swift," she said, at last, taking out a volume at haphazard to settle this question at least. "Let us have some

Rodney took the book, held it in front of him, inserted one finger between the pages, but said nothing. His

face wore a queer expression of deliberation, as if he were weighing one thing with another, and would not

Katharine, taking her chair beside him, noted his silence and looked at him with sudden apprehension. What

she hoped or feared, she could not have said; a most irrational and indefensible desire for some assurance of

his affection was, perhaps, uppermost in her mind. Peevishness, complaints, exacting crossexamination she

was used to, but this attitude of composed quiet, which seemed to come from the consciousness of power

"I think it's a little odd, don't you?" he said, in a voice of detached reflection. "Most people, I mean, would be

seriously upset if their marriage was put off for six months or so. But we aren't; now how do you account for

She looked at him and observed his judicial attitude as of one holding far aloof from emotion.

"I attribute it," he went on, without waiting for her to answer, "to the fact that neither of us is in the least

romantic about the other. That may be partly, no doubt, because we've known each other so long; but I'm

inclined to think there's more in it than that. There's something temperamental. I think you're a trifle cold, and

I suspect I'm a trifle selfabsorbed. If that were so it goes a long way to explaining our odd lack of illusion

about each other. I'm not saying that the most satisfactory marriages aren't founded upon this sort of

understanding. But certainly it struck me as odd this morning, when Wilson told me, how little upset I felt.

"I've kept the letters, and I'll go through them tomorrow; but I'm certain we're on the safe side."

"Thanks. As to the psychological problem," he continued, as if the question interested him in a detached way,

"there's no doubt, I think, that either of us is capable of feeling what, for reasons of simplicity, I call romance

It was, perhaps, the first time in all her knowledge of him that Katharine had known William enter thus

deliberately and without sign of emotion upon a statement of his own feelings. He was wont to discourage

such intimate discussions by a little laugh or turn of the conversation, as much as to say that men, or men of

the world, find such topics a little silly, or in doubtful taste. His obvious wish to explain something puzzled

her, interested her, and neutralized the wound to her vanity. For some reason, too, she felt more at ease with

him than usual; or her ease was more the ease of equalityshe could not stop to think of that at the moment

though. His remarks interested her too much for the light that they threw upon certain problems of her own.

"Ah, that's the question. I've never come across a definition that satisfied me, though there are some very

"It's not altogether knowing the other person, perhapsit's ignorance," she hazarded.

"Some authorities say it's a question of distanceromance in literature, that is"

"Possibly, in the case of art. But in the case of people it may be" she hesitated.

"Have you no personal experience of it?" he asked, letting his eyes rest upon her swiftly for a moment.

"I believe it's influenced me enormously," she said, in the tone of one absorbed by the possibilities of some

view just presented to them; "but in my life there's so little scope for it," she added. She reviewed her daily

task, the perpetual demands upon her for good sense, selfcontrol, and accuracy in a house containing a

romantic mother. Ah, but her romance wasn't THAT romance. It was a desire, an echo, a sound; she could

drape it in color, see it in form, hear it in music, but not in words; no, never in words. She sighed, teased by

"But isn't it curious," William resumed, "that you should neither feel it for me, nor I for you?"

Katharine agreed that it was curiousvery; but even more curious to her was the fact that she was discussing

the question with William. It revealed possibilities which opened a prospect of a new relationship altogether.

Somehow it seemed to her that he was helping her to understand what she had never understood; and in her

gratitude she was conscious of a most sisterly desire to help him, toosisterly, save for one pang, not quite

"I think you might be very happy with some one you loved in that way," she said.

He asked the question formally, to protect himself from the sort of personality which he dreaded. The whole

situation needed the most careful management lest it should degenerate into some degrading and disturbing

exhibition such as the scene, which he could never think of without shame, upon the heath among the dead

leaves. And yet each sentence brought him relief. He was coming to understand something or other about his

own desires hitherto undefined by him, the source of his difficulty with Katharine. The wish to hurt her,

which had urged him to begin, had completely left him, and he felt that it was only Katharine now who could

help him to be sure. He must take his time. There were so many things that he could not say without the

greatest difficultythat name, for example, Cassandra. Nor could he move his eyes from a certain spot, a

fiery glen surrounded by high mountains, in the heart of the coals. He waited in suspense for Katharine to

continue. She had said that he might be very happy with some one he loved in that way.

"I don't see why it shouldn't last with you," she resumed. "I can imagine a certain sort of person" she

paused; she was aware that he was listening with the greatest intentness, and that his formality was merely the

cover for an extreme anxiety of some sort. There was some person thensome womanwho could it be?

"A person," she added, speaking in the most matteroffact tone she could command, "like Cassandra

Otway, for instance. Cassandra is the most interesting of the Otwayswith the exception of Henry. Even so,

I like Cassandra better. She has more than mere cleverness. She is a charactera person by herself."

"Those dreadful insects!" burst from William, with a nervous laugh, and a little spasm went through him as

Katharine noticed. It WAS Cassandra then. Automatically and dully she replied, "You could insist that she

confined herself totosomething else. . . . But she cares for music; I believe she writes poetry; and there

She ceased, as if defining to herself this peculiar charm. After a moment's silence William jerked out:

"Extremely affectionate. She worships Henry. When you think what a house that isUncle Francis always in

"My dear Katharine!" William exclaimed, flinging himself back in his chair, and uprooting his eyes from the

spot in the fire. "I really don't know what we're talking about. . . . I assure you. . . ."

He withdrew the finger that was still thrust between the pages of Gulliver, opened the book, and ran his eye

down the list of chapters, as though he were about to select the one most suitable for reading aloud. As

Katharine watched him, she was seized with preliminary symptoms of his own panic. At the same time she

was convinced that, should he find the right page, take out his spectacles, clear his throat, and open his lips, a

chance that would never come again in all their lives would be lost to them both.

"We're talking about things that interest us both very much," she said. "Shan't we go on talking, and leave

Swift for another time? I don't feel in the mood for Swift, and it's a pity to read any one when that's the

The presence of wise literary speculation, as she calculated, restored William's confidence in his security, and

he replaced the book in the bookcase, keeping his back turned to her as he did so, and taking advantage of

But a second of introspection had the alarming result of showing him that his mind, when looked at from

within, was no longer familiar ground. He felt, that is to say, what he had never consciously felt before; he

was revealed to himself as other than he was wont to think him; he was afloat upon a sea of unknown and

tumultuous possibilities. He paced once up and down the room, and then flung himself impetuously into the

chair by Katharine's side. He had never felt anything like this before; he put himself entirely into her hands;

"You've stirred up all these odious and violent emotions, and now you must do the best you can with them."

Her near presence, however, had a calming and reassuring effect upon his agitation, and he was conscious

only of an implicit trust that, somehow, he was safe with her, that she would see him through, find out what it

"I wish to do whatever you tell me to do," he said. "I put myself entirely in your hands, Katharine."

"My dear, I feel a thousand things every second. I don't know, I'm sure, what I feel. That afternoon on the

heathit was thenthen" He broke off; he did not tell her what had happened then. "Your ghastly good

sense, as usual, has convinced mefor the momentbut what the truth is, Heaven only knows!" he

"Isn't it the truth that you are, or might be, in love with Cassandra?" she said gently.

She sighed, involuntarily. She had been hoping all this time, with an intensity that increased second by

second against the current of her words, that it would not in the end come to this. After a moment of

surprising anguish, she summoned her courage to tell him how she wished only that she might help him, and

had framed the first words of her speech when a knock, terrific and startling to people in their overwrought

"Yes," she replied, withdrawing with a little shiver, "but you must open the door."

When Ralph Denham entered the room and saw Katharine seated with her back to him, he was conscious of a

change in the grade of the atmosphere such as a traveler meets with sometimes upon the roads, particularly

after sunset, when, without warning, he runs from clammy chill to a hoard of unspent warmth in which the

sweetness of hay and beanfield is cherished, as if the sun still shone although the moon is up. He hesitated; he

shuddered; he walked elaborately to the window and laid aside his coat. He balanced his stick most carefully

against the folds of the curtain. Thus occupied with his own sensations and preparations, he had little time to

observe what either of the other two was feeling. Such symptoms of agitation as he might perceive (and they

had left their tokens in brightness of eye and pallor of cheeks) seemed to him well befitting the actors in so

great a drama as that of Katharine Hilbery's daily life. Beauty and passion were the breath of her being, he

She scarcely noticed his presence, or only as it forced her to adopt a manner of composure, which she was

certainly far from feeling. William, however, was even more agitated than she was, and her first instalment of

promised help took the form of some commonplace upon the age of the building or the architect's name,

which gave him an excuse to fumble in a drawer for certain designs, which he laid upon the table between the

Which of the three followed the designs most carefully it would be difficult to tell, but it is certain that not

one of the three found for the moment anything to say. Years of training in a drawingroom came at length to

Katharine's help, and she said something suitable, at the same moment withdrawing her hand from the table

because she perceived that it trembled. William agreed effusively; Denham corroborated him, speaking in

rather highpitched tones; they thrust aside the plans, and drew nearer to the fireplace.

"But I'm just leaving London for goodI've taken that cottage I was telling you about." The announcement

"Indeed?that's sad. . . . You must give me your address. But you won't cut yourself off altogether,

William showed such visible signs of floundering that Katharine collected herself and asked:

In answering her, Denham turned and looked at her. As their eyes met, she realized for the first time that she

was talking to Ralph Denham, and she remembered, without recalling any details, that she had been speaking

of him quite lately, and that she had reason to think ill of him. What Mary had said she could not remember,

but she felt that there was a mass of knowledge in her mind which she had not had time to

examineknowledge now lying on the far side of a gulf. But her agitation flashed the queerest lights upon

her past. She must get through the matter in hand, and then think it out in quiet. She bent her mind to follow

what Ralph was saying. He was telling her that he had taken a cottage in Norfolk, and she was saying that she

knew, or did not know, that particular neighborhood. But after a moment's attention her mind flew to Rodney,

and she had an unusual, indeed unprecedented, sense that they were in touch and shared each other's

thoughts. If only Ralph were not there, she would at once give way to her desire to take William's hand, then

to bend his head upon her shoulder, for this was what she wanted to do more than anything at the moment,

unless, indeed, she wished more than anything to be alone yes, that was what she wanted. She was sick to

death of these discussions; she shivered at the effort to reveal her feelings. She had forgotten to answer.

"But what will you find to do in the country?" she asked at random, striking into a conversation which she

had only half heard, in such a way as to make both Rodney and Denham look at her with a little surprise. But

directly she took up the conversation, it was William's turn to fall silent. He at once forgot to listen to what

they were saying, although he interposed nervously at intervals, "Yes, yes, yes." As the minutes passed,

Ralph's presence became more and more intolerable to him, since there was so much that he must say to

Katharine; the moment he could not talk to her, terrible doubts, unanswerable questions accumulated, which

he must lay before Katharine, for she alone could help him now. Unless he could see her alone, it would be

impossible for him ever to sleep, or to know what he had said in a moment of madness, which was not

altogether mad, or was it mad? He nodded his head, and said, nervously, "Yes, yes," and looked at Katharine,

and thought how beautiful she looked; there was no one in the world that he admired more. There was an

emotion in her face which lent it an expression he had never seen there. Then, as he was turning over means

by which he could speak to her alone, she rose, and he was taken by surprise, for he had counted on the fact

that she would outstay Denham. His only chance, then, of saying something to her in private, was to take her

downstairs and walk with her to the street. While he hesitated, however, overcome with the difficulty of

putting one simple thought into words when all his thoughts were scattered about, and all were too strong for

utterance, he was struck silent by something that was still more unexpected. Denham got up from his chair,

And before William could see any way of detaining himor would it be better to detain Katharine?he had

taken his hat, stick, and was holding the door open for Katharine to pass out. The most that William could do

was to stand at the head of the stairs and say goodnight. He could not offer to go with them. He could not

insist that she should stay. He watched her descend, rather slowly, owing to the dusk of the staircase, and he

had a last sight of Denham's head and of Katharine's head near together, against the panels, when suddenly a

pang of acute jealousy overcame him, and had he not remained conscious of the slippers upon his feet, he

would have run after them or cried out. As it was he could not move from the spot. At the turn of the staircase

Katharine turned to look back, trusting to this last glance to seal their compact of good friendship. Instead of

returning her silent greeting, William grinned back at her a cold stare of sarcasm or of rage.

She stopped dead for a moment, and then descended slowly into the court. She looked to the right and to the

left, and once up into the sky. She was only conscious of Denham as a block upon her thoughts. She

measured the distance that must be traversed before she would be alone. But when they came to the Strand no

Aware of her preoccupation, or absorbed in his own thoughts, Ralph said nothing further; and in silence they

walked some distance along the Strand. Ralph was doing his best to put his thoughts into such order that one

came before the rest, and the determination that when he spoke he should speak worthily, made him put off

the moment of speaking till he had found the exact words and even the place that best suited him. The Strand

was too busy. There was too much risk, also, of finding an empty cab. Without a word of explanation he

turned to the left, down one of the side streets leading to the river. On no account must they part until

something of the very greatest importance had happened. He knew perfectly well what he wished to say, and

had arranged not only the substance, but the order in which he was to say it. Now, however, that he was alone

with her, not only did he find the difficulty of speaking almost insurmountable, but he was aware that he was

angry with her for thus disturbing him, and casting, as it was so easy for a person of her advantages to do,

these phantoms and pitfalls across his path. He was determined that he would question her as severely as he

would question himself; and make them both, once and for all, either justify her dominance or renounce it.

But the longer they walked thus alone, the more he was disturbed by the sense of her actual presence. Her

skirt blew; the feathers in her hat waved; sometimes he saw her a step or two ahead of him, or had to wait for

The silence was prolonged, and at length drew her attention to him. First she was annoyed that there was no

cab to free her from his company; then she recalled vaguely something that Mary had said to make her think

ill of him; she could not remember what, but the recollection, combined with his masterful wayswhy did

he walk so fast down this side street?made her more and more conscious of a person of marked, though

disagreeable, force by her side. She stopped and, looking round her for a cab, sighted one in the distance. He

"Should you mind if we walked a little farther?" he asked. "There's something I want to say to you."

"Very well," she replied, guessing that his request had something to do with Mary Datchet.

"It's quieter by the river," he said, and instantly he crossed over. "I want to ask you merely this," he began.

But he paused so long that she could see his head against the sky; the slope of his thin cheek and his large,

strong nose were clearly marked against it. While he paused, words that were quite different from those he

"I've made you my standard ever since I saw you. I've dreamt about you; I've thought of nothing but you; you

His words, and the queer strained voice in which he spoke them, made it appear as if he addressed some

"And now things have come to such a pass that, unless I can speak to you openly, I believe I shall go mad. I

think of you as the most beautiful, the truest thing in the world," he continued, filled with a sense of

exaltation, and feeling that he had no need now to choose his words with pedantic accuracy, for what he

"I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river; to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything.

She had heard him so far with a feeling that she had dropped some material word which made sense of the

rest. She could hear no more of this unintelligible rambling without checking him. She felt that she was

"I mean every word I say," he replied, emphatically. He turned his head towards her. She recovered the words

she was searching for while he spoke. "Ralph Denham is in love with you." They came back to her in Mary

He made a movement as if he were surprised or taken aback, but answered in a moment:

"I did though. It was the day I saw you at Lincoln," he continued. "I had meant to ask her to marry me, and

then I looked out of the window and saw you. After that I didn't want to ask any one to marry me. But I did it;

and she knew I was lying, and refused me. I thought then, and still think, that she cares for me. I behaved

"No," said Katharine, "I should hope not. There's no defence that I can think of. If any conduct is wrong, that

is." She spoke with an energy that was directed even more against herself than against him. "It seems to me,"

she continued, with the same energy, "that people are bound to be honest. There's no excuse for such

behavior." She could now see plainly before her eyes the expression on Mary Datchet's face.

As if obeying a common instinct, they both stopped and, bending slightly over the balustrade of the river,

"You say that we've got to be honest," Ralph began. "Very well. I will try to tell you the facts; but I warn you,

you'll think me mad. It's a fact, though, that since I first saw you four or five months ago I have made you, in

an utterly absurd way, I expect, my ideal. I'm almost ashamed to tell you what lengths I've gone to. It's

become the thing that matters most in my life." He checked himself. "Without knowing you, except that

you're beautiful, and all that, I've come to believe that we're in some sort of agreement; that we're after

something together; that we see something. . . . I've got into the habit of imagining you; I'm always thinking

what you'd say or do; I walk along the street talking to you; I dream of you. It's merely a bad habit, a

schoolboy habit, daydreaming; it's a common experience; half one's friends do the same; well, those are the

"If you were to know me you would feel none of this," she said. "We don't know each otherwe've always

beeninterrupted. . . . Were you going to tell me this that day my aunts came?" she asked, recollecting the

"I deny that I should cease to feel this if I knew you," he went on. "I should feel it more reasonablythat's

all. I shouldn't talk the kind of nonsense I've talked tonight. . . . But it wasn't nonsense. It was the truth," he

said doggedly. "It's the important thing. You can force me to talk as if this feeling for you were an

hallucination, but all our feelings are that. The best of them are half illusions. Still," he added, as if arguing to

himself, "if it weren't as real a feeling as I'm capable of, I shouldn't be changing my life on your account."

"But I don't know you or your circumstances," she said at last, as he remained silent.

He controlled his wish to ask her to explain herself, and much to his pleasure she went on, appearing to

"I thought that you criticized meperhaps disliked me. I thought of you as a person who judges"

He told her in an orderly way, betokening careful preparation, all that he had meant to say at first; how he

stood with regard to his brothers and sisters; what his mother had said, and his sister Joan had refrained from

saying; exactly how many pounds stood in his name at the bank; what prospect his brother had of earning a

livelihood in America; how much of their income went on rent, and other details known to him by heart. She

listened to all this, so that she could have passed an examination in it by the time Waterloo Bridge was in

sight; and yet she was no more listening to it than she was counting the pavingstones at her feet. She was

feeling happier than she had felt in her life. If Denham could have seen how visibly books of algebraic

symbols, pages all speckled with dots and dashes and twisted bars, came before her eyes as they trod the

Embankment, his secret joy in her attention might have been dispersed. She went on, saying, "Yes, I see. . . .

But how would that help you? . . . Your brother has passed his examination?" so sensibly, that he had

constantly to keep his brain in check; and all the time she was in fancy looking up through a telescope at

white shadowcleft disks which were other worlds, until she felt herself possessed of two bodies, one

walking by the river with Denham, the other concentrated to a silver globe aloft in the fine blue space above

the scum of vapors that was covering the visible world. She looked at the sky once, and saw that no star was

keen enough to pierce the flight of watery clouds now coursing rapidly before the west wind. She looked

down hurriedly again. There was no reason, she assured herself, for this feeling of happiness; she was not

free; she was not alone; she was still bound to earth by a million fibres; every step took her nearer home.

Nevertheless, she exulted as she had never exulted before. The air was fresher, the lights more distinct, the

cold stone of the balustrade colder and harder, when by chance or purpose she struck her hand against it. No

feeling of annoyance with Denham remained; he certainly did not hinder any flight she might choose to

make, whether in the direction of the sky or of her home; but that her condition was due to him, or to

They were now within sight of the stream of cabs and omnibuses crossing to and from the Surrey side of the

river; the sound of the traffic, the hooting of motorhorns, and the light chime of trambells sounded more

and more distinctly, and, with the increase of noise, they both became silent. With a common instinct they

slackened their pace, as if to lengthen the time of semiprivacy allowed them. To Ralph, the pleasure of these

last yards of the walk with Katharine was so great that he could not look beyond the present moment to the

time when she should have left him. He had no wish to use the last moments of their companionship in

adding fresh words to what he had already said. Since they had stopped talking, she had become to him not so

much a real person, as the very woman he dreamt of; but his solitary dreams had never produced any such

keenness of sensation as that which he felt in her presence. He himself was also strangely transfigured. He

had complete mastery of all his faculties. For the first time he was in possession of his full powers. The vistas

which opened before him seemed to have no perceptible end. But the mood had none of the restlessness or

feverish desire to add one delight to another which had hitherto marked, and somewhat spoilt, the most

rapturous of his imaginings. It was a mood that took such cleareyed account of the conditions of human life

that he was not disturbed in the least by the gliding presence of a taxicab, and without agitation he perceived

that Katharine was conscious of it also, and turned her head in that direction. Their halting steps

acknowledged the desirability of engaging the cab; and they stopped simultaneously, and signed to it.

"Then you will let me know your decision as soon as you can?" he asked, with his hand on the door.

She hesitated for a moment. She could not immediately recall what the question was that she had to decide.

"I will write," she said vaguely. "No," she added, in a second, bethinking her of the difficulties of writing

anything decided upon a question to which she had paid no attention, "I don't see how to manage it."

She stood looking at Denham, considering and hesitating, with her foot upon the step. He guessed her

difficulties; he knew in a second that she had heard nothing; he knew everything that she felt.

"There's only one place to discuss things satisfactorily that I know of," he said quickly; "that's Kew."

"Kew," he repeated, with immense decision. He shut the door and gave her address to the driver. She

instantly was conveyed away from him, and her cab joined the knotted stream of vehicles, each marked by a

light, and indistinguishable one from the other. He stood watching for a moment, and then, as if swept by

some fierce impulse, from the spot where they had stood, he turned, crossed the road at a rapid pace, and

He walked on upon the impetus of this last mood of almost supernatural exaltation until he reached a narrow

street, at this hour empty of traffic and passengers. Here, whether it was the shops with their shuttered

windows, the smooth and silvered curve of the wood pavement, or a natural ebb of feeling, his exaltation

slowly oozed and deserted him. He was now conscious of the loss that follows any revelation; he had lost

something in speaking to Katharine, for, after all, was the Katharine whom he loved the same as the real

Katharine? She had transcended her entirely at moments; her skirt had blown, her feather waved, her voice

spoken; yes, but how terrible sometimes the pause between the voice of one's dreams and the voice that

comes from the object of one's dreams! He felt a mixture of disgust and pity at the figure cut by human

beings when they try to carry out, in practice, what they have the power to conceive. How small both he and

Katharine had appeared when they issued from the cloud of thought that enveloped them! He recalled the

small, inexpressive, commonplace words in which they had tried to communicate with each other; he

repeated them over to himself. By repeating Katharine's words, he came in a few moments to such a sense of

her presence that he worshipped her more than ever. But she was engaged to be married, he remembered with

a start. The strength of his feeling was revealed to him instantly, and he gave himself up to an irresistible rage

and sense of frustration. The image of Rodney came before him with every circumstance of folly and

indignity. That little pinkcheeked dancingmaster to marry Katharine? that gibbering ass with the face of a

monkey on an organ? that posing, vain, fantastical fop? with his tragedies and his comedies, his innumerable

spites and prides and pettinesses? Lord! marry Rodney! She must be as great a fool as he was. His bitterness

took possession of him, and as he sat in the corner of the underground carriage, he looked as stark an image

of unapproachable severity as could be imagined. Directly he reached home he sat down at his table, and

began to write Katharine a long, wild, mad letter, begging her for both their sakes to break with Rodney,

imploring her not to do what would destroy for ever the one beauty, the one truth, the one hope; not to be a

traitor, not to be a deserter, for if she wereand he wound up with a quiet and brief assertion that, whatever

she did or left undone, he would believe to be the best, and accept from her with gratitude. He covered sheet

after sheet, and heard the early carts starting for London before he went to bed.

The first signs of spring, even such as make themselves felt towards the middle of February, not only produce

little white and violet flowers in the more sheltered corners of woods and gardens, but bring to birth thoughts

and desires comparable to those faintly colored and sweetly scented petals in the minds of men and women.

Lives frozen by age, so far as the present is concerned, to a hard surface, which neither reflects nor yields, at

this season become soft and fluid, reflecting the shapes and colors of the present, as well as the shapes and

colors of the past. In the case of Mrs. Hilbery, these early spring days were chiefly upsetting inasmuch as

they caused a general quickening of her emotional powers, which, as far as the past was concerned, had never

suffered much diminution. But in the spring her desire for expression invariably increased. She was haunted

by the ghosts of phrases. She gave herself up to a sensual delight in the combinations of words. She sought

them in the pages of her favorite authors. She made them for herself on scraps of paper, and rolled them on

her tongue when there seemed no occasion for such eloquence. She was upheld in these excursions by the

certainty that no language could outdo the splendor of her father's memory, and although her efforts did not

notably further the end of his biography, she was under the impression of living more in his shade at such

times than at others. No one can escape the power of language, let alone those of English birth brought up

from childhood, as Mrs. Hilbery had been, to disport themselves now in the Saxon plainness, now in the

Latin splendor of the tongue, and stored with memories, as she was, of old poets exuberating in an infinity of

vocables. Even Katharine was slightly affected against her better judgment by her mother's enthusiasm. Not

that her judgment could altogether acquiesce in the necessity for a study of Shakespeare's sonnets as a

preliminary to the fifth chapter of her grandfather's biography. Beginning with a perfectly frivolous jest, Mrs.

Hilbery had evolved a theory that Anne Hathaway had a way, among other things, of writing Shakespeare's

sonnets; the idea, struck out to enliven a party of professors, who forwarded a number of privately printed

manuals within the next few days for her instruction, had submerged her in a flood of Elizabethan literature;

she had come half to believe in her joke, which was, she said, at least as good as other people's facts, and all

her fancy for the time being centered upon StratfordonAvon. She had a plan, she told Katharine, when,

rather later than usual, Katharine came into the room the morning after her walk by the river, for visiting

Shakespeare's tomb. Any fact about the poet had become, for the moment, of far greater interest to her than

the immediate present, and the certainty that there was existing in England a spot of ground where

Shakespeare had undoubtedly stood, where his very bones lay directly beneath one's feet, was so absorbing to

her on this particular occasion that she greeted her daughter with the exclamation:

The question, for the moment, seemed to Katharine to have reference to Ralph Denham.

"On his way to Blackfriars, I mean," Mrs. Hilbery continued, "for you know the latest discovery is that he

"Which is a proof that he wasn't as poor as they've sometimes said. I should like to think that he had enough,

Then, perceiving her daughter's expression of perplexity, Mrs. Hilbery burst out laughing.

"My dear, I'm not talking about YOUR William, though that's another reason for liking him. I'm talking, I'm

thinking, I'm dreaming of MY WilliamWilliam Shakespeare, of course. Isn't it odd," she mused, standing

at the window and tapping gently upon the pane, "that for all one can see, that dear old thing in the blue

bonnet, crossing the road with her basket on her arm, has never heard that there was such a person? Yet it all

goes on: lawyers hurrying to their work, cabmen squabbling for their fares, little boys rolling their hoops,

little girls throwing bread to the gulls, as if there weren't a Shakespeare in the world. I should like to stand at

Katharine sat down at her table and opened a long dusty envelope. As Shelley was mentioned in the course of

the letter as if he were alive, it had, of course, considerable value. Her immediate task was to decide whether

the whole letter should be printed, or only the paragraph which mentioned Shelley's name, and she reached

out for a pen and held it in readiness to do justice upon the sheet. Her pen, however, remained in the air.

Almost surreptitiously she slipped a clean sheet in front of her, and her hand, descending, began drawing

square boxes halved and quartered by straight lines, and then circles which underwent the same process of

"Katharine! I've hit upon a brilliant idea!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed"to lay out, say, a hundred pounds or so

on copies of Shakespeare, and give them to working men. Some of your clever friends who get up meetings

might help us, Katharine. And that might lead to a playhouse, where we could all take parts. You'd be

Rosalindbut you've a dash of the old nurse in you. Your father's Hamlet, come to years of discretion; and

I'mwell, I'm a bit of them all; I'm quite a large bit of the fool, but the fools in Shakespeare say all the

clever things. Now who shall William be? A hero? Hotspur? Henry the Fifth? No, William's got a touch of

Hamlet in him, too. I can fancy that William talks to himself when he's alone. Ah, Katharine, you must say

very beautiful things when you're together!" she added wistfully, with a glance at her daughter, who had told

"Oh, we talk a lot of nonsense," said Katharine, hiding her slip of paper as her mother stood by her, and

"It won't seem to you nonsense in ten years' time," said Mrs. Hilbery. "Believe me, Katharine, you'll look

back on these days afterwards; you'll remember all the silly things you've said; and you'll find that your life

has been built on them. The best of life is built on what we say when we're in love. It isn't nonsense,

Katharine was on the point of interrupting her mother, and then she was on the point of confiding in her.

They came strangely close together sometimes. But, while she hesitated and sought for words not too direct,

her mother had recourse to Shakespeare, and turned page after page, set upon finding some quotation which

said all this about love far, far better than she could. Accordingly, Katharine did nothing but scrub one of her

circles an intense black with her pencil, in the midst of which process the telephonebell rang, and she left

When she returned, Mrs. Hilbery had found not the passage she wanted, but another of exquisite beauty as

"AhI half wish I'd called you Mary, but it wouldn't have gone with Hilbery, and it wouldn't have gone with

Rodney. Now this isn't the passage I wanted. (I never can find what I want.) But it's spring; it's the daffodils;

She was cut short in her quotation by another imperative telephonebell. Once more Katharine left the room.

"My dear child, how odious the triumphs of science are!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed on her return. "They'll be

"I'll forgive William anything, for I'm certain that there aren't any Williams in the moon. I hope he's coming

She swept her hand over the faded sheet, and drew herself up squarely to the table as if she refused to waste

time any longer. The gesture was not lost upon her mother. It hinted at the existence of something stern and

unapproachable in her daughter's character, which struck chill upon her, as the sight of poverty, or

drunkenness, or the logic with which Mr. Hilbery sometimes thought good to demolish her certainty of an

approaching millennium struck chill upon her. She went back to her own table, and putting on her spectacles

with a curious expression of quiet humility, addressed herself for the first time that morning to the task before

her. The shock with an unsympathetic world had a sobering effect on her. For once, her industry surpassed

her daughter's. Katharine could not reduce the world to that particular perspective in which Harriet

Martineau, for instance, was a figure of solid importance, and possessed of a genuine relationship to this

figure or to that date. Singularly enough, the sharp call of the telephonebell still echoed in her ear, and her

body and mind were in a state of tension, as if, at any moment, she might hear another summons of greater

interest to her than the whole of the nineteenth century. She did not clearly realize what this call was to be;

but when the ears have got into the habit of listening, they go on listening involuntarily, and thus Katharine

spent the greater part of the morning in listening to a variety of sounds in the back streets of Chelsea. For the

first time in her life, probably, she wished that Mrs. Hilbery would not keep so closely to her work. A

quotation from Shakespeare would not have come amiss. Now and again she heard a sigh from her mother's

table, but that was the only proof she gave of her existence, and Katharine did not think of connecting it with

the square aspect of her own position at the table, or, perhaps, she would have thrown her pen down and told

her mother the reason of her restlessness. The only writing she managed to accomplish in the course of the

morning was one letter, addressed to her cousin, Cassandra Otwaya rambling letter, long, affectionate,

playful and commanding all at once. She bade Cassandra put her creatures in the charge of a groom, and

come to them for a week or so. They would go and hear some music together. Cassandra's dislike of rational

society, she said, was an affectation fast hardening into a prejudice, which would, in the long run, isolate her

from all interesting people and pursuits. She was finishing the sheet when the sound she was anticipating all

the time actually struck upon her ears. She jumped up hastily, and slammed the door with a sharpness which

made Mrs. Hilbery start. Where was Katharine off to? In her preoccupied state she had not heard the bell.

The alcove on the stairs, in which the telephone was placed, was screened for privacy by a curtain of purple

velvet. It was a pocket for superfluous possessions, such as exist in most houses which harbor the wreckage

of three generations. Prints of greatuncles, famed for their prowess in the East, hung above Chinese teapots,

whose sides were riveted by little gold stitches, and the precious teapots, again, stood upon bookcases

containing the complete works of William Cowper and Sir Walter Scott. The thread of sound, issuing from

the telephone, was always colored by the surroundings which received it, so it seemed to Katharine. Whose

"Whose voice?" she asked herself, hearing a man inquire, with great determination, for her number. The

unfamiliar voice now asked for Miss Hilbery. Out of all the welter of voices which crowd round the far end

of the telephone, out of the enormous range of possibilities, whose voice, what possibility, was this? A pause

"I've looked out the train. . . . Early on Saturday afternoon would suit me best. . . . I'm Ralph Denham. . . . But

With more than the usual sense of being impinged upon the point of a bayonet, Katharine replied:

She dropped the machine, and looked fixedly at the print of the greatuncle who had not ceased to gaze, with

an air of amiable authority, into a world which, as yet, beheld no symptoms of the Indian Mutiny. And yet,

gently swinging against the wall, within the black tube, was a voice which recked nothing of Uncle James, of

China teapots, or of red velvet curtains. She watched the oscillation of the tube, and at the same moment

became conscious of the individuality of the house in which she stood; she heard the soft domestic sounds of

regular existence upon staircases and floors above her head, and movements through the wall in the house

next door. She had no very clear vision of Denham himself, when she lifted the telephone to her lips and

replied that she thought Saturday would suit her. She hoped that he would not say goodbye at once,

although she felt no particular anxiety to attend to what he was saying, and began, even while he spoke, to

think of her own upper room, with its books, its papers pressed between the leaves of dictionaries, and the

table that could be cleared for work. She replaced the instrument, thoughtfully; her restlessness was assuaged;

she finished her letter to Cassandra without difficulty, addressed the envelope, and fixed the stamp with her

A bunch of anemones caught Mrs. Hilbery's eye when they had finished luncheon. The blue and purple and

white of the bowl, standing in a pool of variegated light on a polished Chippendale table in the

"Who is lying ill in bed, Katharine?" she demanded. "Which of our friends wants cheering up? Who feels that

they've been forgotten and passed over, and that nobody wants them? Whose water rates are overdue, and the

cook leaving in a temper without waiting for her wages? There was somebody I know" she concluded, but

for the moment the name of this desirable acquaintance escaped her. The best representative of the forlorn

company whose day would be brightened by a bunch of anemones was, in Katharine's opinion, the widow of

a general living in the Cromwell Road. In default of the actually destitute and starving, whom she would

much have preferred, Mrs. Hilbery was forced to acknowledge her claims, for though in comfortable

circumstances, she was extremely dull, unattractive, connected in some oblique fashion with literature, and

It happened that Mrs. Hilbery had an engagement elsewhere, so that the task of taking the flowers to the

Cromwell Road fell upon Katharine. She took her letter to Cassandra with her, meaning to post it in the first

pillarbox she came to. When, however, she was fairly out of doors, and constantly invited by pillarboxes

and postoffices to slip her envelope down their scarlet throats, she forbore. She made absurd excuses, as that

she did not wish to cross the road, or that she was certain to pass another postoffice in a more central

position a little farther on. The longer she held the letter in her hand, however, the more persistently certain

questions pressed upon her, as if from a collection of voices in the air. These invisible people wished to be

informed whether she was engaged to William Rodney, or was the engagement broken off? Was it right, they

asked, to invite Cassandra for a visit, and was William Rodney in love with her, or likely to fall in love? Then

the questioners paused for a moment, and resumed as if another side of the problem had just come to their

notice. What did Ralph Denham mean by what he said to you last night? Do you consider that he is in love

with you? Is it right to consent to a solitary walk with him, and what advice are you going to give him about

his future? Has William Rodney cause to be jealous of your conduct, and what do you propose to do about

Mary Datchet? What are you going to do? What does honor require you to do? they repeated.

"Good Heavens!" Katharine exclaimed, after listening to all these remarks, "I suppose I ought to make up my

But the debate was a formal skirmishing, a pastime to gain breathing space. Like all people brought up in a

tradition, Katharine was able, within ten minutes or so, to reduce any moral difficulty to its traditional shape

and solve it by the traditional answers. The book of wisdom lay open, if not upon her mother's knee, upon the

knees of many uncles and aunts. She had only to consult them, and they would at once turn to the right page

and read out an answer exactly suited to one in her position. The rules which should govern the behavior of

an unmarried woman are written in red ink, graved upon marble, if, by some freak of nature, it should fall out

that the unmarried woman has not the same writing scored upon her heart. She was ready to believe that some

people are fortunate enough to reject, accept, resign, or lay down their lives at the bidding of traditional

authority; she could envy them; but in her case the questions became phantoms directly she tried seriously to

find an answer, which proved that the traditional answer would be of no use to her individually. Yet it had

served so many people, she thought, glancing at the rows of houses on either side of her, where families,

whose incomes must be between a thousand and fifteenhundred a year lived, and kept, perhaps, three

servants, and draped their windows with curtains which were always thick and generally dirty, and must, she

thought, since you could only see a lookingglass gleaming above a sideboard on which a dish of apples was

set, keep the room inside very dark. But she turned her head away, observing that this was not a method of

The only truth which she could discover was the truth of what she herself felta frail beam when compared

with the broad illumination shed by the eyes of all the people who are in agreement to see together; but

having rejected the visionary voices, she had no choice but to make this her guide through the dark masses

which confronted her. She tried to follow her beam, with an expression upon her face which would have

made any passerby think her reprehensibly and almost ridiculously detached from the surrounding scene.

One would have felt alarmed lest this young and striking woman were about to do something eccentric. But

her beauty saved her from the worst fate that can befall a pedestrian; people looked at her, but they did not

laugh. To seek a true feeling among the chaos of the unfeelings or halffeelings of life, to recognize it when

found, and to accept the consequences of the discovery, draws lines upon the smoothest brow, while it

quickens the light of the eyes; it is a pursuit which is alternately bewildering, debasing, and exalting, and, as

Katharine speedily found, her discoveries gave her equal cause for surprise, shame, and intense anxiety.

Much depended, as usual, upon the interpretation of the word love; which word came up again and again,

whether she considered Rodney, Denham, Mary Datchet, or herself; and in each case it seemed to stand for

something different, and yet for something unmistakable and something not to be passed by. For the more she

looked into the confusion of lives which, instead of running parallel, had suddenly intersected each other, the

more distinctly she seemed to convince herself that there was no other light on them than was shed by this

strange illumination, and no other path save the one upon which it threw its beams. Her blindness in the case

of Rodney, her attempt to match his true feeling with her false feeling, was a failure never to be sufficiently

condemned; indeed, she could only pay it the tribute of leaving it a black and naked landmark unburied by

With this to humiliate there was much to exalt. She thought of three different scenes; she thought of Mary

sitting upright and saying, "I'm in loveI'm in love"; she thought of Rodney losing his self consciousness

among the dead leaves, and speaking with the abandonment of a child; she thought of Denham leaning upon

the stone parapet and talking to the distant sky, so that she thought him mad. Her mind, passing from Mary to

Denham, from William to Cassandra, and from Denham to herselfif, as she rather doubted, Denham's state

of mind was connected with herselfseemed to be tracing out the lines of some symmetrical pattern, some

arrangement of life, which invested, if not herself, at least the others, not only with interest, but with a kind of

tragic beauty. She had a fantastic picture of them upholding splendid palaces upon their bent backs. They

were the lanternbearers, whose lights, scattered among the crowd, wove a pattern, dissolving, joining,

meeting again in combination. Half forming such conceptions as these in her rapid walk along the dreary

streets of South Kensington, she determined that, whatever else might be obscure, she must further the

objects of Mary, Denham, William, and Cassandra. The way was not apparent. No course of action seemed to

her indubitably right. All she achieved by her thinking was the conviction that, in such a cause, no risk was

too great; and that, far from making any rules for herself or others, she would let difficulties accumulate

unsolved, situations widen their jaws unsatiated, while she maintained a position of absolute and fearless

Read in the light of this exaltation, there was a new meaning in the words which her mother had penciled

upon the card attached to the bunch of anemones. The door of the house in the Cromwell Road opened;

gloomy vistas of passage and staircase were revealed; such light as there was seemed to be concentrated upon

a silver salver of visitingcards, whose black borders suggested that the widow's friends had all suffered the

same bereavement. The parlormaid could hardly be expected to fathom the meaning of the grave tone in

which the young lady proffered the flowers, with Mrs. Hilbery's love; and the door shut upon the offering.

The sight of a face, the slam of a door, are both rather destructive of exaltation in the abstract; and, as she

walked back to Chelsea, Katharine had her doubts whether anything would come of her resolves. If you

cannot make sure of people, however, you can hold fairly fast to figures, and in some way or other her

thought about such problems as she was wont to consider worked in happily with her mood as to her friends'

On the ancient Dutch chest in the hall she perceived one or two hats, coats, and walkingsticks, and the

sound of voices reached her as she stood outside the drawingroom door. Her mother gave a little cry as she

came in; a cry which conveyed to Katharine the fact that she was late, that the teacups and milkjugs were in

a conspiracy of disobedience, and that she must immediately take her place at the head of the table and pour

out tea for the guests. Augustus Pelham, the diarist, liked a calm atmosphere in which to tell his stories; he

liked attention; he liked to elicit little facts, little stories, about the past and the great dead, from such

distinguished characters as Mrs. Hilbery for the nourishment of his diary, for whose sake he frequented

teatables and ate yearly an enormous quantity of buttered toast. He, therefore, welcomed Katharine with

relief, and she had merely to shake hands with Rodney and to greet the American lady who had come to be

shown the relics, before the talk started again on the broad lines of reminiscence and discussion which were

Yet, even with this thick veil between them, she could not help looking at Rodney, as if she could detect what

had happened to him since they met. It was in vain. His clothes, even the white slip, the pearl in his tie,

seemed to intercept her quick glance, and to proclaim the futility of such inquiries of a discreet, urbane

gentleman, who balanced his cup of tea and poised a slice of bread and butter on the edge of the saucer. He

would not meet her eye, but that could be accounted for by his activity in serving and helping, and the polite

It was certainly a sight to daunt any one coming in with a head full of theories about love. The voices of the

invisible questioners were reinforced by the scene round the table, and sounded with a tremendous

selfconfidence, as if they had behind them the common sense of twenty generations, together with the

immediate approval of Mr. Augustus Pelham, Mrs. Vermont Bankes, William Rodney, and, possibly, Mrs.

Hilbery herself. Katharine set her teeth, not entirely in the metaphorical sense, for her hand, obeying the

impulse towards definite action, laid firmly upon the table beside her an envelope which she had been

grasping all this time in complete forgetfulness. The address was uppermost, and a moment later she saw

William's eye rest upon it as he rose to fulfil some duty with a plate. His expression instantly changed. He did

what he was on the point of doing, and then looked at Katharine with a look which revealed enough of his

confusion to show her that he was not entirely represented by his appearance. In a minute or two he proved

himself at a loss with Mrs. Vermont Bankes, and Mrs. Hilbery, aware of the silence with her usual quickness,

suggested that, perhaps, it was now time that Mrs. Bankes should be shown "our things."

Katharine accordingly rose, and led the way to the little inner room with the pictures and the books. Mrs.

She turned on the lights, and began directly in her low, pleasant voice: "This table is my grandfather's

writingtable. Most of the later poems were written at it. And this is his penthe last pen he ever used." She

took it in her hand and paused for the right number of seconds. "Here," she continued, "is the original

manuscript of the 'Ode to Winter.' The early manuscripts are far less corrected than the later ones, as you will

see directly. . . . Oh, do take it yourself," she added, as Mrs. Bankes asked, in an awestruck tone of voice, for

"You are wonderfully like your grandfather, Miss Hilbery," the American lady observed, gazing from

Katharine to the portrait, "especially about the eyes. Come, now, I expect she writes poetry herself, doesn't

she?" she asked in a jocular tone, turning to William. "Quite one's ideal of a poet, is it not, Mr. Rodney? I

cannot tell you what a privilege I feel it to be standing just here with the poet's granddaughter. You must

know we think a great deal of your grandfather in America, Miss Hilbery. We have societies for reading him

aloud. What! His very own slippers!" Laying aside the manuscript, she hastily grasped the old shoes, and

While Katharine went on steadily with her duties as showwoman, Rodney examined intently a row of little

drawings which he knew by heart already. His disordered state of mind made it necessary for him to take

advantage of these little respites, as if he had been out in a high wind and must straighten his dress in the first

shelter he reached. His calm was only superficial, as he knew too well; it did not exist much below the

On getting out of bed that morning he had fully made up his mind to ignore what had been said the night

before; he had been convinced, by the sight of Denham, that his love for Katharine was passionate, and when

he addressed her early that morning on the telephone, he had meant his cheerful but authoritative tones to

convey to her the fact that, after a night of madness, they were as indissolubly engaged as ever. But when he

reached his office his torments began. He found a letter from Cassandra waiting for him. She had read his

play, and had taken the very first opportunity to write and tell him what she thought of it. She knew, she

wrote, that her praise meant absolutely nothing; but still, she had sat up all night; she thought this, that, and

the other; she was full of enthusiasm most elaborately scratched out in places, but enough was written plain to

gratify William's vanity exceedingly. She was quite intelligent enough to say the right things, or, even more

charmingly, to hint at them. In other ways, too, it was a very charming letter. She told him about her music,

and about a Suffrage meeting to which Henry had taken her, and she asserted, half seriously, that she had

learnt the Greek alphabet, and found it "fascinating." The word was underlined. Had she laughed when she

drew that line? Was she ever serious? Didn't the letter show the most engaging compound of enthusiasm and

spirit and whimsicality, all tapering into a flame of girlish freakishness, which flitted, for the rest of the

morning, as a willo'thewisp, across Rodney's landscape. He could not resist beginning an answer to her

there and then. He found it particularly delightful to shape a style which should express the bowing and

curtsying, advancing and retreating, which are characteristic of one of the many million partnerships of men

and women. Katharine never trod that particular measure, he could not help reflecting;

KatharineCassandra; CassandraKatharinethey alternated in his consciousness all day long. It was all

very well to dress oneself carefully, compose one's face, and start off punctually at halfpast four to a

teaparty in Cheyne Walk, but Heaven only knew what would come of it all, and when Katharine, after

sitting silent with her usual immobility, wantonly drew from her pocket and slapped down on the table

beneath his eyes a letter addressed to Cassandra herself, his composure deserted him. What did she mean by

He looked up sharply from his row of little pictures. Katharine was disposing of the American lady in far too

arbitrary a fashion. Surely the victim herself must see how foolish her enthusiasms appeared in the eyes of the

poet's granddaughter. Katharine never made any attempt to spare people's feelings, he reflected; and, being

himself very sensitive to all shades of comfort and discomfort, he cut short the auctioneer's catalog, which

Katharine was reeling off more and more absentmindedly, and took Mrs. Vermont Bankes, with a queer

But within a few minutes the American lady had completed her inspection, and inclining her head in a little

nod of reverential farewell to the poet and his shoes, she was escorted downstairs by Rodney. Katharine

stayed by herself in the little room. The ceremony of ancestorworship had been more than usually

oppressive to her. Moreover, the room was becoming crowded beyond the bounds of order. Only that

morning a heavily insured proofsheet had reached them from a collector in Australia, which recorded a

change of the poet's mind about a very famous phrase, and, therefore, had claims to the honor of glazing and

framing. But was there room for it? Must it be hung on the staircase, or should some other relic give place to

do it honor? Feeling unable to decide the question, Katharine glanced at the portrait of her grandfather, as if

to ask his opinion. The artist who had painted it was now out of fashion, and by dint of showing it to visitors,

Katharine had almost ceased to see anything but a glow of faintly pleasing pink and brown tints, enclosed

within a circular scroll of gilt laurelleaves. The young man who was her grandfather looked vaguely over

her head. The sensual lips were slightly parted, and gave the face an expression of beholding something

lovely or miraculous vanishing or just rising upon the rim of the distance. The expression repeated itself

curiously upon Katharine's face as she gazed up into his. They were the same age, or very nearly so. She

wondered what he was looking for; were there waves beating upon a shore for him, too, she wondered, and

heroes riding through the leafhung forests? For perhaps the first time in her life she thought of him as a

man, young, unhappy, tempestuous, full of desires and faults; for the first time she realized him for herself,

and not from her mother's memory. He might have been her brother, she thought. It seemed to her that they

were akin, with the mysterious kinship of blood which makes it seem possible to interpret the sights which

the eyes of the dead behold so intently, or even to believe that they look with us upon our present joys and

sorrows. He would have understood, she thought, suddenly; and instead of laying her withered flowers upon

his shrine, she brought him her own perplexitiesperhaps a gift of greater value, should the dead be

conscious of gifts, than flowers and incense and adoration. Doubts, questionings, and despondencies she felt,

as she looked up, would be more welcome to him than homage, and he would hold them but a very small

burden if she gave him, also, some share in what she suffered and achieved. The depth of her own pride and

love were not more apparent to her than the sense that the dead asked neither flowers nor regrets, but a share

Rodney found her a moment later sitting beneath her grandfather's portrait. She laid her hand on the seat next

"Come and sit down, William. How glad I was you were here! I felt myself getting ruder and ruder."

"Oh, don't scold meI've had a horrid afternoon." She told him how she had taken the flowers to Mrs.

McCormick, and how South Kensington impressed her as the preserve of officers' widows. She described

how the door had opened, and what gloomy avenues of busts and palmtrees and umbrellas had been

revealed to her. She spoke lightly, and succeeded in putting him at his ease. Indeed, he rapidly became too

much at his ease to persist in a condition of cheerful neutrality. He felt his composure slipping from him.

Katharine made it seem so natural to ask her to help him, or advise him, to say straight out what he had in his

mind. The letter from Cassandra was heavy in his pocket. There was also the letter to Cassandra lying on the

table in the next room. The atmosphere seemed charged with Cassandra. But, unless Katharine began the

subject of her own accord, he could not even hinthe must ignore the whole affair; it was the part of a

gentleman to preserve a bearing that was, as far as he could make it, the bearing of an undoubting lover. At

intervals he sighed deeply. He talked rather more quickly than usual about the possibility that some of the

operas of Mozart would be played in the summer. He had received a notice, he said, and at once produced a

pocketbook stuffed with papers, and began shuffling them in search. He held a thick envelope between his

finger and thumb, as if the notice from the opera company had become in some way inseparably attached to

"A letter from Cassandra?" said Katharine, in the easiest voice in the world, looking over his shoulder. "I've

He handed her the envelope in silence. She took it, extracted the sheets, and read the letter through.

Rodney's face was half turned away, as if in bashfulness. Her view of his profile almost moved her to

"I see no harm," William blurted out, "in helping herwith Greek, for exampleif she really cares for that

"There's no reason why she shouldn't care," said Katharine, consulting the pages once more. "In factah,

here it is'The Greek alphabet is absolutely FASCINATING.' Obviously she does care."

"Well, Greek may be rather a large order. I was thinking chiefly of English. Her criticisms of my play, though

they're too generous, evidently immatureshe can't be more than twentytwo, I suppose? they certainly

show the sort of thing one wants: real feeling for poetry, understanding, not formed, of course, but it's at the

"But if ithumled to a correspondence? I mean, Katharine, I take it, without going into matters which

seem to me a little morbid, I mean," he floundered, "you, from your point of view, feel that there's nothing

disagreeable to you in the notion? If so, you've only to speak, and I never think of it again."

She was surprised by the violence of her desire that he never should think of it again. For an instant it seemed

to her impossible to surrender an intimacy, which might not be the intimacy of love, but was certainly the

intimacy of true friendship, to any woman in the world. Cassandra would never understand himshe was not

good enough for him. The letter seemed to her a letter of flatterya letter addressed to his weakness, which

it made her angry to think was known to another. For he was not weak; he had the rare strength of doing what

"She loves me," he thought. The woman he admired more than any one in the world, loved him, as he had

given up hope that she would ever love him. And now that for the first time he was sure of her love, he

resented it. He felt it as a fetter, an encumbrance, something which made them both, but him in particular,

ridiculous. He was in her power completely, but his eyes were open and he was no longer her slave or her

dupe. He would be her master in future. The instant prolonged itself as Katharine realized the strength of her

desire to speak the words that should keep William for ever, and the baseness of the temptation which

assailed her to make the movement, or speak the word, which he had often begged her for, which she was

At this moment there was a stir in the other room; the voice of Mrs. Hilbery was heard talking of

proofsheets rescued by miraculous providence from butcher's ledgers in Australia; the curtain separating

one room from the other was drawn apart, and Mrs. Hilbery and Augustus Pelham stood in the doorway. Mrs.

Hilbery stopped short. She looked at her daughter, and at the man her daughter was to marry, with her

"The best of all my treasures, Mr. Pelham!" she exclaimed. "Don't move, Katharine. Sit still, William. Mr.

Mr. Pelham looked, smiled, bowed, and, as his hostess had moved on, followed her without a word. The

"As I told you last night," she said, "I think it's your duty, if there's a chance that you care for Cassandra, to

discover what your feeling is for her now. It's your duty to her, as well as to me. But we must tell my mother.

"That is entirely in your hands, of course," said Rodney, with an immediate return to the manner of a formal

Directly he left her she would go to her mother, and explain that the engagement was at an endor it might

"But, Katharine," Rodney began, nervously attempting to stuff Cassandra's sheets back into their envelope;

He crossed his knees in a discomfited silence. By all his codes it was impossible to ask a woman with whom

he had just broken off his engagement to help him to become acquainted with another woman with a view to

his falling in love with her. If it was announced that their engagement was over, a long and complete

separation would inevitably follow; in those circumstances, letters and gifts were returned; after years of

distance the severed couple met, perhaps at an evening party, and touched hands uncomfortably with an

indifferent word or two. He would be cast off completely; he would have to trust to his own resources. He

could never mention Cassandra to Katharine again; for months, and doubtless years, he would never see

Katharine was almost as well aware of his perplexities as he was. She knew in what direction complete

generosity pointed the way; but pride for to remain engaged to Rodney and to cover his experiments hurt

"I'm to give up my freedom for an indefinite time," she thought, "in order that William may see Cassandra

here at his ease. He's not the courage to manage it without my helphe's too much of a coward to tell me

openly what he wants. He hates the notion of a public breach. He wants to keep us both."

When she reached this point, Rodney pocketed the letter and elaborately looked at his watch. Although the

action meant that he resigned Cassandra, for he knew his own incompetence and distrusted himself entirely,

and lost Katharine, for whom his feeling was profound though unsatisfactory, still it appeared to him that

there was nothing else left for him to do. He was forced to go, leaving Katharine free, as he had said, to tell

her mother that the engagement was at an end. But to do what plain duty required of an honorable man, cost

an effort which only a day or two ago would have been inconceivable to him. That a relationship such as he

had glanced at with desire could be possible between him and Katharine, he would have been the first, two

days ago, to deny with indignation. But now his life had changed; his attitude had changed; his feelings were

different; new aims and possibilities had been shown him, and they had an almost irresistible fascination and

force. The training of a life of thirtyfive years had not left him defenceless; he was still master of his

"I leave you, then," he said, standing up and holding out his hand with an effort that left him pale, but lent

"I'm hopeless without your help!" he exclaimed passionately, but withdrew his hand and turned his back.

When he faced her, she thought that she saw him for the first time without disguise.

"It's useless to pretend that I don't understand what you're offering, Katharine. I admit what you say.

Speaking to you perfectly frankly, I believe at this moment that I do love your cousin; there is a chance that,

with your help, I mightbut no," he broke off, "it's impossible, it's wrongI'm infinitely to blame for

"Ah, but can I allow that?" he exclaimed. "It would meanfor we must face it, Katharinethat we let our

engagement stand for the time nominally; in fact, of course, your freedom would be absolute."

"Yes, we should both be free. Let us say that I saw Cassandra once, twice, perhaps, under these conditions;

and then if, as I think certain, the whole thing proves a dream, we tell your mother instantly. Why not tell her

"Why not? It would be over London in ten minutes, besides, she would never even remotely understand."

"Ah, who could be expected to understand?" Rodney groaned; "but it's from your point of view that we must

look at it. It's not only asking too much, it's putting you into a positiona position in which I could not

"We're not brothers and sisters," she said impatiently, "and if we can't decide, who can? I'm not talking

nonsense," she proceeded. "I've done my best to think this out from every point of view, and I've come to the

conclusion that there are risks which have to be taken,though I don't deny that they hurt horribly."

"No I shan't," she said stoutly. "I shall mind a good deal, but I'm prepared for that; I shall get through it,

because you will help me. You'll both help me. In fact, we'll help each other. That's a Christian doctrine, isn't

"It sounds more like Paganism to me," Rodney groaned, as he reviewed the situation into which her Christian

And yet he could not deny that a divine relief possessed him, and that the future, instead of wearing a

leadcolored mask, now blossomed with a thousand varied gaieties and excitements. He was actually to see

Cassandra within a week or perhaps less, and he was more anxious to know the date of her arrival than he

could own even to himself. It seemed base to be so anxious to pluck this fruit of Katharine's unexampled

generosity and of his own contemptible baseness. And yet, though he used these words automatically, they

had now no meaning. He was not debased in his own eyes by what he had done, and as for praising

Katharine, were they not partners, conspirators, people bent upon the same quest together, so that to praise

the pursuit of a common end as an act of generosity was meaningless. He took her hand and pressed it, not in

"We will help each other," he said, repeating her words, seeking her eyes in an enthusiasm of friendship.

Her eyes were grave but dark with sadness as they rested on him. "He's already gone," she thought, "far

awayhe thinks of me no more." And the fancy came to her that, as they sat side by side, hand in hand, she

could hear the earth pouring from above to make a barrier between them, so that, as they sat, they were

separated second by second by an impenetrable wall. The process, which affected her as that of being sealed

away and for ever from all companionship with the person she cared for most, came to an end at last, and by

common consent they unclasped their fingers, Rodney touching hers with his lips, as the curtain parted, and

Mrs. Hilbery peered through the opening with her benevolent and sarcastic expression to ask whether

Katharine could remember was it Tuesday or Wednesday, and did she dine in Westminster?

"Dearest William," she said, pausing, as if she could not resist the pleasure of encroaching for a second upon

this wonderful world of love and confidence and romance. "Dearest children," she added, disappearing with

an impulsive gesture, as if she forced herself to draw the curtain upon a scene which she refused all

At a quarterpast three in the afternoon of the following Saturday Ralph Denham sat on the bank of the lake

in Kew Gardens, dividing the dialplate of his watch into sections with his forefinger. The just and

inexorable nature of time itself was reflected in his face. He might have been composing a hymn to the

unhasting and unresting march of that divinity. He seemed to greet the lapse of minute after minute with stern

acquiescence in the inevitable order. His expression was so severe, so serene, so immobile, that it seemed

obvious that for him at least there was a grandeur in the departing hour which no petty irritation on his part

was to mar, although the wasting time wasted also high private hopes of his own.

His face was no bad index to what went on within him. He was in a condition of mind rather too exalted for

the trivialities of daily life. He could not accept the fact that a lady was fifteen minutes late in keeping her

appointment without seeing in that accident the frustration of his entire life. Looking at his watch, he seemed

to look deep into the springs of human existence, and by the light of what he saw there altered his course

towards the north and the midnight. . . . Yes, one's voyage must be made absolutely without companions

through ice and black watertowards what goal? Here he laid his finger upon the halfhour, and decided

that when the minutehand reached that point he would go, at the same time answering the question put by

another of the many voices of consciousness with the reply that there was undoubtedly a goal, but that it

would need the most relentless energy to keep anywhere in its direction. Still, still, one goes on, the ticking

seconds seemed to assure him, with dignity, with open eyes, with determination not to accept the

secondrate, not to be tempted by the unworthy, not to yield, not to compromise. Twentyfive minutes past

three were now marked upon the face of the watch. The world, he assured himself, since Katharine Hilbery

was now half an hour behind her time, offers no happiness, no rest from struggle, no certainty. In a scheme of

things utterly bad from the start the only unpardonable folly is that of hope. Raising his eyes for a moment

from the face of his watch, he rested them upon the opposite bank, reflectively and not without a certain

wistfulness, as if the sternness of their gaze were still capable of mitigation. Soon a look of the deepest

satisfaction filled them, though, for a moment, he did not move. He watched a lady who came rapidly, and

yet with a trace of hesitation, down the broad grasswalk towards him. She did not see him. Distance lent her

figure an indescribable height, and romance seemed to surround her from the floating of a purple veil which

"Here she comes, like a ship in full sail," he said to himself, half remembering some line from a play or poem

where the heroine bore down thus with feathers flying and airs saluting her. The greenery and the high

presences of the trees surrounded her as if they stood forth at her coming. He rose, and she saw him; her little

exclamation proved that she was glad to find him, and then that she blamed herself for being late.

"Why did you never tell me? I didn't know there was this," she remarked, alluding to the lake, the broad green

space, the vista of trees, with the ruffled gold of the Thames in the distance and the Ducal castle standing in

its meadows. She paid the rigid tail of the Ducal lion the tribute of incredulous laughter.

But it appeared that she had come once as a small child, when the geography of the place was entirely

different, and the fauna included certainly flamingoes and, possibly, camels. They strolled on, refashioning

these legendary gardens. She was, as he felt, glad merely to stroll and loiter and let her fancy touch upon

anything her eyes encountereda bush, a parkkeeper, a decorated gooseas if the relaxation soothed her.

The warmth of the afternoon, the first of spring, tempted them to sit upon a seat in a glade of beechtrees,

with forest drives striking green paths this way and that around them. She sighed deeply.

"It's so peaceful," she said, as if in explanation of her sigh. Not a single person was in sight, and the stir of the

wind in the branches, that sound so seldom heard by Londoners, seemed to her as if wafted from fathomless

While she breathed and looked, Denham was engaged in uncovering with the point of his stick a group of

green spikes half smothered by the dead leaves. He did this with the peculiar touch of the botanist. In naming

the little green plant to her he used the Latin name, thus disguising some flower familiar even to Chelsea, and

making her exclaim, half in amusement, at his knowledge. Her own ignorance was vast, she confessed. What

did one call that tree opposite, for instance, supposing one condescended to call it by its English name? Beech

or elm or sycamore? It chanced, by the testimony of a dead leaf, to be oak; and a little attention to a diagram

which Denham proceeded to draw upon an envelope soon put Katharine in possession of some of the

fundamental distinctions between our British trees. She then asked him to inform her about flowers. To her

they were variously shaped and colored petals, poised, at different seasons of the year, upon very similar

green stalks; but to him they were, in the first instance, bulbs or seeds, and later, living things endowed with

sex, and pores, and susceptibilities which adapted themselves by all manner of ingenious devices to live and

beget life, and could be fashioned squat or tapering, flamecolored or pale, pure or spotted, by processes

which might reveal the secrets of human existence. Denham spoke with increasing ardor of a hobby which

had long been his in secret. No discourse could have worn a more welcome sound in Katharine's ears. For

weeks she had heard nothing that made such pleasant music in her mind. It wakened echoes in all those

remote fastnesses of her being where loneliness had brooded so long undisturbed.

She wished he would go on for ever talking of plants, and showing her how science felt not quite blindly for

the law that ruled their endless variations. A law that might be inscrutable but was certainly omnipotent

appealed to her at the moment, because she could find nothing like it in possession of human lives.

Circumstances had long forced her, as they force most women in the flower of youth, to consider, painfully

and minutely, all that part of life which is conspicuously without order; she had had to consider moods and

wishes, degrees of liking or disliking, and their effect upon the destiny of people dear to her; she had been

forced to deny herself any contemplation of that other part of life where thought constructs a destiny which is

independent of human beings. As Denham spoke, she followed his words and considered their bearing with

an easy vigor which spoke of a capacity long hoarded and unspent. The very trees and the green merging into

the blue distance became symbols of the vast external world which recks so little of the happiness, of the

marriages or deaths of individuals. In order to give her examples of what he was saying, Denham led the way,

For him there was safety in the direction which the talk had taken. His emphasis might come from feelings

more personal than those science roused in him, but it was disguised, and naturally he found it easy to

expound and explain. Nevertheless, when he saw Katharine among the orchids, her beauty strangely

emphasized by the fantastic plants, which seemed to peer and gape at her from striped hoods and fleshy

throats, his ardor for botany waned, and a more complex feeling replaced it. She fell silent. The orchids

seemed to suggest absorbing reflections. In defiance of the rules she stretched her ungloved hand and touched

one. The sight of the rubies upon her finger affected him so disagreeably that he started and turned away. But

next moment he controlled himself; he looked at her taking in one strange shape after another with the

contemplative, considering gaze of a person who sees not exactly what is before him, but gropes in regions

that lie beyond it. The faraway look entirely lacked selfconsciousness. Denham doubted whether she

remembered his presence. He could recall himself, of course, by a word or a movementbut why? She was

happier thus. She needed nothing that he could give her. And for him, too, perhaps, it was best to keep aloof,

only to know that she existed, to preserve what he already hadperfect, remote, and unbroken. Further, her

still look, standing among the orchids in that hot atmosphere, strangely illustrated some scene that he had

imagined in his room at home. The sight, mingling with his recollection, kept him silent when the door was

But though she did not speak, Katharine had an uneasy sense that silence on her part was selfishness. It was

selfish of her to continue, as she wished to do, a discussion of subjects not remotely connected with any

human beings. She roused herself to consider their exact position upon the turbulent map of the emotions. Oh

yesit was a question whether Ralph Denham should live in the country and write a book; it was getting

late; they must waste no more time; Cassandra arrived tonight for dinner; she flinched and roused herself,

and discovered that she ought to be holding something in her hands. But they were empty. She held them out

"I've left my bag somewherewhere?" The gardens had no points of the compass, so far as she was

concerned. She had been walking for the most part on grassthat was all she knew. Even the road to the

Orchid House had now split itself into three. But there was no bag in the Orchid House. It must, therefore,

have been left upon the seat. They retraced their steps in the preoccupied manner of people who have to think

"A pursea ticketsome letters, papers," Katharine counted, becoming more agitated as she recalled the

list. Denham went on quickly in advance of her, and she heard him shout that he had found it before she

reached the seat. In order to make sure that all was safe she spread the contents on her knee. It was a queer

collection, Denham thought, gazing with the deepest interest. Loose gold coins were tangled in a narrow strip

of lace; there were letters which somehow suggested the extreme of intimacy; there were two or three keys,

and lists of commissions against which crosses were set at intervals. But she did not seem satisfied until she

had made sure of a certain paper so folded that Denham could not judge what it contained. In her relief and

gratitude she began at once to say that she had been thinking over what Denham had told her of his plans.

"I mean it matters to me, but it matters to no one else. Anyhow," he continued, more amiably, "I see no

She supposed that she had let him see too clearly her weariness of this side of life.

"I'm afraid I've been absentminded," she began, remembering how often William had brought this charge

"Yes," she replied, flushing. "No," she contradicted herself. "Nothing particular, I mean. But I was thinking

about plants. I was enjoying myself. In fact, I've seldom enjoyed an afternoon more. But I want to hear what

"Oh, it's all settled," he replied. "I'm going to this infernal cottage to write a worthless book."

"Cottages are to be hadyes," she replied. "The question is" She checked herself. "Two rooms are all I

should want," she continued, with a curious sigh; "one for eating, one for sleeping. Oh, but I should like

another, a large one at the top, and a little garden where one could grow flowers. A pathsodown to a

river, or up to a wood, and the sea not very far off, so that one could hear the waves at night. Ships just

"My notion of perfect happiness," he began, not replying to her question, "is to live as you've said."

"Well, now you can. You will work, I suppose," she continued; "you'll work all the morning and again after

tea and perhaps at night. You won't have people always coming about you to interrupt."

"Once for three weeks," she replied. "My father and mother were in Italy, and something happened so that I

couldn't join them. For three weeks I lived entirely by myself, and the only person I spoke to was a stranger

in a shop where I luncheda man with a beard. Then I went back to my room by myself andwell, I did

what I liked. It doesn't make me out an amiable character, I'm afraid," she added, "but I can't endure living

with other people. An occasional man with a beard is interesting; he's detached; he lets me go my way, and

we know we shall never meet again. Therefore, we are perfectly sincerea thing not possible with one's

"You're very positive," she said, laughing and looking at him. How arbitrary, hottempered, and imperious he

was! He had asked her to come to Kew to advise him; he then told her that he had settled the question

already; he then proceeded to find fault with her. He was the very opposite of William Rodney, she thought;

he was shabby, his clothes were badly made, he was ill versed in the amenities of life; he was tonguetied

and awkward to the verge of obliterating his real character. He was awkwardly silent; he was awkwardly

"I doubt whether you make absolute sincerity your standard in life," he answered significantly.

She flushed. He had penetrated at once to the weak spother engagement, and had reason for what he said.

He was not altogether justified now, at any rate, she was glad to remember; but she could not enlighten him

and must bear his insinuations, though from the lips of a man who had behaved as he had behaved their force

should not have been sharp. Nevertheless, what he said had its force, she mused; partly because he seemed

unconscious of his own lapse in the case of Mary Datchet, and thus baffled her insight; partly because he

"Absolute sincerity is rather difficult, don't you think?" she inquired, with a touch of irony.

"There are people one credits even with that," he replied a little vaguely. He was ashamed of his savage wish

to hurt her, and yet it was not for the sake of hurting her, who was beyond his shafts, but in order to mortify

his own incredibly reckless impulse of abandonment to the spirit which seemed, at moments, about to rush

him to the uttermost ends of the earth. She affected him beyond the scope of his wildest dreams. He seemed

to see that beneath the quiet surface of her manner, which was almost pathetically at hand and within reach

for all the trivial demands of daily life, there was a spirit which she reserved or repressed for some reason

either of loneliness orcould it be possibleof love. Was it given to Rodney to see her unmasked,

unrestrained, unconscious of her duties? a creature of uncalculating passion and instinctive freedom? No; he

refused to believe it. It was in her loneliness that Katharine was unreserved. "I went back to my room by

myself and I didwhat I liked." She had said that to him, and in saying it had given him a glimpse of

possibilities, even of confidences, as if he might be the one to share her loneliness, the mere hint of which

made his heart beat faster and his brain spin. He checked himself as brutally as he could. He saw her redden,

He began slipping his smooth, silver watch in his pocket, in the hope that somehow he might help himself

back to that calm and fatalistic mood which had been his when he looked at its face upon the bank of the lake,

for that mood must, at whatever cost, be the mood of his intercourse with Katharine. He had spoken of

gratitude and acquiescence in the letter which he had never sent, and now all the force of his character must

She, thus challenged, tried meanwhile to define her points. She wished to make Denham understand.

"Don't you see that if you have no relations with people it's easier to be honest with them?" she inquired.

"That is what I meant. One needn't cajole them; one's under no obligation to them. Surely you must have

found with your own family that it's impossible to discuss what matters to you most because you're all herded

together, because you're in a conspiracy, because the position is false" Her reasoning suspended itself a

little inconclusively, for the subject was complex, and she found herself in ignorance whether Denham had a

family or not. Denham was agreed with her as to the destructiveness of the family system, but he did not wish

"I'm convinced," he said, "that there are cases in which perfect sincerity is possiblecases where there's no

relationship, though the people live together, if you like, where each is free, where there's no obligation upon

"For a time perhaps," she agreed, a little despondently. "But obligations always grow up. There are feelings

to be considered. People aren't simple, and though they may mean to be reasonable, they end"in the

"Because," Denham instantly intervened, "they don't make themselves understood at the beginning. I could

undertake, at this instant," he continued, with a reasonable intonation which did much credit to his

selfcontrol, "to lay down terms for a friendship which should be perfectly sincere and perfectly

She was curious to hear them, but, besides feeling that the topic concealed dangers better known to her than

to him, she was reminded by his tone of his curious abstract declaration upon the Embankment. Anything that

hinted at love for the moment alarmed her; it was as much an infliction to her as the rubbing of a skinless

"In the first place, such a friendship must be unemotional," he laid it down emphatically. "At least, on both

sides it must be understood that if either chooses to fall in love, he or she does so entirely at his own risk.

Neither is under any obligation to the other. They must be at liberty to break or to alter at any moment. They

was one that she had been using frequently in her arguments with herself of late.

"Well," he said, "those are the terms of the friendship I wish to offer you." She had known that this was

coming, but, none the less, felt a little shock, half of pleasure, half of reluctance, when she heard the formal

"No, no, it isn't that," she went on, and again came to an end. She had been touched by the unreserved and yet

ceremonious way in which he had made what he called his offer of terms, but if he was generous it was the

more necessary for her to be cautious. They would find themselves in difficulties, she speculated; but, at this

point, which was not very far, after all, upon the road of caution, her foresight deserted her. She sought for

some definite catastrophe into which they must inevitably plunge. But she could think of none. It seemed to

her that these catastrophes were fictitious; life went on and onlife was different altogether from what

people said. And not only was she at an end of her stock of caution, but it seemed suddenly altogether

superfluous. Surely if any one could take care of himself, Ralph Denham could; he had told her that he did

not love her. And, further, she meditated, walking on beneath the beechtrees and swinging her umbrella, as

in her thought she was accustomed to complete freedom, why should she perpetually apply so different a

standard to her behavior in practice? Why, she reflected, should there be this perpetual disparity between the

thought and the action, between the life of solitude and the life of society, this astonishing precipice on one

side of which the soul was active and in broad daylight, on the other side of which it was contemplative and

dark as night? Was it not possible to step from one to the other, erect, and without essential change? Was this

not the chance he offered herthe rare and wonderful chance of friendship? At any rate, she told Denham,

with a sigh in which he heard both impatience and relief, that she agreed; she thought him right; she would

In fact, these principles having been laid down, a great lightness of spirit showed itself in both of them. They

were both convinced that something of profound importance had been settled, and could now give their

attention to their tea and the Gardens. They wandered in and out of glasshouses, saw lilies swimming in

tanks, breathed in the scent of thousands of carnations, and compared their respective tastes in the matter of

trees and lakes. While talking exclusively of what they saw, so that any one might have overheard them, they

felt that the compact between them was made firmer and deeper by the number of people who passed them

and suspected nothing of the kind. The question of Ralph's cottage and future was not mentioned again.

Although the old coaches, with their gay panels and the guard's horn, and the humors of the box and the

vicissitudes of the road, have long moldered into dust so far as they were matter, and are preserved in the

printed pages of our novelists so far as they partook of the spirit, a journey to London by express train can

still be a very pleasant and romantic adventure. Cassandra Otway, at the age of twentytwo, could imagine

few things more pleasant. Satiated with months of green fields as she was, the first row of artisans' villas on

the outskirts of London seemed to have something serious about it, which positively increased the importance

of every person in the railway carriage, and even, to her impressionable mind, quickened the speed of the

train and gave a note of stern authority to the shriek of the enginewhistle. They were bound for London;

they must have precedence of all traffic not similarly destined. A different demeanor was necessary directly

one stepped out upon Liverpool Street platform, and became one of those preoccupied and hasty citizens for

whose needs innumerable taxicabs, motoromnibuses, and underground railways were in waiting. She did

her best to look dignified and preoccupied too, but as the cab carried her away, with a determination which

alarmed her a little, she became more and more forgetful of her station as a citizen of London, and turned her

head from one window to another, picking up eagerly a building on this side or a street scene on that to feed

her intense curiosity. And yet, while the drive lasted no one was real, nothing was ordinary; the crowds, the

Government buildings, the tide of men and women washing the base of the great glass windows, were all

All these feelings were sustained and partly inspired by the fact that her journey took her straight to the center

of her most romantic world. A thousand times in the midst of her pastoral landscape her thoughts took this

precise road, were admitted to the house in Chelsea, and went directly upstairs to Katharine's room, where,

invisible themselves, they had the better chance of feasting upon the privacy of the room's adorable and

mysterious mistress. Cassandra adored her cousin; the adoration might have been foolish, but was saved from

that excess and lent an engaging charm by the volatile nature of Cassandra's temperament. She had adored a

great many things and people in the course of twentytwo years; she had been alternately the pride and the

desperation of her teachers. She had worshipped architecture and music, natural history and humanity,

literature and art, but always at the height of her enthusiasm, which was accompanied by a brilliant degree of

accomplishment, she changed her mind and bought, surreptitiously, another grammar. The terrible results

which governesses had predicted from such mental dissipation were certainly apparent now that Cassandra

was twentytwo, and had never passed an examination, and daily showed herself less and less capable of

passing one. The more serious prediction that she could never possibly earn her living was also verified. But

from all these short strands of different accomplishments Cassandra wove for herself an attitude, a cast of

mind, which, if useless, was found by some people to have the not despicable virtues of vivacity and

freshness. Katharine, for example, thought her a most charming companion. The cousins seemed to assemble

between them a great range of qualities which are never found united in one person and seldom in half a

dozen people. Where Katharine was simple, Cassandra was complex; where Katharine was solid and direct,

Cassandra was vague and evasive. In short, they represented very well the manly and the womanly sides of

the feminine nature, and, for foundation, there was the profound unity of common blood between them. If

Cassandra adored Katharine she was incapable of adoring any one without refreshing her spirit with frequent

draughts of raillery and criticism, and Katharine enjoyed her laughter at least as much as her respect.

Respect was certainly uppermost in Cassandra's mind at the present moment. Katharine's engagement had

appealed to her imagination as the first engagement in a circle of contemporaries is apt to appeal to the

imaginations of the others; it was solemn, beautiful, and mysterious; it gave both parties the important air of

those who have been initiated into some rite which is still concealed from the rest of the group. For

Katharine's sake Cassandra thought William a most distinguished and interesting character, and welcomed

first his conversation and then his manuscript as the marks of a friendship which it flattered and delighted her

Katharine was still out when she arrived at Cheyne Walk. After greeting her uncle and aunt and receiving, as

usual, a present of two sovereigns for "cab fares and dissipation" from Uncle Trevor, whose favorite niece

she was, she changed her dress and wandered into Katharine's room to await her. What a great lookingglass

Katharine had, she thought, and how mature all the arrangements upon the dressingtable were compared to

what she was used to at home. Glancing round, she thought that the bills stuck upon a skewer and stood for

ornament upon the mantelpiece were astonishingly like Katharine, There wasn't a photograph of William

anywhere to be seen. The room, with its combination of luxury and bareness, its silk dressinggowns and

crimson slippers, its shabby carpet and bare walls, had a powerful air of Katharine herself; she stood in the

middle of the room and enjoyed the sensation; and then, with a desire to finger what her cousin was in the

habit of fingering, Cassandra began to take down the books which stood in a row upon the shelf above the

bed. In most houses this shelf is the ledge upon which the last relics of religious belief lodge themselves as if,

late at night, in the heart of privacy, people, skeptical by day, find solace in sipping one draught of the old

charm for such sorrows or perplexities as may steal from their hidingplaces in the dark. But there was no

hymnbook here. By their battered covers and enigmatical contents, Cassandra judged them to be old

schoolbooks belonging to Uncle Trevor, and piously, though eccentrically, preserved by his daughter. There

was no end, she thought, to the unexpectedness of Katharine. She had once had a passion for geometry

herself, and, curled upon Katharine's quilt, she became absorbed in trying to remember how far she had

forgotten what she once knew. Katharine, coming in a little later, found her deep in this characteristic pursuit.

"My dear," Cassandra exclaimed, shaking the book at her cousin, "my whole life's changed from this

Whose name, what book, which life was changed Katharine proceeded to ascertain. She began to lay aside

"May I sit and watch you?" Cassandra asked, shutting up her book. "I got ready on purpose."

"Oh, you're ready, are you?" said Katharine, half turning in the midst of her operations, and looking at

"There are people dining here," she said, taking in the effect of Cassandra from a new point of view. After an

interval, the distinction, the irregular charm, of the small face with its long tapering nose and its bright oval

eyes were very notable. The hair rose up off the forehead rather stiffly, and, given a more careful treatment

by hairdressers and dressmakers, the light angular figure might possess a likeness to a French lady of

"Who's coming to dinner?" Cassandra asked, anticipating further possibilities of rapture.

"I'm so glad William is coming. Did he tell you that he sent me his manuscript? I think it's wonderfulI

"But then, with your wellknown fidelity, considering that you're staying here at least a fortnight, you won't

have any illusions left about me by the time you go. I give you a week, Cassandra. I shall see my power

fading day by day. Now it's at the climax; but tomorrow it'll have begun to fade. What am I to wear, I

She spoke disconnectedly, handling brush and comb, and pulling out the little drawers in her dressingtable

and leaving them open. Cassandra, sitting on the bed behind her, saw the reflection of her cousin's face in the

lookingglass. The face in the lookingglass was serious and intent, apparently occupied with other things

besides the straightness of the parting which, however, was being driven as straight as a Roman road through

the dark hair. Cassandra was impressed again by Katharine's maturity; and, as she enveloped herself in the

blue dress which filled almost the whole of the long lookingglass with blue light and made it the frame of a

picture, holding not only the slightly moving effigy of the beautiful woman, but shapes and colors of objects

reflected from the background, Cassandra thought that no sight had ever been quite so romantic. It was all in

keeping with the room and the house, and the city round them; for her ears had not yet ceased to notice the

They went downstairs rather late, in spite of Katharine's extreme speed in getting ready. To Cassandra's ears

the buzz of voices inside the drawingroom was like the tuning up of the instruments of the orchestra. It

seemed to her that there were numbers of people in the room, and that they were strangers, and that they were

beautiful and dressed with the greatest distinction, although they proved to be mostly her relations, and the

distinction of their clothing was confined, in the eyes of an impartial observer, to the white waistcoat which

Rodney wore. But they all rose simultaneously, which was by itself impressive, and they all exclaimed, and

shook hands, and she was introduced to Mr. Peyton, and the door sprang open, and dinner was announced,

and they filed off, William Rodney offering her his slightly bent black arm, as she had secretly hoped he

would. In short, had the scene been looked at only through her eyes, it must have been described as one of

magical brilliancy. The pattern of the soupplates, the stiff folds of the napkins, which rose by the side of

each plate in the shape of arum lilies, the long sticks of bread tied with pink ribbon, the silver dishes and the

seacolored champagne glasses, with the flakes of gold congealed in their stemsall these details, together

with a curiously pervasive smell of kid gloves, contributed to her exhilaration, which must be repressed,

however, because she was grown up, and the world held no more for her to marvel at.

The world held no more for her to marvel at, it is true; but it held other people; and each other person

possessed in Cassandra's mind some fragment of what privately she called "reality." It was a gift that they

would impart if you asked them for it, and thus no dinnerparty could possibly be dull, and little Mr. Peyton

on her right and William Rodney on her left were in equal measure endowed with the quality which seemed

to her so unmistakable and so precious that the way people neglected to demand it was a constant source of

surprise to her. She scarcely knew, indeed, whether she was talking to Mr. Peyton or to William Rodney. But

to one who, by degrees, assumed the shape of an elderly man with a mustache, she described how she had

arrived in London that very afternoon, and how she had taken a cab and driven through the streets. Mr.

Peyton, an editor of fifty years, bowed his bald head repeatedly, with apparent understanding. At least, he

understood that she was very young and pretty, and saw that she was excited, though he could not gather at

once from her words or remember from his own experience what there was to be excited about. "Were there

He was cut short in these amiable inquiries by her desire to know whether he was one of those who read, or

one of those who look out of the window? Mr. Peyton was by no means sure which he did. He rather thought

he did both. He was told that he had made a most dangerous confession. She could deduce his entire history

from that one fact. He challenged her to proceed; and she proclaimed him a Liberal Member of Parliament.

William, nominally engaged in a desultory conversation with Aunt Eleanor, heard every word, and taking

advantage of the fact that elderly ladies have little continuity of conversation, at least with those whom they

esteem for their youth and their sex, he asserted his presence by a very nervous laugh.

Cassandra turned to him directly. She was enchanted to find that, instantly and with such ease, another of

"There's no doubt what YOU do in a railway carriage, William," she said, making use in her pleasure of his

"Oh, that he's a poet, of course," said Cassandra. "But I must confess that I knew that before, so it isn't fair.

I've got your manuscript with me," she went on, disregarding Mr. Peyton in a shameless way. "I've got all

William inclined his head and tried to conceal the pleasure that her remark gave him. But the pleasure was

not unalloyed. However susceptible to flattery William might be, he would never tolerate it from people who

showed a gross or emotional taste in literature, and if Cassandra erred even slightly from what he considered

essential in this respect he would express his discomfort by flinging out his hands and wrinkling his forehead;

"I mean that I don't see what it would gain by being acted. But then does Shakespeare gain? Henry and I are

always arguing about Shakespeare. I'm certain he's wrong, but I can't prove it because I've only seen

Shakespeare acted once in Lincoln. But I'm quite positive," she insisted, "that Shakespeare wrote for the

"You're perfectly right," Rodney exclaimed. "I was hoping you were on that side. Henry's wrongentirely

wrong. Of course, I've failed, as all the moderns fail. Dear, dear, I wish I'd consulted you before."

From this point they proceeded to go over, as far as memory served them, the different aspects of Rodney's

drama. She said nothing that jarred upon him, and untrained daring had the power to stimulate experience to

such an extent that Rodney was frequently seen to hold his fork suspended before him, while he debated the

first principles of the art. Mrs. Hilbery thought to herself that she had never seen him to such advantage; yes,

he was somehow different; he reminded her of some one who was dead, some one who was

"Shake hands! Shake hands!" boomed Uncle Aubrey from across the table. "Neither do I. And I hazard the

The old gentleman had ruled a large part of the Indian Empire, but he was in the habit of saying that he had

rather have written the works of Dickens. The table now took possession of a subject much to its liking. Aunt

Eleanor showed premonitory signs of pronouncing an opinion. Although she had blunted her taste upon some

form of philanthropy for twentyfive years, she had a fine natural instinct for an upstart or a pretender, and

knew to a hairbreadth what literature should be and what it should not be. She was born to the knowledge,

"There's the wellknown case of Hamlet," Mr. Hilbery interposed, in his leisurely, halfhumorous tones.

"Ah, but poetry's different, Trevor," said Aunt Eleanor, as if she had special authority from Shakespeare to

say so. "Different altogether. And I've never thought, for my part, that Hamlet was as mad as they make out.

What is your opinion, Mr. Peyton?" For, as there was a minister of literature present in the person of the

Mr. Peyton leant a little back in his chair, and, putting his head rather on one side, observed that that was a

question that he had never been able to answer entirely to his satisfaction. There was much to be said on both

sides, but as he considered upon which side he should say it, Mrs. Hilbery broke in upon his judicious

"Lovely, lovely Ophelia!" she exclaimed. "What a wonderful power it ispoetry! I wake up in the morning

all bedraggled; there's a yellow fog outside; little Emily turns on the electric light when she brings me my tea,

and says, 'Oh, ma'am, the water's frozen in the cistern, and cook's cut her finger to the bone.' And then I open

a little green book, and the birds are singing, the stars shining, the flowers twinkling" She looked about her

as if these presences had suddenly manifested themselves round her diningroom table.

"Has the cook cut her finger badly?" Aunt Eleanor demanded, addressing herself naturally to Katharine.

"Oh, the cook's finger is only my way of putting it," said Mrs. Hilbery. "But if she had cut her arm off,

Katharine would have sewn it on again," she remarked, with an affectionate glance at her daughter, who

looked, she thought, a little sad. "But what horrid, horrid thoughts," she wound up, laying down her napkin

and pushing her chair back. "Come, let us find something more cheerful to talk about upstairs."

Upstairs in the drawingroom Cassandra found fresh sources of pleasure, first in the distinguished and

expectant look of the room, and then in the chance of exercising her diviningrod upon a new assortment of

human beings. But the low tones of the women, their meditative silences, the beauty which, to her at least,

shone even from black satin and the knobs of amber which encircled elderly necks, changed her wish to

chatter to a more subdued desire merely to watch and to whisper. She entered with delight into an atmosphere

in which private matters were being interchanged freely, almost in monosyllables, by the older women who

now accepted her as one of themselves. Her expression became very gentle and sympathetic, as if she, too,

were full of solicitude for the world which was somehow being cared for, managed and deprecated by Aunt

Maggie and Aunt Eleanor. After a time she perceived that Katharine was outside the community in some

way, and, suddenly, she threw aside her wisdom and gentleness and concern and began to laugh.

"It was nothingridiculousin the worst of taste, but still, if you half shut your eyes and looked"

Katharine half shut her eyes and looked, but she looked in the wrong direction, and Cassandra laughed more

than ever, and was still laughing and doing her best to explain in a whisper that Aunt Eleanor, through

halfshut eyes, was like the parrot in the cage at Stogdon House, when the gentlemen came in and Rodney

"I utterly refuse to tell you!" Cassandra replied, standing up straight, clasping her hands in front of her, and

facing him. Her mockery was delicious to him. He had not even for a second the fear that she had been

"Ah, but you're cruel to make me feel the barbarity of my sex," he replied, drawing his feet together and

pressing his fingertips upon an imaginary operahat or malacca cane. "We've been discussing all sorts of

dull things, and now I shall never know what I want to know more than anything in the world."

"You don't deceive us for a minute!" she cried. "Not for a second. We both know that you've been enjoying

"No," she replied, "I think he's speaking the truth. He doesn't care much for politics."

Her words, though spoken simply, produced a curious change in the light, sparkling atmosphere. William at

"I don't think any man has the right to say that," said Cassandra, almost severely.

"You see, I believe Cassandra is what they call a Feminist," Katharine went on. "Or rather, she was a

Feminist six months ago, but it's no good supposing that she is now what she was then. That is one of her

greatest charms in my eyes. One never can tell." She smiled at her as an elder sister might smile.

"No, no, that's not what she means," Rodney interposed. "I quite agree that women have an immense

advantage over us there. One misses a lot by attempting to know things thoroughly."

"He knows Greek thoroughly," said Katharine. "But then he also knows a good deal about painting, and a

certain amount about music. He's very cultivatedperhaps the most cultivated person I know."

"Yes, I was forgetting his play," Katharine remarked, and turning her head as though she saw something that

For a moment they stood silent, after what seemed a deliberate introduction to each other, and Cassandra

"Henry," she said next moment, "would say that a stage ought to be no bigger than this drawingroom. He

wants there to be singing and dancing as well as actingonly all the opposite of Wagneryou understand?"

They sat down, and Katharine, turning when she reached the window, saw William with his hand raised in

gesticulation and his mouth open, as if ready to speak the moment Cassandra ceased.

Katharine's duty, whether it was to pull a curtain or move a chair, was either forgotten or discharged, but she

continued to stand by the window without doing anything. The elderly people were all grouped together

round the fire. They seemed an independent, middleaged community busy with its own concerns. They were

telling stories very well and listening to them very graciously. But for her there was no obvious employment.

"If anybody says anything, I shall say that I'm looking at the river," she thought, for in her slavery to her

family traditions, she was ready to pay for her transgression with some plausible falsehood. She pushed aside

the blind and looked at the river. But it was a dark night and the water was barely visible. Cabs were passing,

and couples were loitering slowly along the road, keeping as close to the railings as possible, though the trees

had as yet no leaves to cast shadow upon their embraces. Katharine, thus withdrawn, felt her loneliness. The

evening had been one of pain, offering her, minute after minute, plainer proof that things would fall out as

she had foreseen. She had faced tones, gestures, glances; she knew, with her back to them, that William, even

now, was plunging deeper and deeper into the delight of unexpected understanding with Cassandra. He had

almost told her that he was finding it infinitely better than he could have believed. She looked out of the

window, sternly determined to forget private misfortunes, to forget herself, to forget individual lives. With

her eyes upon the dark sky, voices reached her from the room in which she was standing. She heard them as

if they came from people in another world, a world antecedent to her world, a world that was the prelude, the

antechamber to reality; it was as if, lately dead, she heard the living talking. The dream nature of our life had

never been more apparent to her, never had life been more certainly an affair of four walls, whose objects

existed only within the range of lights and fires, beyond which lay nothing, or nothing more than darkness.

She seemed physically to have stepped beyond the region where the light of illusion still makes it desirable to

possess, to love, to struggle. And yet her melancholy brought her no serenity. She still heard the voices within

the room. She was still tormented by desires. She wished to be beyond their range. She wished inconsistently

enough that she could find herself driving rapidly through the streets; she was even anxious to be with some

one who, after a moment's groping, took a definite shape and solidified into the person of Mary Datchet. She

drew the curtains so that the draperies met in deep folds in the middle of the window.

"Ah, there she is," said Mr. Hilbery, who was standing swaying affably from side to side, with his back to the

fire. "Come here, Katharine. I couldn't see where you'd got toour children," he observed parenthetically,

"have their usesI want you to go to my study, Katharine; go to the third shelf on the righthand side of the

door; take down 'Trelawny's Recollections of Shelley'; bring it to me. Then, Peyton, you will have to admit to

"'Trelawny's Recollections of Shelley.' The third shelf on the right of the door," Katharine repeated. After all,

one does not check children in their play, or rouse sleepers from their dreams. She passed William and

"Stop, Katharine," said William, speaking almost as if he were conscious of her against his will. "Let me go."

He rose, after a second's hesitation, and she understood that it cost him an effort. She knelt one knee upon the

sofa where Cassandra sat, looking down at her cousin's face, which still moved with the speed of what she

"Oh, my dear!" Cassandra exclaimed, as if no further words were needed. "Of course, we disagree about

every subject under the sun," she exclaimed, "but I think he's the cleverest man I've ever metand you're the

most beautiful woman," she added, looking at Katharine, and as she looked her face lost its animation and

became almost melancholy in sympathy with Katharine's melancholy, which seemed to Cassandra the last

"At twelve my horses turn into rats and off I go. The illusion fades. But I accept my fate. I make hay while

"Here's Katharine talking about rats, and hay, and all sorts of odd things," she said, as William returned to

Katharine perceived from his little frown and hesitation that he did not find that particular problem to his

"I really am off, though. I wish you'd explain if they say anything, William. I shan't be late, but I've got to see

"A friend," she remarked, half turning her head towards him. She knew that he wished her to stay, not,

"Katharine has a great many friends," said William rather lamely, sitting down once more, as Katharine left

She was soon driving quickly, as she had wished to drive, through the lamplit streets. She liked both light

and speed, and the sense of being out of doors alone, and the knowledge that she would reach Mary in her

high, lonely room at the end of the drive. She climbed the stone steps quickly, remarking the queer look of

her blue silk skirt and blue shoes upon the stone, dusty with the boots of the day, under the light of an

The door was opened in a second by Mary herself, whose face showed not only surprise at the sight of her

visitor, but some degree of embarrassment. She greeted her cordially, and, as there was no time for

explanations, Katharine walked straight into the sittingroom, and found herself in the presence of a young

man who was lying back in a chair and holding a sheet of paper in his hand, at which he was looking as if he

expected to go on immediately with what he was in the middle of saying to Mary Datchet. The apparition of

an unknown lady in full evening dress seemed to disturb him. He took his pipe from his mouth, rose stiffly,

The young man shook his head, as if he disowned his share in the question with some irritation.

"Well, not exactly," Mary replied. "Mr. Basnett had brought some papers to show me. We were going

Mary had a ruffled appearance, as if she had been running her fingers through her hair in the course of her

conversation; she was dressed more or less like a Russian peasant girl. She sat down again in a chair which

looked as if it had been her seat for some hours; the saucer which stood upon the arm contained the ashes of

many cigarettes. Mr. Basnett, a very young man with a fresh complexion and a high forehead from which the

hair was combed straight back, was one of that group of "very able young men" suspected by Mr. Clacton,

justly as it turned out, of an influence upon Mary Datchet. He had come down from one of the Universities

not long ago, and was now charged with the reformation of society. In connection with the rest of the group

of very able young men he had drawn up a scheme for the education of labor, for the amalgamation of the

middle class and the working class, and for a joint assault of the two bodies, combined in the Society for the

Education of Democracy, upon Capital. The scheme had already reached the stage in which it was

permissible to hire an office and engage a secretary, and he had been deputed to expound the scheme to

Mary, and make her an offer of the Secretaryship, to which, as a matter of principle, a small salary was

attached. Since seven o'clock that evening he had been reading out loud the document in which the faith of

the new reformers was expounded, but the reading was so frequently interrupted by discussion, and it was so

often necessary to inform Mary "in strictest confidence" of the private characters and evil designs of certain

individuals and societies that they were still only halfway through the manuscript. Neither of them realized

that the talk had already lasted three hours. In their absorption they had forgotten even to feed the fire, and

yet both Mr. Basnett in his exposition, and Mary in her interrogation, carefully preserved a kind of formality

calculated to check the desire of the human mind for irrelevant discussion. Her questions frequently began,

"Am I to understand" and his replies invariably represented the views of some one called "we."

By this time Mary was almost persuaded that she, too, was included in the "we," and agreed with Mr. Basnett

in believing that "our" views, "our" society, "our" policy, stood for something quite definitely segregated

The appearance of Katharine in this atmosphere was extremely incongruous, and had the effect of making

"You've been dining out?" she asked again, looking, with a little smile, at the blue silk and the pearlsewn

"No, at home. Are you starting something new?" Katharine hazarded, rather hesitatingly, looking at the

"Afraid," said Mr. Basnett, conveying the impression that, in his opinion, no sensible person could be afraid

"Yes," said Katharine, as if he had stated this opinion aloud. "I should like to start somethingsomething off

"Yes, that's the fun," said Mr. Basnett, looking at her for the first time rather keenly, and refilling his pipe.

"But you can't limit workthat's what I mean," said Mary. "I mean there are other sorts of work. No one

"Quite so," said Mr. Basnett. "It's precisely the women with babies we want to get hold of." He glanced at his

document, rolled it into a cylinder between his fingers, and gazed into the fire. Katharine felt that in this

company anything that one said would be judged upon its merits; one had only to say what one thought,

rather barely and tersely, with a curious assumption that the number of things that could properly be thought

about was strictly limited. And Mr. Basnett was only stiff upon the surface; there was an intelligence in his

"That depends upon many things," said Mary. The conspirators looked pleased, as if Katharine's question,

with the belief in their existence which it implied, had a warming effect upon them.

"In starting a society such as we wish to start (we can't say any more at present)," Mr. Basnett began, with a

little jerk of his head, "there are two things to rememberthe Press and the public. Other societies, which

shall be nameless, have gone under because they've appealed only to cranks. If you don't want a mutual

admiration society, which dies as soon as you've all discovered each other's faults, you must nobble the Press.

"That's where she comes in," said Mr. Basnett, jerking his head in Mary's direction. "She's the only one of us

who's a capitalist. She can make a wholetime job of it. I'm tied to an office; I can only give my spare time.

Are you, by any chance, on the lookout for a job?" he asked Katharine, with a queer mixture of distrust and

"Oh, I see," said Mr. Basnett. He made allowances for that; he and his friends had faced the question of sex,

along with all others, and assigned it an honorable place in their scheme of life. Katharine felt this beneath the

roughness of his manner; and a world entrusted to the guardianship of Mary Datchet and Mr. Basnett seemed

to her a good world, although not a romantic or beautiful place or, to put it figuratively, a place where any

line of blue mist softly linked tree to tree upon the horizon. For a moment she thought she saw in his face,

bent now over the fire, the features of that original man whom we still recall every now and then, although

we know only the clerk, barrister, Governmental official, or workingman variety of him. Not that Mr.

Basnett, giving his days to commerce and his spare time to social reform, would long carry about him any

trace of his possibilities of completeness; but, for the moment, in his youth and ardor, still speculative, still

uncramped, one might imagine him the citizen of a nobler state than ours. Katharine turned over her small

stock of information, and wondered what their society might be going to attempt. Then she remembered that

she was hindering their business, and rose, still thinking of this society, and thus thinking, she said to Mr.

He nodded, and took his pipe from his mouth, but, being unable to think of anything to say, he put it back

Against her wish, Mary insisted upon taking her downstairs, and then, as there was no cab to be seen, they

"Go back," Katharine urged her, thinking of Mr. Basnett with his papers in his hand.

"You can't wander about the streets alone in those clothes," said Mary, but the desire to find a cab was not her

true reason for standing beside Katharine for a minute or two. Unfortunately for her composure, Mr. Basnett

and his papers seemed to her an incidental diversion of life's serious purpose compared with some

tremendous fact which manifested itself as she stood alone with Katharine. It may have been their common

"Yes," said Katharine directly, but she did not remember when or where she had seen him. It took her a

"Nonsense, Mary," said Katharine, rather distractedly, taking her arm and beginning to walk up the street in

the direction of the main road. "Let me see; we went to Kew, and we agreed to be friends. Yes, that's what

happened." Mary was silent, in the hope that Katharine would tell her more. But Katharine said nothing.

"It's not a question of friendship," Mary exclaimed, her anger rising, to her own surprise. "You know it's not.

How can it be? I've no right to interfere" She stopped. "Only I'd rather Ralph wasn't hurt," she concluded.

"I think he seems able to take care of himself," Katharine observed. Without either of them wishing it, a

"I can't wander about London discussing my feelingsHere's a cabno, there's some one in it."

"Ought I to have told him that I wouldn't be his friend?" Katharine asked. "Shall I tell him that? If so, what

"The whole thing's foolish," said Katharine, peremptorily. "That's what I say. It's not worth it." She spoke

with unnecessary vehemence, but it was not directed against Mary Datchet. Their animosity had completely

disappeared, and upon both of them a cloud of difficulty and darkness rested, obscuring the future, in which

"No, no, it's not worth it," Katharine repeated. "Suppose, as you say, it's out of the questionthis friendship;

he falls in love with me. I don't want that. Still," she added, "I believe you exaggerate; love's not everything;

marriage itself is only one of the things" They had reached the main thoroughfare, and stood looking at the

omnibuses and passersby, who seemed, for the moment, to illustrate what Katharine had said of the

diversity of human interests. For both of them it had become one of those moments of extreme detachment,

when it seems unnecessary ever again to shoulder the burden of happiness and selfassertive existence. Their

"I don't lay down any rules,"' said Mary, recovering herself first, as they turned after a long pause of this

description. "All I say is that you should know what you're aboutfor certain; but," she added, "I expect you

At the same time she was profoundly perplexed, not only by what she knew of the arrangements for

Katharine's marriage, but by the impression which she had of her, there on her arm, dark and inscrutable.

They walked back again and reached the steps which led up to Mary's flat. Here they stopped and paused for

"You must go in," said Katharine, rousing herself. "He's waiting all this time to go on with his reading." She

glanced up at the lighted window near the top of the house, and they both looked at it and waited for a

moment. A flight of semicircular steps ran up to the hall, and Mary slowly mounted the first two or three, and

"I think you underrate the value of that emotion," she said slowly, and a little awkwardly. She climbed

another step and looked down once more upon the figure that was only partly lit up, standing in the street

with a colorless face turned upwards. As Mary hesitated, a cab came by and Katharine turned and stopped it,

"Remember, I want to belong to your societyremember," she added, having to raise her voice a little, and

Mary mounted the stairs step by step, as if she had to lift her body up an extremely steep ascent. She had had

to wrench herself forcibly away from Katharine, and every step vanquished her desire. She held on grimly,

encouraging herself as though she were actually making some great physical effort in climbing a height. She

was conscious that Mr. Basnett, sitting at the top of the stairs with his documents, offered her solid footing if

she were capable of reaching it. The knowledge gave her a faint sense of exaltation.

"I'll go on where I left off," he said. "Stop me if you want anything explained."

He had been rereading the document, and making pencil notes in the margin while he waited, and he went

on again as if there had been no interruption. Mary sat down among the flat cushions, lit another cigarette,

Katharine leant back in the corner of the cab that carried her to Chelsea, conscious of fatigue, and conscious,

too, of the sober and satisfactory nature of such industry as she had just witnessed. The thought of it

composed and calmed her. When she reached home she let herself in as quietly as she could, in the hope that

the household was already gone to bed. But her excursion had occupied less time than she thought, and she

heard sounds of unmistakable liveliness upstairs. A door opened, and she drew herself into a groundfloor

room in case the sound meant that Mr. Peyton were taking his leave. From where she stood she could see the

stairs, though she was herself invisible. Some one was coming down the stairs, and now she saw that it was

William Rodney. He looked a little strange, as if he were walking in his sleep; his lips moved as if he were

acting some part to himself. He came down very slowly, step by step, with one hand upon the banisters to

guide himself. She thought he looked as if he were in some mood of high exaltation, which it made her

uncomfortable to witness any longer unseen. She stepped into the hall. He gave a great start upon seeing her

He did not answer, and walked into the groundfloor room through the door which stood open.

He was scarcely addressing her, and she said nothing. For a moment they stood at opposite sides of a table

saying nothing. Then he asked her quickly, "But tell me, how did it seem to you? What did you think,

Before she could answer a door opened on the landing above and disturbed them. It disturbed William

excessively. He started back, walked rapidly into the hall, and said in a loud and ostentatiously ordinary tone:

"Good night, Katharine. Go to bed now. I shall see you soon. I hope I shall be able to come tomorrow."

Next moment he was gone. She went upstairs and found Cassandra on the landing. She held two or three

books in her hand, and she was stooping to look at others in a little bookcase. She said that she could never

"What do you read in bed, Katharine?" she asked, as they walked upstairs side by side.

"Sometimes one thingsometimes another," said Katharine vaguely. Cassandra looked at her.

"D'you know, you're extraordinarily queer," she said. "Every one seems to me a little queer. Perhaps it's the

"Well, I think he is a little," Cassandra replied. "Queer, but very fascinating. I shall read Milton tonight. It's

been one of the happiest nights of my life, Katharine," she added, looking with shy devotion at her cousin's

London, in the first days of spring, has buds that open and flowers that suddenly shake their petalswhite,

purple, or crimsonin competition with the display in the garden beds, although these city flowers are

merely so many doors flung wide in Bond Street and the neighborhood, inviting you to look at a picture, or

hear a symphony, or merely crowd and crush yourself among all sorts of vocal, excitable, brightly colored

human beings. But, all the same, it is no mean rival to the quieter process of vegetable florescence. Whether

or not there is a generous motive at the root, a desire to share and impart, or whether the animation is purely

that of insensate fervor and friction, the effect, while it lasts, certainly encourages those who are young, and

those who are ignorant, to think the world one great bazaar, with banners fluttering and divans heaped with

As Cassandra Otway went about London provided with shillings that opened turnstiles, or more often with

large white cards that disregarded turnstiles, the city seemed to her the most lavish and hospitable of hosts.

After visiting the National Gallery, or Hertford House, or hearing Brahms or Beethoven at the Bechstein Hall,

she would come back to find a new person awaiting her, in whose soul were imbedded some grains of the

invaluable substance which she still called reality, and still believed that she could find. The Hilberys, as the

saying is, "knew every one," and that arrogant claim was certainly upheld by the number of houses which,

within a certain area, lit their lamps at night, opened their doors after 3 p. m., and admitted the Hilberys to

their diningrooms, say, once a month. An indefinable freedom and authority of manner, shared by most of

the people who lived in these houses, seemed to indicate that whether it was a question of art, music, or

government, they were well within the gates, and could smile indulgently at the vast mass of humanity which

is forced to wait and struggle, and pay for entrance with common coin at the door. The gates opened instantly

to admit Cassandra. She was naturally critical of what went on inside, and inclined to quote what Henry

would have said; but she often succeeded in contradicting Henry, in his absence, and invariably paid her

partner at dinner, or the kind old lady who remembered her grandmother, the compliment of believing that

there was meaning in what they said. For the sake of the light in her eager eyes, much crudity of expression

and some untidiness of person were forgiven her. It was generally felt that, given a year or two of experience,

introduced to good dressmakers, and preserved from bad influences, she would be an acquisition. Those

elderly ladies, who sit on the edge of ballrooms sampling the stuff of humanity between finger and thumb and

breathing so evenly that the necklaces, which rise and fall upon their breasts, seem to represent some

elemental force, such as the waves upon the ocean of humanity, concluded, a little smilingly, that she would

do. They meant that she would in all probability marry some young man whose mother they respected.

William Rodney was fertile in suggestions. He knew of little galleries, and select concerts, and private

performances, and somehow made time to meet Katharine and Cassandra, and to give them tea or dinner or

supper in his rooms afterwards. Each one of her fourteen days thus promised to bear some bright illumination

in its sober text. But Sunday approached. The day is usually dedicated to Nature. The weather was almost

kindly enough for an expedition. But Cassandra rejected Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, and Kew in

favor of the Zoological Gardens. She had once trifled with the psychology of animals, and still knew

something about inherited characteristics. On Sunday afternoon, therefore, Katharine, Cassandra, and

William Rodney drove off to the Zoo. As their cab approached the entrance, Katharine bent forward and

"There's Ralph Denham!" she exclaimed. "I told him to meet us here," she added. She had even come

provided with a ticket for him. William's objection that he would not be admitted was, therefore, silenced

directly. But the way in which the two men greeted each other was significant of what was going to happen.

As soon as they had admired the little birds in the large cage William and Cassandra lagged behind, and

Ralph and Katharine pressed on rather in advance. It was an arrangement in which William took his part, and

one that suited his convenience, but he was annoyed all the same. He thought that Katharine should have told

"One of Katharine's friends," he said rather sharply. It was clear that he was irritated, and Cassandra felt for

his annoyance. They were standing by the pen of some Oriental hog, and she was prodding the brute gently

with the point of her umbrella, when a thousand little observations seemed, in some way, to collect in one

center. The center was one of intense and curious emotion. Were they happy? She dismissed the question as

she asked it, scorning herself for applying such simple measures to the rare and splendid emotions of so

unique a couple. Nevertheless, her manner became immediately different, as if, for the first time, she felt

consciously womanly, and as if William might conceivably wish later on to confide in her. She forgot all

about the psychology of animals, and the recurrence of blue eyes and brown, and became instantly engrossed

in her feelings as a woman who could administer consolation, and she hoped that Katharine would keep

ahead with Mr. Denham, as a child who plays at being grownup hopes that her mother won't come in just

yet, and spoil the game. Or was it not rather that she had ceased to play at being grownup, and was

There was still unbroken silence between Katharine and Ralph Denham, but the occupants of the different

"Doing?" she pondered. "Walking in and out of other people's houses. I wonder if these animals are happy?"

she speculated, stopping before a gray bear, who was philosophically playing with a tassel which once,

"No. But he'll soon get over that," she replied. The detachment expressed by her voice puzzled Ralph, and he

would have been glad if she had explained her meaning further. But he was not going to press her for

explanations. Each moment was to be, as far as he could make it, complete in itself, owing nothing of its

happiness to explanations, borrowing neither bright nor dark tints from the future.

"The bears seem happy," he remarked. "But we must buy them a bag of something. There's the place to buy

buns. Let's go and get them." They walked to the counter piled with little paper bags, and each

simultaneously produced a shilling and pressed it upon the young lady, who did not know whether to oblige

the lady or the gentleman, but decided, from conventional reasons, that it was the part of the gentleman to

"I wish to pay," said Ralph peremptorily, refusing the coin which Katharine tendered. "I have a reason for

"I believe you have a reason for everything," she agreed, breaking the bun into parts and tossing them down

the bears' throats, "but I can't believe it's a good one this time. What is your reason?"

He refused to tell her. He could not explain to her that he was offering up consciously all his happiness to her,

and wished, absurdly enough, to pour every possession he had upon the blazing pyre, even his silver and

gold. He wished to keep this distance between themthe distance which separates the devotee from the

Circumstances conspired to make this easier than it would have been, had they been seated in a

drawingroom, for example, with a teatray between them. He saw her against a background of pale grottos

and sleek hides; camels slanted their heavyridded eyes at her, giraffes fastidiously observed her from their

melancholy eminence, and the pinklined trunks of elephants cautiously abstracted buns from her

outstretched hands. Then there were the hothouses. He saw her bending over pythons coiled upon the sand, or

considering the brown rock breaking the stagnant water of the alligators' pool, or searching some minute

section of tropical forest for the golden eye of a lizard or the indrawn movement of the green frogs' flanks. In

particular, he saw her outlined against the deep green waters, in which squadrons of silvery fish wheeled

incessantly, or ogled her for a moment, pressing their distorted mouths against the glass, quivering their tails

straight out behind them. Again, there was the insect house, where she lifted the blinds of the little cages, and

marveled at the purple circles marked upon the rich tussore wings of some lately emerged and

semiconscious butterfly, or at caterpillars immobile like the knobbed twigs of a paleskinned tree, or at slim

green snakes stabbing the glass wall again and again with their flickering cleft tongues. The heat of the air,

and the bloom of heavy flowers, which swam in water or rose stiffly from great red jars, together with the

display of curious patterns and fantastic shapes, produced an atmosphere in which human beings tended to

Opening the door of a house which rang with the mocking and profoundly unhappy laughter of monkeys,

they discovered William and Cassandra. William appeared to be tempting some small reluctant animal to

descend from an upper perch to partake of half an apple. Cassandra was reading out, in her highpitched

tones, an account of this creature's secluded disposition and nocturnal habits. She saw Katharine and

"We thought we'd lost you," said William. He looked from one to the other, and seemed to take stock of

Denham's unfashionable appearance. He seemed to wish to find some outlet for malevolence, but, failing one,

he remained silent. The glance, the slight quiver of the upper lip, were not lost upon Katharine.

"William isn't kind to animals," she remarked. "He doesn't know what they like and what they don't like."

"I take it you're well versed in these matters, Denham," said Rodney, withdrawing his hand with the apple.

"Which is the way to the Reptile House?" Cassandra asked him, not from a genuine desire to visit the reptiles,

but in obedience to her newborn feminine susceptibility, which urged her to charm and conciliate the other

sex. Denham began to give her directions, and Katharine and William moved on together.

Many retorts were obvious, but wishing, on the whole, for peace, Katharine merely inquired:

"Cassandra and I thought of having tea at a little shop in Portland Place," he replied. "I don't know whether

"I'll ask him," she replied, turning her head to look for him. But he and Cassandra were absorbed in the

William and Katharine watched them for a moment, and each looked curiously at the object of the other's

preference. But resting his eye upon Cassandra, to whose elegance the dressmakers had now done justice,

They were professedly looking into the enormous central cage of monkeys, and being thoroughly annoyed by

William, she compared him to a wretched misanthropical ape, huddled in a scrap of old shawl at the end of a

pole, darting peevish glances of suspicion and distrust at his companions. Her tolerance was deserting her.

The events of the past week had worn it thin. She was in one of those moods, perhaps not uncommon with

either sex, when the other becomes very clearly distinguished, and of contemptible baseness, so that the

necessity of association is degrading, and the tie, which at such moments is always extremely close, drags

like a halter round the neck. William's exacting demands and his jealousy had pulled her down into some

horrible swamp of her nature where the primeval struggle between man and woman still rages.

"You seem to delight in hurting me," William persisted. "Why did you say that just now about my behavior

to animals?" As he spoke he rattled his stick against the bars of the cage, which gave his words an

"Because it's true. You never see what any one feels," she said. "You think of no one but yourself."

"That is not true," said William. By his determined rattling he had now collected the animated attention of

some halfdozen apes. Either to propitiate them, or to show his consideration for their feelings, he proceeded

The sight, unfortunately, was so comically apt in its illustration of the picture in her mind, the ruse was so

transparent, that Katharine was seized with laughter. She laughed uncontrollably. William flushed red. No

display of anger could have hurt his feelings more profoundly. It was not only that she was laughing at him;

"I don't know what you're laughing at," he muttered, and, turning, found that the other couple had rejoined

them. As if the matter had been privately agreed upon, the couples separated once more, Katharine and

Denham passing out of the house without more than a perfunctory glance round them. Denham obeyed what

seemed to be Katharine's wish in thus making haste. Some change had come over her. He connected it with

her laughter, and her few words in private with Rodney; he felt that she had become unfriendly to him. She

talked, but her remarks were indifferent, and when he spoke her attention seemed to wander. This change of

mood was at first extremely disagreeable to him; but soon he found it salutary. The pale drizzling atmosphere

of the day affected him, also. The charm, the insidious magic in which he had luxuriated, were suddenly

gone; his feeling had become one of friendly respect, and to his great pleasure he found himself thinking

spontaneously of the relief of finding himself alone in his room that night. In his surprise at the suddenness of

the change, and at the extent of his freedom, he bethought him of a daring plan, by which the ghost of

Katharine could be more effectually exorcised than by mere abstinence. He would ask her to come home with

him to tea. He would force her through the mill of family life; he would place her in a light unsparing and

revealing. His family would find nothing to admire in her, and she, he felt certain, would despise them all,

and this, too, would help him. He felt himself becoming more and more merciless towards her. By such

courageous measures any one, he thought, could end the absurd passions which were the cause of so much

pain and waste. He could foresee a time when his experiences, his discovery, and his triumph were made

available for younger brothers who found themselves in the same predicament. He looked at his watch, and

"Anyhow," he added, "I think we've seen enough for one afternoon. Where have the others got to?" He

"We'd better be independent of them. The best plan will be for you to come back to tea with me."

She assented, having very little notion whether Highgate was next door to Regent's Park or not. She was only

glad to put off her return to the family teatable in Chelsea for an hour or two. They proceeded with dogged

determination through the winding roads of Regent's Park, and the Sundaystricken streets of the

neighborhood, in the direction of the Tube station. Ignorant of the way, she resigned herself entirely to him,

and found his silence a convenient cover beneath which to continue her anger with Rodney.

When they stepped out of the train into the still grayer gloom of Highgate, she wondered, for the first time,

where he was taking her. Had he a family, or did he live alone in rooms? On the whole she was inclined to

believe that he was the only son of an aged, and possibly invalid, mother. She sketched lightly, upon the

blank vista down which they walked, the little white house and the tremulous old lady rising from behind her

teatable to greet her with faltering words about "my son's friends," and was on the point of asking Ralph to

tell her what she might expect, when he jerked open one of the infinite number of identical wooden doors,

and led her up a tiled path to a porch in the Alpine style of architecture. As they listened to the shaking of the

bell in the basement, she could summon no vision to replace the one so rudely destroyed.

"I must warn you to expect a family party," said Ralph. "They're mostly in on Sundays. We can go to my

While Ralph took off his coat, she had time to notice the ferns and photographs and draperies, and to hear a

hum, or rather a babble, of voices talking each other down, from the sound of them. The rigidity of extreme

shyness came over her. She kept as far behind Denham as she could, and walked stiffly after him into a room

blazing with unshaded lights, which fell upon a number of people, of different ages, sitting round a large

diningroom table untidily strewn with food, and unflinchingly lit up by incandescent gas. Ralph walked

A large elderly lady, bent over an unsatisfactory spiritlamp, looked up with a little frown, and observed:

"I beg your pardon. I thought you were one of my own girls. Dorothy," she continued on the same breath, to

catch the servant before she left the room, "we shall want some more methylated spiritsunless the lamp

itself is out of order. If one of you could invent a good spiritlamp" she sighed, looking generally down

the table, and then began seeking among the china before her for two clean cups for the newcomers.

The unsparing light revealed more ugliness than Katharine had seen in one room for a very long time. It was

the ugliness of enormous folds of brown material, looped and festooned, of plush curtains, from which

depended balls and fringes, partially concealing bookshelves swollen with black schooltexts. Her eye was

arrested by crossed scabbards of fretted wood upon the dull green wall, and whereever there was a high flat

eminence, some fern waved from a pot of crinkled china, or a bronze horse reared so high that the stump of a

tree had to sustain his forequarters. The waters of family life seemed to rise and close over her head, and she

"You see, Miss Hilbery, my children all come in at different hours and want different things. (The tray should

go up if you've done, Johnnie.) My boy Charles is in bed with a cold. What else can you expect?standing

A boy of sixteen, who appeared to be Johnnie, grumbled derisively both at the notion of drawingroom tea

and at the necessity of carrying a tray up to his brother. But he took himself off, being enjoined by his mother

"It's much nicer like this," said Katharine, applying herself with determination to the dissection of her cake;

they had given her too large a slice. She knew that Mrs. Denham suspected her of critical comparisons. She

knew that she was making poor progress with her cake. Mrs. Denham had looked at her sufficiently often to

make it clear to Katharine that she was asking who this young woman was, and why Ralph had brought her to

tea with them. There was an obvious reason, which Mrs. Denham had probably reached by this time.

Outwardly, she was behaving with rather rusty and laborious civility. She was making conversation about the

"When I first married," she said, "Highgate was quite separate from London, Miss Hilbery, and this house,

though you wouldn't believe it, had a view of apple orchards. That was before the Middletons built their

"It must be a great advantage to live at the top of a hill," said Katharine. Mrs. Denham agreed effusively, as if

"Yes, indeed, we find it very healthy," she said, and she went on, as people who live in the suburbs so often

do, to prove that it was healthier, more convenient, and less spoilt than any suburb round London. She spoke

with such emphasis that it was quite obvious that she expressed unpopular views, and that her children

"The ceiling's fallen down in the pantry again," said Hester, a girl of eighteen, abruptly.

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Denham. "It's only a little bit of plasterI don't see how any house could be expected

to stand the wear and tear you give it." Here some family joke exploded, which Katharine could not follow.

"Miss Hilbery's thinking us all so rude," she added reprovingly. Miss Hilbery smiled and shook her head, and

was conscious that a great many eyes rested upon her, for a moment, as if they would find pleasure in

discussing her when she was gone. Owing, perhaps, to this critical glance, Katharine decided that Ralph

Denham's family was commonplace, unshapely, lacking in charm, and fitly expressed by the hideous nature

of their furniture and decorations. She glanced along a mantelpiece ranged with bronze chariots, silver vases,

She did not apply her judgment consciously to Ralph, but when she looked at him, a moment later, she rated

He had made no effort to tide over the discomforts of her introduction, and now, engaged in argument with

his brother, apparently forgot her presence. She must have counted upon his support more than she realized,

for this indifference, emphasized, as it was, by the insignificant commonplace of his surroundings, awoke

her, not only to that ugliness, but to her own folly. She thought of one scene after another in a few seconds,

with that shudder which is almost a blush. She had believed him when he spoke of friendship. She had

believed in a spiritual light burning steadily and steadfastly behind the erratic disorder and incoherence of

life. The light was now gone out, suddenly, as if a sponge had blotted it. The litter of the table and the tedious

but exacting conversation of Mrs. Denham remained: they struck, indeed, upon a mind bereft of all defences,

and, keenly conscious of the degradation which is the result of strife whether victorious or not, she thought

gloomily of her loneliness, of life's futility, of the barren prose of reality, of William Rodney, of her mother,

Her answers to Mrs. Denham were perfunctory to the verge of rudeness, and to Ralph, who watched her

narrowly, she seemed further away than was compatible with her physical closeness. He glanced at her, and

ground out further steps in his argument, determined that no folly should remain when this experience was

over. Next moment, a silence, sudden and complete, descended upon them all. The silence of all these people

round the untidy table was enormous and hideous; something horrible seemed about to burst from it, but they

endured it obstinately. A second later the door opened and there was a stir of relief; cries of "Hullo, Joan!

There's nothing left for you to eat," broke up the oppressive concentration of so many eyes upon the

tablecloth, and set the waters of family life dashing in brisk little waves again. It was obvious that Joan had

some mysterious and beneficent power upon her family. She went up to Katharine as if she had heard of her,

and was very glad to see her at last. She explained that she had been visiting an uncle who was ill, and that

had kept her. No, she hadn't had any tea, but a slice of bread would do. Some one handed up a hot cake,

which had been keeping warm in the fender; she sat down by her mother's side, Mrs. Denham's anxieties

seemed to relax, and every one began eating and drinking, as if tea had begun over again. Hester voluntarily

explained to Katharine that she was reading to pass some examination, because she wanted more than

"No, Johnnie, no Greek at mealtimes," said Joan, overhearing him instantly. "She's up at all hours of the

night over her books, Miss Hilbery, and I'm sure that's not the way to pass examinations," she went on,

smiling at Katharine, with the worried humorous smile of the elder sister whose younger brothers and sisters

"Did I say Greek? Well, never mind. No dead languages at teatime. My dear boy, don't trouble to make me

"Or if you do, surely there's the toastingfork somewhere?" said Mrs. Denham, still cherishing the belief that

the breadknife could be spoilt. "Do one of you ring and ask for one," she said, without any conviction that

she would be obeyed. "But is Ann coming to be with Uncle Joseph?" she continued. "If so, surely they had

better send Amy to us" and in the mysterious delight of learning further details of these arrangements, and

suggesting more sensible plans of her own, which, from the aggrieved way in which she spoke, she did not

seem to expect any one to adopt, Mrs. Denham completely forgot the presence of a welldressed visitor, who

had to be informed about the amenities of Highgate. As soon as Joan had taken her seat, an argument had

sprung up on either side of Katharine, as to whether the Salvation Army has any right to play hymns at street

corners on Sunday mornings, thereby making it impossible for James to have his sleep out, and tampering

"You see, James likes to lie in bed and sleep like a hog," said Johnnie, explaining himself to Katharine,

"Because Sundays are my one chance in the week of having my sleep out. Johnnie messes with stinking

They appealed to her, and she forgot her cake and began to laugh and talk and argue with sudden animation.

The large family seemed to her so warm and various that she forgot to censure them for their taste in pottery.

But the personal question between James and Johnnie merged into some argument already, apparently,

debated, so that the parts had been distributed among the family, in which Ralph took the lead; and Katharine

found herself opposed to him and the champion of Johnnie's cause, who, it appeared, always lost his head and

"Yes, yes, that's what I mean. She's got it right," he exclaimed, after Katharine had restated his case, and

made it more precise. The debate was left almost solely to Katharine and Ralph. They looked into each

other's eyes fixedly, like wrestlers trying to see what movement is coming next, and while Ralph spoke,

Katharine bit her lower lip, and was always ready with her next point as soon as he had done. They were very

But at the most exciting stage of the argument, for no reason that Katharine could see, all chairs were pushed

back, and one after another the Denham family got up and went out of the door, as if a bell had summoned

them. She was not used to the clockwork regulations of a large family. She hesitated in what she was saying,

and rose. Mrs. Denham and Joan had drawn together and stood by the fireplace, slightly raising their skirts

above their ankles, and discussing something which had an air of being very serious and very private. They

appeared to have forgotten her presence among them. Ralph stood holding the door open for her.

"Won't you come up to my room?" he said. And Katharine, glancing back at Joan, who smiled at her in a

preoccupied way, followed Ralph upstairs. She was thinking of their argument, and when, after the long

"The question is, then, at what point is it right for the individual to assert his will against the will of the

For some time they continued the argument, and then the intervals between one statement and the next

became longer and longer, and they spoke more speculatively and less pugnaciously, and at last fell silent.

Katharine went over the argument in her mind, remembering how, now and then, it had been set

conspicuously on the right course by some remark offered either by James or by Johnnie.

"Your brothers are very clever," she said. "I suppose you're in the habit of arguing?"

"James and Johnnie will go on like that for hours," Ralph replied. "So will Hester, if you start her upon

He was immensely pleased by Katharine's praise of his brothers and sisters. He would have liked to go on

"I see that it must be difficult to leave them," Katharine continued. His deep pride in his family was more

evident to him, at that moment, than ever before, and the idea of living alone in a cottage was ridiculous. All

that brotherhood and sisterhood, and a common childhood in a common past mean, all the stability, the

unambitious comradeship, and tacit understanding of family life at its best, came to his mind, and he thought

of them as a company, of which he was the leader, bound on a difficult, dreary, but glorious voyage. And it

"My tame rook," he explained briefly. "A cat had bitten one of its legs." She looked at the rook, and her eyes

"You sit here and read?" she said, her eyes resting upon his books. He said that he was in the habit of

"The great advantage of Highgate is the view over London. At night the view from my window is splendid."

He was extremely anxious that she should appreciate his view, and she rose to see what was to be seen. It was

already dark enough for the turbulent haze to be yellow with the light of street lamps, and she tried to

determine the quarters of the city beneath her. The sight of her gazing from his window gave him a peculiar

satisfaction. When she turned, at length, he was still sitting motionless in his chair.

"It must be late," she said. "I must be going." She settled upon the arm of the chair irresolutely, thinking that

she had no wish to go home. William would be there, and he would find some way of making things

unpleasant for her, and the memory of their quarrel came back to her. She had noticed Ralph's coldness, too.

She looked at him, and from his fixed stare she thought that he must be working out some theory, some

argument. He had thought, perhaps, of some fresh point in his position, as to the bounds of personal liberty.

"When you're here, it's differentI'm happy. You've only to walk to the windowyou've only to talk about

An immense relief, and a reluctance to enjoy that relief, conflicted in her heart.

"God knows I tried," he replied. "I've done my best to see you as you are, without any of this damned

romantic nonsense. That was why I asked you here, and it's increased my folly. When you're gone I shall look

out of that window and think of you. I shall waste the whole evening thinking of you. I shall waste my whole

He spoke with such vehemence that her relief disappeared; she frowned; and her tone changed to one almost

"This is what I foretold. We shall gain nothing but unhappiness. Look at me, Ralph." He looked at her. "I

assure you that I'm far more ordinary than I appear. Beauty means nothing whatever. In fact, the most

beautiful women are generally the most stupid. I'm not that, but I'm a matteroffact, prosaic, rather ordinary

character; I order the dinner, I pay the bills, I do the accounts, I wind up the clock, and I never look at a

"You come and see me among flowers and pictures, and think me mysterious, romantic, and all the rest of it.

Being yourself very inexperienced and very emotional, you go home and invent a story about me, and now

you can't separate me from the person you've imagined me to be. You call that, I suppose, being in love; as a

matter of fact it's being in delusion. All romantic people are the same," she added. "My mother spends her life

in making stories about the people she's fond of. But I won't have you do it about me, if I can help it."

"That may be what we have to face," he said. "There may be nothing else. Nothing but what we imagine."

"You won't be lonely then," he said. "According to what people say, marriage is a very queer business. They

say it's different from anything else. It may be true. I've known one or two cases where it seems to be true."

He hoped that she would go on with the subject. But she made no reply. He had done his best to master

himself, and his voice was sufficiently indifferent, but her silence tormented him. She would never speak to

him of Rodney of her own accord, and her reserve left a whole continent of her soul in darkness.

"It may be put off even longer than that," she said, as if by an afterthought. "Some one in the office is ill, and

"He has his work," she replied. "He has lots of things that interest him. . . . I know I've been to that place,"

she broke off, pointing to a photograph. "But I can't remember where it isoh, of course it's Oxford. Now,

"It's not that," he said impatiently. "It's that I want to be where I can see you."

"You're going to go on dreaming and imagining and making up stories about me as you walk along the street,

"No. I shall think of you ordering dinner, paying bills, doing the accounts, showing old ladies the relics"

"That's better," she said. "You can think of me tomorrow morning looking up dates in the 'Dictionary of

At this she smiled, but in another moment her smile faded, either because of his words or of the way in which

he spoke them. She was capable of forgetting things. He saw that. But what more did he see? Was he not

looking at something she had never shown to anybody? Was it not something so profound that the notion of

his seeing it almost shocked her? Her smile faded, and for a moment she seemed upon the point of speaking,

but looking at him in silence, with a look that seemed to ask what she could not put into words, she turned

Like a strain of music, the effect of Katharine's presence slowly died from the room in which Ralph sat alone.

The music had ceased in the rapture of its melody. He strained to catch the faintest lingering echoes; for a

moment the memory lulled him into peace; but soon it failed, and he paced the room so hungry for the sound

to come again that he was conscious of no other desire left in life. She had gone without speaking; abruptly a

chasm had been cut in his course, down which the tide of his being plunged in disorder; fell upon rocks; flung

itself to destruction. The distress had an effect of physical ruin and disaster. He trembled; he was white; he

felt exhausted, as if by a great physical effort. He sank at last into a chair standing opposite her empty one,

and marked, mechanically, with his eye upon the clock, how she went farther and farther from him, was

home now, and now, doubtless, again with Rodney. But it was long before he could realize these facts; the

immense desire for her presence churned his senses into foam, into froth, into a haze of emotion that removed

all facts from his grasp, and gave him a strange sense of distance, even from the material shapes of wall and

window by which he was surrounded. The prospect of the future, now that the strength of his passion was

The marriage would take place in September, she had said; that allowed him, then, six full months in which

to undergo these terrible extremes of emotion. Six months of torture, and after that the silence of the grave,

the isolation of the insane, the exile of the damned; at best, a life from which the chief good was knowingly

and for ever excluded. An impartial judge might have assured him that his chief hope of recovery lay in this

mystic temper, which identified a living woman with much that no human beings long possess in the eyes of

each other; she would pass, and the desire for her vanish, but his belief in what she stood for, detached from

her, would remain. This line of thought offered, perhaps, some respite, and possessed of a brain that had its

station considerably above the tumult of the senses, he tried to reduce the vague and wandering incoherency

of his emotions to order. The sense of selfpreservation was strong in him, and Katharine herself had

strangely revived it by convincing him that his family deserved and needed all his strength. She was right,

and for their sake, if not for his own, this passion, which could bear no fruit, must be cut off, uprooted, shown

to be as visionary and baseless as she had maintained. The best way of achieving this was not to run away

from her, but to face her, and having steeped himself in her qualities, to convince his reason that they were, as

she assured him, not those that he imagined. She was a practical woman, a domestic wife for an inferior poet,

endowed with romantic beauty by some freak of unintelligent Nature. No doubt her beauty itself would not

stand examination. He had the means of settling this point at least. He possessed a book of photographs from

the Greek statues; the head of a goddess, if the lower part were concealed, had often given him the ecstasy of

being in Katharine's presence. He took it down from the shelf and found the picture. To this he added a note

from her, bidding him meet her at the Zoo. He had a flower which he had picked at Kew to teach her botany.

Such were his relics. He placed them before him, and set himself to visualize her so clearly that no deception

or delusion was possible. In a second he could see her, with the sun slanting across her dress, coming towards

him down the green walk at Kew. He made her sit upon the seat beside him. He heard her voice, so low and

yet so decided in its tone; she spoke reasonably of indifferent matters. He could see her faults, and analyze

her virtues. His pulse became quieter, and his brain increased in clarity. This time she could not escape him.

The illusion of her presence became more and more complete. They seemed to pass in and out of each other's

minds, questioning and answering. The utmost fullness of communion seemed to be theirs. Thus united, he

felt himself raised to an eminence, exalted, and filled with a power of achievement such as he had never

known in singleness. Once more he told over conscientiously her faults, both of face and character; they were

clearly known to him; but they merged themselves in the flawless union that was born of their association.

They surveyed life to its uttermost limits. How deep it was when looked at from this height! How sublime!

How the commonest things moved him almost to tears! Thus, he forgot the inevitable limitations; he forgot

her absence, he thought it of no account whether she married him or another; nothing mattered, save that she

should exist, and that he should love her. Some words of these reflections were uttered aloud, and it happened

that among them were the words, "I love her." It was the first time that he had used the word "love" to

describe his feeling; madness, romance, hallucinationhe had called it by these names before; but having,

apparently by accident, stumbled upon the word "love," he repeated it again and again with a sense of

"But I'm in love with you!" he exclaimed, with something like dismay. He leant against the windowsill,

looking over the city as she had looked. Everything had become miraculously different and completely

distinct. His feelings were justified and needed no further explanation. But he must impart them to some one,

because his discovery was so important that it concerned other people too. Shutting the book of Greek

photographs, and hiding his relics, he ran downstairs, snatched his coat, and passed out of doors.

The lamps were being lit, but the streets were dark enough and empty enough to let him walk his fastest, and

to talk aloud as he walked. He had no doubt where he was going. He was going to find Mary Datchet. The

desire to share what he felt, with some one who understood it, was so imperious that he did not question it.

He was soon in her street. He ran up the stairs leading to her flat two steps at a time, and it never crossed his

mind that she might not be at home. As he rang her bell, he seemed to himself to be announcing the presence

of something wonderful that was separate from himself, and gave him power and authority over all other

people. Mary came to the door after a moment's pause. He was perfectly silent, and in the dusk his face

"Do you know each other?" she said, to his extreme surprise, for he had counted on finding her alone. A

"We were just going through some papers," said Mary. "Mr. Basnett has to help me, because I don't know

much about my work yet. It's the new society," she explained. "I'm the secretary. I'm no longer at Russell

The voice in which she gave this information was so constrained as to sound almost harsh.

"What are your aims?" said Ralph. He looked neither at Mary nor at Mr. Basnett. Mr. Basnett thought he had

seldom seen a more disagreeable or formidable man than this friend of Mary's, this sarcasticlooking,

whitefaced Mr. Denham, who seemed to demand, as if by right, an account of their proposals, and to

criticize them before he had heard them. Nevertheless, he explained his projects as clearly as he could, and

"I see," said Ralph, when he had done. "D'you know, Mary," he suddenly remarked, "I believe I'm in for a

cold. Have you any quinine?" The look which he cast at her frightened her; it expressed mutely, perhaps

without his own consciousness, something deep, wild, and passionate. She left the room at once. Her heart

beat fast at the knowledge of Ralph's presence; but it beat with pain, and with an extraordinary fear. She

"Of course, I agree with you," she heard Ralph say, in this strange voice, to Mr. Basnett. "But there's more

that might be done. Have you seen Judson, for instance? You should make a point of getting him."

"Judson's address?" Mr. Basnett inquired, pulling out his notebook and preparing to write. For twenty

minutes, perhaps, he wrote down names, addresses, and other suggestions that Ralph dictated to him. Then,

when Ralph fell silent, Mr. Basnett felt that his presence was not desired, and thanking Ralph for his help,

with a sense that he was very young and ignorant compared with him, he said goodbye.

"Mary," said Ralph, directly Mr. Basnett had shut the door and they were alone together. "Mary," he

repeated. But the old difficulty of speaking to Mary without reserve prevented him from continuing. His

desire to proclaim his love for Katharine was still strong in him, but he had felt, directly he saw Mary, that he

could not share it with her. The feeling increased as he sat talking to Mr. Basnett. And yet all the time he was

thinking of Katharine, and marveling at his love. The tone in which he spoke Mary's name was harsh.

"What is it, Ralph?" she asked, startled by his tone. She looked at him anxiously, and her little frown showed

that she was trying painfully to understand him, and was puzzled. He could feel her groping for his meaning,

and he was annoyed with her, and thought how he had always found her slow, painstaking, and clumsy. He

had behaved badly to her, too, which made his irritation the more acute. Without waiting for him to answer,

she rose as if his answer were indifferent to her, and began to put in order some papers that Mr. Basnett had

left on the table. She hummed a scrap of a tune under her breath, and moved about the room as if she were

"No," Ralph replied. She did not press him further. They sat side by side without speaking, and Mary reached

"I'm glad you thought so. It's tremendously interesting work, and considering everything, I think we've done

very well. But I'm inclined to agree with you; we ought to try to be more conciliatory. We're absurdly strict.

It's difficult to see that there may be sense in what one's opponents say, though they are one's opponents.

Horace Basnett is certainly too uncompromising. I mustn't forget to see that he writes that letter to Judson.

You're too busy, I suppose, to come on to our committee?" She spoke in the most impersonal manner.

"Our executive meets every week, of course," she observed. "But some of our members don't come more than

once a month. Members of Parliament are the worst; it was a mistake, I think, to ask them."

"You've not taken your quinine," she said, looking up and seeing the tabloids upon the mantelpiece.

"Mary, I'm a brute!" he exclaimed. "Here I come and waste your time, and do nothing but make myself

"I've not got a cold. That was a lie. There's nothing the matter with me. I'm mad, I suppose. I ought to have

had the decency to keep away. But I wanted to see youI wanted to tell youI'm in love, Mary." He spoke

"I suppose I'm in love. Anyhow, I'm out of my mind. I can't think, I can't work, I don't care a hang for

anything in the world. Good Heavens, Mary! I'm in torment! One moment I'm happy; next I'm miserable. I

hate her for half an hour; then I'd give my whole life to be with her for ten minutes; all the time I don't know

what I feel, or why I feel it; it's insanity, and yet it's perfectly reasonable. Can you make any sense of it? Can

you see what's happened? I'm raving, I know; don't listen, Mary; go on with your work."

He rose and began, as usual, to pace up and down the room. He knew that what he had just said bore very

little resemblance to what he felt, for Mary's presence acted upon him like a very strong magnet, drawing

from him certain expressions which were not those he made use of when he spoke to himself, nor did they

represent his deepest feelings. He felt a little contempt for himself at having spoken thus; but somehow he

"Do sit down," said Mary suddenly. "You make me so" She spoke with unusual irritability, and Ralph,

"I see," said Mary. But in truth the calm of his manner, now that he was sitting down once more, wrapt her in

the presence of something which she felt to be so strong, so mysterious, so incalculable, that she scarcely

dared to attempt to intercept it by any word or question that she was able to frame. She looked at Ralph

blankly, with a kind of awe in her face, her lips slightly parted, and her brows raised. He was apparently quite

unconscious of her gaze. Then, as if she could look no longer, she leant back in her chair, and half closed her

eyes. The distance between them hurt her terribly; one thing after another came into her mind, tempting her to

assail Ralph with questions, to force him to confide in her, and to enjoy once more his intimacy. But she

rejected every impulse, for she could not speak without doing violence to some reserve which had grown

between them, putting them a little far from each other, so that he seemed to her dignified and remote, like a

"Is there anything that I could do for you?" she asked gently, and even with courtesy, at length.

"You could see herno, that's not what I want; you mustn't bother about me, Mary." He, too, spoke very

"No," he shook his head. "Katharine was saying today how lonely we are." She saw the effort with which he

spoke Katharine's name, and believed that he forced himself to make amends now for his concealment in the

past. At any rate, she was conscious of no anger against him; but rather of a deep pity for one condemned to

suffer as she had suffered. But in the case of Katharine it was different; she was indignant with Katharine.

"No, no. It's Sunday," she replied. "I was thinking of Katharine. She doesn't understand about work. She's

never had to. She doesn't know what work is. I've only found out myself quite lately. But it's the thing that

"Nothing that one can count upon," she returned. "After all, other people" she stopped, but forced herself

to go on. "Where should I be now if I hadn't got to go to my office every day? Thousands of people would

tell you the same thingthousands of women. I tell you, work is the only thing that saved me, Ralph." He set

his mouth, as if her words rained blows on him; he looked as if he had made up his mind to bear anything she

might say, in silence. He had deserved it, and there would be relief in having to bear it. But she broke off, and

rose as if to fetch something from the next room. Before she reached the door she turned back, and stood

"It's all turned out splendidly for me," she said. "It will for you, too. I'm sure of that. Because, after all,

"Mary!" he exclaimed. But her head was turned away, and he could not say what he wished to say. "Mary,

you're splendid," he concluded. She faced him as he spoke, and gave him her hand. She had suffered and

relinquished, she had seen her future turned from one of infinite promise to one of barrenness, and yet,

somehow, over what she scarcely knew, and with what results she could hardly foretell, she had conquered.

With Ralph's eyes upon her, smiling straight back at him serenely and proudly, she knew, for the first time,

The streets were empty enough on Sunday night, and if the Sabbath, and the domestic amusements proper to

the Sabbath, had not kept people indoors, a high strong wind might very probably have done so. Ralph

Denham was aware of a tumult in the street much in accordance with his own sensations. The gusts,

sweeping along the Strand, seemed at the same time to blow a clear space across the sky in which stars

appeared, and for a short time the quickspeeding silver moon riding through clouds, as if they were waves

of water surging round her and over her. They swamped her, but she emerged; they broke over her and

covered her again; she issued forth indomitable. In the country fields all the wreckage of winter was being

dispersed; the dead leaves, the withered bracken, the dry and discolored grass, but no bud would be broken,

nor would the new stalks that showed above the earth take any harm, and perhaps tomorrow a line of blue or

yellow would show through a slit in their green. But the whirl of the atmosphere alone was in Denham's

mood, and what of star or blossom appeared was only as a light gleaming for a second upon heaped waves

fast following each other. He had not been able to speak to Mary, though for a moment he had come near

enough to be tantalized by a wonderful possibility of understanding. But the desire to communicate

something of the very greatest importance possessed him completely; he still wished to bestow this gift upon

some other human being; he sought their company. More by instinct than by conscious choice, he took the

direction which led to Rodney's rooms. He knocked loudly upon his door; but no one answered. He rang the

bell. It took him some time to accept the fact that Rodney was out. When he could no longer pretend that the

sound of the wind in the old building was the sound of some one rising from his chair, he ran downstairs

again, as if his goal had been altered and only just revealed to him. He walked in the direction of Chelsea.

But physical fatigue, for he had not dined and had tramped both far and fast, made him sit for a moment upon

a seat on the Embankment. One of the regular occupants of those seats, an elderly man who had drunk

himself, probably, out of work and lodging, drifted up, begged a match, and sat down beside him. It was a

windy night, he said; times were hard; some long story of bad luck and injustice followed, told so often that

the man seemed to be talking to himself, or, perhaps, the neglect of his audience had long made any attempt

to catch their attention seem scarcely worth while. When he began to speak Ralph had a wild desire to talk to

him; to question him; to make him understand. He did, in fact, interrupt him at one point; but it was useless.

The ancient story of failure, illluck, undeserved disaster, went down the wind, disconnected syllables flying

past Ralph's ears with a queer alternation of loudness and faintness as if, at certain moments, the man's

memory of his wrongs revived and then flagged, dying down at last into a grumble of resignation, which

seemed to represent a final lapse into the accustomed despair. The unhappy voice afflicted Ralph, but it also

angered him. And when the elderly man refused to listen and mumbled on, an odd image came to his mind of

a lighthouse besieged by the flying bodies of lost birds, who were dashed senseless, by the gale, against the

glass. He had a strange sensation that he was both lighthouse and bird; he was steadfast and brilliant; and at

the same time he was whirled, with all other things, senseless against the glass. He got up, left his tribute of

silver, and pressed on, with the wind against him. The image of the lighthouse and the storm full of birds

persisted, taking the place of more definite thoughts, as he walked past the Houses of Parliament and down

Grosvenor Road, by the side of the river. In his state of physical fatigue, details merged themselves in the

vaster prospect, of which the flying gloom and the intermittent lights of lampposts and private houses were

the outward token, but he never lost his sense of walking in the direction of Katharine's house. He took it for

granted that something would then happen, and, as he walked on, his mind became more and more full of

pleasure and expectancy. Within a certain radius of her house the streets came under the influence of her

presence. Each house had an individuality known to Ralph, because of the tremendous individuality of the

house in which she lived. For some yards before reaching the Hilberys' door he walked in a trance of

pleasure, but when he reached it, and pushed the gate of the little garden open, he hesitated. He did not know

what to do next. There was no hurry, however, for the outside of the house held pleasure enough to last him

some time longer. He crossed the road, and leant against the balustrade of the Embankment, fixing his eyes

Lights burnt in the three long windows of the drawingroom. The space of the room behind became, in

Ralph's vision, the center of the dark, flying wilderness of the world; the justification for the welter of

confusion surrounding it; the steady light which cast its beams, like those of a lighthouse, with searching

composure over the trackless waste. In this little sanctuary were gathered together several different people,

but their identity was dissolved in a general glory of something that might, perhaps, be called civilization; at

any rate, all dryness, all safety, all that stood up above the surge and preserved a consciousness of its own,

was centered in the drawingroom of the Hilberys. Its purpose was beneficent; and yet so far above his level

as to have something austere about it, a light that cast itself out and yet kept itself aloof. Then he began, in his

mind, to distinguish different individuals within, consciously refusing as yet to attack the figure of Katharine.

His thoughts lingered over Mrs. Hilbery and Cassandra; and then he turned to Rodney and Mr. Hilbery.

Physically, he saw them bathed in that steady flow of yellow light which filled the long oblongs of the

windows; in their movements they were beautiful; and in their speech he figured a reserve of meaning,

unspoken, but understood. At length, after all this halfconscious selection and arrangement, he allowed

himself to approach the figure of Katharine herself; and instantly the scene was flooded with excitement. He

did not see her in the body; he seemed curiously to see her as a shape of light, the light itself; he seemed,

simplified and exhausted as he was, to be like one of those lost birds fascinated by the lighthouse and held to

These thoughts drove him to tramp a beat up and down the pavement before the Hilberys' gate. He did not

trouble himself to make any plans for the future. Something of an unknown kind would decide both the

coming year and the coming hour. Now and again, in his vigil, he sought the light in the long windows, or

glanced at the ray which gilded a few leaves and a few blades of grass in the little garden. For a long time the

light burnt without changing. He had just reached the limit of his beat and was turning, when the front door

opened, and the aspect of the house was entirely changed. A black figure came down the little pathway and

paused at the gate. Denham understood instantly that it was Rodney. Without hesitation, and conscious only

of a great friendliness for any one coming from that lighted room, he walked straight up to him and stopped

him. In the flurry of the wind Rodney was taken aback, and for the moment tried to press on, muttering

Ralph mumbled something about being on his way home. They walked on together, though Rodney walked

He was very unhappy. That afternoon Cassandra had repulsed him; he had tried to explain to her the

difficulties of the situation, and to suggest the nature of his feelings for her without saying anything definite

or anything offensive to her. But he had lost his head; under the goad of Katharine's ridicule he had said too

much, and Cassandra, superb in her dignity and severity, had refused to hear another word, and threatened an

immediate return to her home. His agitation, after an evening spent between the two women, was extreme.

Moreover, he could not help suspecting that Ralph was wandering near the Hilberys' house, at this hour, for

reasons connected with Katharine. There was probably some understanding between themnot that anything

of the kind mattered to him now. He was convinced that he had never cared for any one save Cassandra, and

Katharine's future was no concern of his. Aloud, he said, shortly, that he was very tired and wished to find a

cab. But on Sunday night, on the Embankment, cabs were hard to come by, and Rodney found himself

constrained to walk some distance, at any rate, in Denham's company. Denham maintained his silence.

Rodney's irritation lapsed. He found the silence oddly suggestive of the good masculine qualities which he

much respected, and had at this moment great reason to need. After the mystery, difficulty, and uncertainty of

dealing with the other sex, intercourse with one's own is apt to have a composing and even ennobling

influence, since plain speaking is possible and subterfuges of no avail. Rodney, too, was much in need of a

confidant; Katharine, despite her promises of help, had failed him at the critical moment; she had gone off

with Denham; she was, perhaps, tormenting Denham as she had tormented him. How grave and stable he

seemed, speaking little, and walking firmly, compared with what Rodney knew of his own torments and

indecisions! He began to cast about for some way of telling the story of his relations with Katharine and

Cassandra that would not lower him in Denham's eyes. It then occurred to him that, perhaps, Katharine

herself had confided in Denham; they had something in common; it was likely that they had discussed him

that very afternoon. The desire to discover what they had said of him now came uppermost in his mind. He

recalled Katharine's laugh; he remembered that she had gone, laughing, to walk with Denham.

This seemed to confirm Rodney's belief that he had been discussed. He turned over the unpalatable idea for a

"Um," said Denham, who seemed to himself possessed of complete understanding, not merely of women, but

of the entire universe. He could read Rodney, too, like a book. He knew that he was unhappy, and he pitied

"You say something and theyfly into a passion. Or for no reason at all, they laugh. I take it that no amount

of education will" The remainder of the sentence was lost in the high wind, against which they had to

struggle; but Denham understood that he referred to Katharine's laughter, and that the memory of it was still

hurting him. In comparison with Rodney, Denham felt himself very secure; he saw Rodney as one of the lost

birds dashed senseless against the glass; one of the flying bodies of which the air was full. But he and

Katharine were alone together, aloft, splendid, and luminous with a twofold radiance. He pitied the unstable

creature beside him; he felt a desire to protect him, exposed without the knowledge which made his own way

so direct. They were united as the adventurous are united, though one reaches the goal and the other perishes

This sentence, apparently addressed to no other human being, reached Denham's ears. The wind seemed to

"You love her." Was that his own voice, which seemed to sound in the air several yards in front of him?

The wind blew a space between the wordsblew them so far away that they seemed unspoken.

This was certainly spoken by the man at Denham's side. The voice had all the marks of Rodney's character,

and recalled, with; strange vividness, his personal appearance. Denham could see him against the blank

buildings and towers of the horizon. He saw him dignified, exalted, and tragic, as he might have appeared

Ralph spoke distinctly and deliberately, as if Rodney's confession had made this statement necessary.

"Ah, I've always known it," he cried, "I've known it from the first. You'll marry her!"

The cry had a note of despair in it. Again the wind intercepted their words. They said no more. At length they

"My God, Denham, what fools we both are!" Rodney exclaimed. They looked at each other, queerly, in the

light of the lamp. Fools! They seemed to confess to each other the extreme depths of their folly. For the

moment, under the lamppost, they seemed to be aware of some common knowledge which did away with

the possibility of rivalry, and made them feel more sympathy for each other than for any one else in the

world. Giving simultaneously a little nod, as if in confirmation of this understanding, they parted without

Between twelve and one that Sunday night Katharine lay in bed, not asleep, but in that twilight region where

a detached and humorous view of our own lot is possible; or if we must be serious, our seriousness is

tempered by the swift oncome of slumber and oblivion. She saw the forms of Ralph, William, Cassandra, and

herself, as if they were all equally unsubstantial, and, in putting off reality, had gained a kind of dignity which

rested upon each impartially. Thus rid of any uncomfortable warmth of partisanship or load of obligation, she

was dropping off to sleep when a light tap sounded upon her door. A moment later Cassandra stood beside

her, holding a candle and speaking in the low tones proper to the time of night.

She roused herself, sat up, and asked what in Heaven's name Cassandra was doing?

"I couldn't sleep, and I thought I'd come and speak to youonly for a moment, though. I'm going home

Cassandra spoke formally, almost solemnly; the announcement was clearly prepared and marked a crisis of

"I have decided to tell you the whole truth, Katharine. William allowed himself to behave in a way which

As if foreseeing that the interview might be long, and the night chilly, Katharine advised Cassandra to wrap

"There's a train at eleven," she said. "I shall tell Aunt Maggie that I have to go suddenly. . . . I shall make

Violet's visit an excuse. But, after thinking it over, I don't see how I can go without telling you the truth."

She was careful to abstain from looking in Katharine's direction. There was a slight pause.

"But I don't see the least reason why you should go," said Katharine eventually. Her voice sounded so

astonishingly equable that Cassandra glanced at her. It was impossible to suppose that she was either

indignant or surprised; she seemed, on the contrary, sitting up in bed, with her arms clasped round her knees

and a little frown on her brow, to be thinking closely upon a matter of indifference to her.

"Because I can't allow any man to behave to me in that way," Cassandra replied, and she added, "particularly

"That's got nothing to do with it," Cassandra exclaimed indignantly. "I consider his conduct, under the

This was the last of the sentences of her premeditated speech; and having spoken it she was left unprovided

"I should say it had everything to do with it," Cassandra's selfpossession deserted her.

"I don't understand you in the least, Katharine. How can you behave as you behave? Ever since I came here

"No," Cassandra allowed once more. She was completely at a loss. In her forecast of the interview she had

taken it for granted that Katharine, after an outburst of incredulity, would agree that Cassandra must return

home as soon as possible. But Katharine, on the contrary, accepted her statement at once, seemed neither

shocked nor surprised, and merely looked rather more thoughtful than usual. From being a mature woman

charged with an important mission, Cassandra shrunk to the stature of an inexperienced child.

Katharine made no answer, but still sat deliberating silently, and a certain feeling of alarm took possession of

Cassandra. Perhaps her words had struck far deeper than she had thought, into depths beyond her reach, as so

much of Katharine was beyond her reach. She thought suddenly that she had been playing with very

Looking at her at length, Katharine asked slowly, as if she found the question very difficult to ask.

She marked the agitation and bewilderment of the girl's expression, and how she looked away from her.

"Do you mean, am I in love with him?" Cassandra asked, breathing quickly, and nervously moving her hands.

"I don't think you've any right to say such things, Katharine," Cassandra exclaimed. "Why do you say them?

Don't you mind in the least how William behaves to other women? If I were engaged, I couldn't bear it!"

"No, we're not engaged," Katharine repeated. "But no one knows it but ourselves."

"But whyI don't understandyou're not engaged!" Cassandra said again. "Oh, that explains it! You're not

"We aren't in love with each other any longer," said Katharine, as if disposing of something for ever and ever.

"How queer, how strange, how unlike other people you are, Katharine," Cassandra said, her whole body and

voice seeming to fall and collapse together, and no trace of anger or excitement remaining, but only a dreamy

Cassandra remained bowed, as if by the weight of the revelation, for some little while longer. Nor did

Katharine speak. Her attitude was that of some one who wishes to be concealed as much as possible from

observation. She sighed profoundly; she was absolutely silent, and apparently overcome by her thoughts.

"D'you know what time it is?" she said at length, and shook her pillow, as if making ready for sleep.

Cassandra rose obediently, and once more took up her candle. Perhaps the white dressinggown, and the

loosened hair, and something unseeing in the expression of the eyes gave her a likeness to a woman walking

"There's no reason why I should go home, then?" Cassandra said, pausing. "Unless you want me to go,

"You wanted us to fall in love," Cassandra exclaimed, as if she read the certainty there. But as she looked she

saw a sight that surprised her. The tears rose slowly in Katharine's eyes and stood there, brimming but

containedthe tears of some profound emotion, happiness, grief, renunciation; an emotion so complex in its

nature that to express it was impossible, and Cassandra, bending her head and receiving the tears upon her

"Please, miss," said the maid, about eleven o'clock on the following morning, "Mrs. Milvain is in the

A long wicker basket of flowers and branches had arrived from the country, and Katharine, kneeling upon the

floor of the drawingroom, was sorting them while Cassandra watched her from an armchair, and

absentmindedly made spasmodic offers of help which were not accepted. The maid's message had a curious

She rose, walked to the window, and, the maid being gone, said emphatically and even tragically:

"Probably because she's discovered something," Katharine replied. Cassandra's thoughts flew to the subject

"Heaven knows," Katharine replied. "I shan't let her stay in the kitchen, though. I shall bring her up here."

The sternness with which this was said suggested that to bring Aunt Celia upstairs was, for some reason, a

"For goodness' sake, Katharine," Cassandra exclaimed, jumping from her chair and showing signs of

Katharine assured her by nodding her head several times, but the manner in which she left the room was not

Mrs. Milvain was sitting, or rather perching, upon the edge of a chair in the servants' room. Whether there

was any sound reason for her choice of a subterranean chamber, or whether it corresponded with the spirit of

her quest, Mrs. Milvain invariably came in by the back door and sat in the servants' room when she was

engaged in confidential family transactions. The ostensible reason she gave was that neither Mr. nor Mrs.

Hilbery should be disturbed. But, in truth, Mrs. Milvain depended even more than most elderly women of her

generation upon the delicious emotions of intimacy, agony, and secrecy, and the additional thrill provided by

the basement was one not lightly to be forfeited. She protested almost plaintively when Katharine proposed to

"I've something that I want to say to you in PRIVATE," she said, hesitating reluctantly upon the threshold of

"But we might meet your mother upon the stairs. We might disturb your father," Mrs. Milvain objected,

But as Katharine's presence was absolutely necessary to the success of the interview, and as Katharine

obstinately receded up the kitchen stairs, Mrs. Milvain had no course but to follow her. She glanced furtively

about her as she proceeded upstairs, drew her skirts together, and stepped with circumspection past all doors,

"Nobody will overhear us?" she murmured, when the comparative sanctuary of the drawingroom had been

reached. "I see that I have interrupted you," she added, glancing at the flowers strewn upon the floor. A

moment later she inquired, "Was some one sitting with you?" noticing a handkerchief that Cassandra had

"Cassandra was helping me to put the flowers in water," said Katharine, and she spoke so firmly and clearly

that Mrs. Milvain glanced nervously at the main door and then at the curtain which divided the little room

"Ah, Cassandra is still with you," she remarked. "And did William send you those lovely flowers?"

Katharine sat down opposite her aunt and said neither yes nor no. She looked past her, and it might have been

thought that she was considering very critically the pattern of the curtains. Another advantage of the

basement, from Mrs. Milvain's point of view, was that it made it necessary to sit very close together, and the

light was dim compared with that which now poured through three windows upon Katharine and the basket

of flowers, and gave even the slight angular figure of Mrs. Milvain herself a halo of gold.

"They're from Stogdon House," said Katharine abruptly, with a little jerk of her head.

Mrs. Milvain felt that it would be easier to tell her niece what she wished to say if they were actually in

physical contact, for the spiritual distance between them was formidable. Katharine, however, made no

overtures, and Mrs. Milvain, who was possessed of rash but heroic courage, plunged without preface:

"People are talking about you, Katharine. That is why I have come this morning. You forgive me for saying

"There's nothing to forgive yet, Aunt Celia," said Katharine, with apparent good humor.

"People are saying that William goes everywhere with you and Cassandra, and that he is always paying her

attentions. At the Markhams' dance he sat out five dances with her. At the Zoo they were seen alone together.

They left together. They never came back here till seven in the evening. But that is not all. They say his

Mrs. Milvain, whose words had run themselves together, and whose voice had raised its tone almost to one of

protest, here ceased, and looked intently at Katharine, as if to judge the effect of her communication. A slight

rigidity had passed over Katharine's face. Her lips were pressed together; her eyes were contracted, and they

were still fixed upon the curtain. These superficial changes covered an extreme inner loathing such as might

follow the display of some hideous or indecent spectacle. The indecent spectacle was her own action beheld

for the first time from the outside; her aunt's words made her realize how infinitely repulsive the body of life

"We all know how good you arehow unselfishhow you sacrifice yourself to others. But you've been too

unselfish, Katharine. You have made Cassandra happy, and she has taken advantage of your goodness."

"Cassandra has behaved in a way that I could not have thought possible," said Mrs. Milvain warmly. "She has

Mrs. Milvain looked at her. Was it possible that Katharine really doubted? That there was something that

Mrs. Milvain herself did not understand? She braced herself, and pronounced the tremendous words:

Katharine remained silent. The silence alarmed Mrs. Milvain, and she began hurriedly:

"Nothing would have made me say these things but your own good. I have not wished to interfere; I have not

wished to give you pain. I am a useless old woman. I have no children of my own. I only want to see you

"You are not going to say these things to Cassandra," said Katharine suddenly. "You've said them to me;

Katharine spoke so low and with such restraint that Mrs. Milvain had to strain to catch her words, and when

"I've made you angry! I knew I should!" she exclaimed. She quivered, and a kind of sob shook her; but even

to have made Katharine angry was some relief, and allowed her to feel some of the agreeable sensations of

"Yes," said Katharine, standing up, "I'm so angry that I don't want to say anything more. I think you'd better

At these words Mrs. Milvain looked for a moment terribly apprehensive; she glanced at her niece's face, but

read no pity there, whereupon she folded her hands upon a black velvet bag which she carried in an attitude

that was almost one of prayer. Whatever divinity she prayed to, if pray she did, at any rate she recovered her

"Married love," she said slowly and with emphasis upon every word, "is the most sacred of all loves. The

love of husband and wife is the most holy we know. That is the lesson Mamma's children learnt from her;

that is what they can never forget. I have tried to speak as she would have wished her daughter to speak. You

Katharine seemed to judge this defence upon its merits, and then to convict it of falsity.

At these words Mrs. Milvain rose and stood for a moment beside her niece. She had never met with such

treatment before, and she did not know with what weapons to break down the terrible wall of resistance

offered her by one who, by virtue of youth and beauty and sex, should have been all tears and supplications.

But Mrs. Milvain herself was obstinate; upon a matter of this kind she could not admit that she was either

beaten or mistaken. She beheld herself the champion of married love in its purity and supremacy; what her

niece stood for she was quite unable to say, but she was filled with the gravest suspicions. The old woman

and the young woman stood side by side in unbroken silence. Mrs. Milvain could not make up her mind to

withdraw while her principles trembled in the balance and her curiosity remained unappeased. She ransacked

her mind for some question that should force Katharine to enlighten her, but the supply was limited, the

choice difficult, and while she hesitated the door opened and William Rodney came in. He carried in his hand

an enormous and splendid bunch of white and purple flowers, and, either not seeing Mrs. Milvain, or

disregarding her, he advanced straight to Katharine, and presented the flowers with the words:

Katharine took them with a glance that Mrs. Milvain did not fail to intercept. But with all her experience, she

did not know what to make of it. She watched anxiously for further illumination. William greeted her without

obvious sign of guilt, and, explaining that he had a holiday, both he and Katharine seemed to take it for

granted that his holiday should be celebrated with flowers and spent in Cheyne Walk. A pause followed; that,

too, was natural; and Mrs. Milvain began to feel that she laid herself open to a charge of selfishness if she

stayed. The mere presence of a young man had altered her disposition curiously, and filled her with a desire

for a scene which should end in an emotional forgiveness. She would have given much to clasp both nephew

and niece in her arms. But she could not flatter herself that any hope of the customary exaltation remained.

Neither of them said anything to stop her. William politely escorted her downstairs, and somehow, amongst

her protests and embarrassments, Mrs. Milvain forgot to say goodbye to Katharine. She departed,

murmuring words about masses of flowers and a drawingroom always beautiful even in the depths of

"I've come to be forgiven," he said. "Our quarrel was perfectly hateful to me. I've not slept all night. You're

She could not bring herself to answer him until she had rid her mind of the impression that her aunt had made

on her. It seemed to her that the very flowers were contaminated, and Cassandra's pocket handkerchief, for

"She's been spying upon us," she said, "following us about London, overhearing what people are saying"

"Oh, people are saying that you're in love with Cassandra, and that you don't care for me."

He walked to the window in evident perturbation. Katharine was too indignant to attend to him. She was

swept away by the force of her own anger. Clasping Rodney's flowers, she stood upright and motionless.

"It's all been a mistake," he said. "I blame myself for it. I should have known better. I let you persuade me in

"She wished even to persecute Cassandra!" Katharine burst out, not listening to him. "She threatened to speak

"Mrs. Milvain is not tactful, I know, but you exaggerate, Katharine. People are talking about us. She was

"It does," he said, flushing. "It's intensely disagreeable to me. I can't endure that people should gossip about

"I came here this morning, Katharine," he resumed, with a change of voice, "to ask you to forget my folly, my

bad temper, my inconceivable behavior. I came, Katharine, to ask whether we can't return to the position we

were in before thisthis season of lunacy. Will you take me back, Katharine, once more and for ever?"

No doubt her beauty, intensified by emotion and enhanced by the flowers of bright color and strange shape

which she carried wrought upon Rodney, and had its share in bestowing upon her the old romance. But a less

noble passion worked in him, too; he was inflamed by jealousy. His tentative offer of affection had been

rudely and, as he thought, completely repulsed by Cassandra on the preceding day. Denham's confession was

in his mind. And ultimately, Katharine's dominion over him was of the sort that the fevers of the night cannot

"I was as much to blame as you were yesterday," she said gently, disregarding his question. "I confess,

William, the sight of you and Cassandra together made me jealous, and I couldn't control myself. I laughed at

"You jealous!" William exclaimed. "l assure you, Katharine, you've not the slightest reason to be jealous.

Cassandra dislikes me, so far as she feels about me at all. I was foolish enough to try to explain the nature of

our relationship. I couldn't resist telling her what I supposed myself to feel for her. She refused to listen, very

Katharine hesitated. She was confused, agitated, physically tired, and had already to reckon with the violent

feeling of dislike aroused by her aunt which still vibrated through all the rest of her feelings. She sank into a

"She charmed me," Rodney continued. "I thought I loved her. But that's a thing of the past. It's all over,

Katharine. It was a dreaman hallucination. We were both equally to blame, but no harm's done if you

He stood over her, as if in readiness to seize the first sign of her assent. Precisely at that moment, owing,

perhaps, to her vicissitudes of feeling, all sense of love left her, as in a moment a mist lifts from the earth.

And when the mist departed a skeleton world and blankness alone remaineda terrible prospect for the eyes

of the living to behold. He saw the look of terror in her face, and without understanding its origin, took her

hand in his. With the sense of companionship returned a desire, like that of a child for shelter, to accept what

he had to offer herand at that moment it seemed that he offered her the only thing that could make it

tolerable to live. She let him press his lips to her cheek, and leant her head upon his arm. It was the moment

of his triumph. It was the only moment in which she belonged to him and was dependent upon his protection.

"She loves you," Katharine repeated. She raised herself and repeated the sentence yet a third time. "She loves

William slowly raised himself. He believed instinctively what Katharine said, but what it meant to him he

was unable to understand. Could Cassandra love him? Could she have told Katharine that she loved him? The

desire to know the truth of this was urgent, unknown though the consequences might be. The thrill of

excitement associated with the thought of Cassandra once more took possession of him. No longer was it the

excitement of anticipation and ignorance; it was the excitement of something greater than a possibility, for

now he knew her and had measure of the sympathy between them. But who could give him certainty? Could

Katharine, Katharine who had lately lain in his arms, Katharine herself the most admired of women? He

"Yes, yes," she said, interpreting his wish for assurance, "it's true. I know what she feels for you."

"Ah, but who knows what I feel? How can I be sure of my feeling myself? Ten minutes ago I asked you to

He clenched his hands and turned away. He suddenly faced her and demanded: "Tell me what you feel for

"For Ralph Denham?" she asked. "Yes!" she exclaimed, as if she had found the answer to some momentarily

perplexing question. "You're jealous of me, William; but you're not in love with me. I'm jealous of you.

He tried to compose himself. He walked up and down the room; he paused at the window and surveyed the

flowers strewn upon the floor. Meanwhile his desire to have Katharine's assurance confirmed became so

insistent that he could no longer deny the overmastering strength of his feeling for Cassandra.

"You're right," he exclaimed, coming to a standstill and rapping his knuckles sharply upon a small table

As he said this, the curtains hanging at the door of the little room parted, and Cassandra herself stepped forth.

She put her hands before her face; she turned away and seemed to shrink from both of them.

"What Katharine said," she murmured. "But," she added, raising her head with a look of fear from the kiss

with which he greeted her admission, "how frightfully difficult it all is! Our feelings, I mean yours and

"Rightof course we're doing right," William answered her, "if, after what you've heard, you can marry a

"Don't, William," Katharine interposed; "Cassandra has heard us; she can judge what we are; she knows

But, still holding William's hand, questions and desires welled up in Cassandra's heart. Had she done wrong

in listening? Why did Aunt Celia blame her? Did Katharine think her right? Above all, did William really

"I must be first with him, Katharine!" she exclaimed. "I can't share him even with you."

"I shall never ask that," said Katharine. She moved a little away from where they sat and began

"But you've shared with me," Cassandra said. "Why can't I share with you? Why am I so mean? I know why

it is," she added. "We understand each other, William and I. You've never understood each other. You're too

"Yes," Cassandra interposed. "You've asked her for sympathy, and she's not sympathetic; you've wanted her

to be practical, and she's not practical. You've been selfish; you've been exactingand so has

Katharine had listened to this attempt at analysis with keen attention. Cassandra's words seemed to rub the

old blurred image of life and freshen it so marvelously that it looked new again. She turned to William.

"There are many things that he'll always come to you for," Cassandra continued, still reading from her

invisible book. "I accept that, Katharine. I shall never dispute it. I want to be generous as you've been

"One thing I beg of you both, he said, and the old nervousness of manner returned as he glanced at Katharine.

"We will never discuss these matters again. It's not that I'm timid and conventional, as you think, Katharine.

It's that it spoils things to discuss them; it unsettles people's minds; and now we're all so happy"

Cassandra ratified this conclusion so far as she was concerned, and William, after receiving the exquisite

pleasure of her glance, with its absolute affection and trust, looked anxiously at Katharine.

"Yes, I'm happy," she assured him. "And I agree. We will never talk about it again."

"Oh, Katharine, Katharine!" Cassandra cried, holding out her arms while the tears ran down her cheeks.

The day was so different from other days to three people in the house that the common routine of household

lifethe maid waiting at table, Mrs. Hilbery writing a letter, the clock striking, and the door opening, and all

the other signs of longestablished civilization appeared suddenly to have no meaning save as they lulled Mr.

and Mrs. Hilbery into the belief that nothing unusual had taken place. It chanced that Mrs. Hilbery was

depressed without visible cause, unless a certain crudeness verging upon coarseness in the temper of her

favorite Elizabethans could be held responsible for the mood. At any rate, she had shut up "The Duchess of

Malfi" with a sigh, and wished to know, so she told Rodney at dinner, whether there wasn't some young

writer with a touch of the great spiritsomebody who made you believe that life was BEAUTIFUL? She got

little help from Rodney, and after singing her plaintive requiem for the death of poetry by herself, she

charmed herself into good spirits again by remembering the existence of Mozart. She begged Cassandra to

play to her, and when they went upstairs Cassandra opened the piano directly, and did her best to create an

atmosphere of unmixed beauty. At the sound of the first notes Katharine and Rodney both felt an enormous

sense of relief at the license which the music gave them to loosen their hold upon the mechanism of behavior.

They lapsed into the depths of thought. Mrs. Hilbery was soon spirited away into a perfectly congenial mood,

that was half reverie and half slumber, half delicious melancholy and half pure bliss. Mr. Hilbery alone

attended. He was extremely musical, and made Cassandra aware that he listened to every note. She played

her best, and won his approval. Leaning slightly forward in his chair, and turning his little green stone, he

weighed the intention of her phrases approvingly, but stopped her suddenly to complain of a noise behind

him. The window was unhasped. He signed to Rodney, who crossed the room immediately to put the matter

right. He stayed a moment longer by the window than was, perhaps, necessary, and having done what was

needed, drew his chair a little closer than before to Katharine's side. The music went on. Under cover of some

exquisite run of melody, he leant towards her and whispered something. She glanced at her father and

Rodney made no answer, but led her downstairs into the diningroom on the ground floor. Even when he had

shut the door he said nothing, but went straight to the window and parted the curtains. He beckoned to

Katharine looked. She had no idea what Rodney was talking about. A vague feeling of alarm and mystery

possessed her. She saw a man standing on the opposite side of the road facing the house beneath a lamppost.

As they looked the figure turned, walked a few steps, and came back again to his old position. It seemed to

her that he was looking fixedly at her, and was conscious of her gaze on him. She knew, in a flash, who the

"Denham," said Rodney. "He was there last night too." He spoke sternly. His whole manner had become full

of authority. Katharine felt almost as if he accused her of some crime. She was pale and uncomfortably

agitated, as much by the strangeness of Rodney's behavior as by the sight of Ralph Denham.

"You can't let him wait out there. I shall tell him to come in." Rodney spoke with such decision that when he

raised his arm Katharine expected him to draw the curtain instantly. She caught his hand with a little

"You can't wait," he replied. "You've gone too far." His hand remained upon the curtain. "Why don't you

admit, Katharine," he broke out, looking at her with an expression of contempt as well as of anger, "that you

She looked at him, wondering, in spite of all her perplexity, at the spirit that possessed him.

"I've no right to interfere," he concluded. "I'll leave you. Or, if you like, we'll go back to the drawingroom."

"No. I can't go back," she said, shaking her head. She bent her head in thought.

"You love him, Katharine," Rodney said suddenly. His tone had lost something of its sternness, and might

have been used to urge a child to confess its fault. She raised her eyes and fixed them upon him.

"I love him?" she repeated. He nodded. She searched his face, as if for further confirmation of his words, and,

as he remained silent and expectant, turned away once more and continued her thoughts. He observed her

closely, but without stirring, as if he gave her time to make up her mind to fulfil her obvious duty. The strains

"Now," she said suddenly, with a sort of desperation, rising from her chair and seeming to command Rodney

to fulfil his part. He drew the curtain instantly, and she made no attempt to stop him. Their eyes at once

No one was there. William threw the window up and looked out. The wind rushed into the room, together

with the sound of distant wheels, footsteps hurrying along the pavement, and the cries of sirens hooting down

"Ralph!" said Katharine, but she spoke scarcely louder than she might have spoken to some one in the same

room. With their eyes fixed upon the opposite side of the road, they did not notice a figure close to the railing

which divided the garden from the street. But Denham had crossed the road and was standing there. They

"There you are! Come in, Denham." Rodney went to the front door and opened it. "Here he is," he said,

bringing Ralph with him into the diningroom where Katharine stood, with her back to the open window.

Their eyes met for a second. Denham looked half dazed by the strong light, and, buttoned in his overcoat,

with his hair ruffled across his forehead by the wind, he seemed like somebody rescued from an open boat

out at sea. William promptly shut the window and drew the curtains. He acted with a cheerful decision as if

"You're the first to hear the news, Denham," he said. "Katharine isn't going to marry me, after all."

"Where shall I put" Ralph began vaguely, holding out his hat and glancing about him; he balanced it

carefully against a silver bowl that stood upon the sideboard. He then sat himself down rather heavily at the

head of the oval dinnertable. Rodney stood on one side of him and Katharine on the other. He appeared to

be presiding over some meeting from which most of the members were absent. Meanwhile, he waited, and

At that Denham looked up quickly at Rodney. Rodney's expression changed. He lost his selfpossession. He

smiled a little nervously, and then his attention seemed to be caught by a fragment of melody from the floor

above. He seemed for a moment to forget the presence of the others. He glanced towards the door.

"Yes, yes. We're all madquite out of our minds, Denham," he said. "It's partly Katharine's doingpartly

mine." He looked oddly round the room as if he wished to make sure that the scene in which he played a part

had some real existence. "Quite mad," he repeated. "Even Katharine" His gaze rested upon her finally, as if

she, too, had changed from his old view of her. He smiled at her as if to encourage her. "Katharine shall

Katharine sat down at once, and leant her chin upon her hands. So long as Rodney was in the room the

proceedings of the evening had seemed to be in his charge, and had been marked by a certain unreality. Now

that she was alone with Ralph she felt at once that a constraint had been taken from them both. She felt that

they were alone at the bottom of the house, which rose, story upon story, upon the top of them.

"You would have waited all night if it hadn't been for William. It's windy too. You must have been cold.

She bent her head. "Yes, yes," she sighed. "But you don't know how good he iswhat he's done for me"

Ralph made a sound of understanding. "You waited there last night too?" she asked.

The words seemed to fill the room with an emotion which Katharine connected with the sound of distant

wheels, the footsteps hurrying along the pavement, the cries of sirens hooting down the river, the darkness

"Waiting in the dark," she said, glancing at the window, as if he saw what she was seeing. "Ah, but it's

different" She broke off. "I'm not the person you think me. Until you realize that it's impossible"

Placing her elbows on the table, she slid her ruby ring up and down her finger abstractedly. She frowned at

the rows of leatherbound books opposite her. Ralph looked keenly at her. Very pale, but sternly

concentrated upon her meaning, beautiful but so little aware of herself as to seem remote from him also, there

was something distant and abstract about her which exalted him and chilled him at the same time.

Some detached instinct made her aware that she was gazing at a book which belonged by rights to some other

part of the house. She walked over to the shelf, took it down, and returned to her seat, placing the book on the

table between them. Ralph opened it and looked at the portrait of a man with a voluminous white shirtcollar,

"I say I do know you, Katharine," he affirmed, shutting the book. "It's only for moments that I go mad."

"I swear to you that now, at this instant, I see you precisely as you are. No one has ever known you as I know

"That's true," she replied, "but you can't think how I'm dividedhow I'm at my ease with you, and how I'm

bewildered. The unrealitythe darkthe waiting outside in the windyes, when you look at me, not

seeing me, and I don't see you either. . . . But I do see," she went on quickly, changing her position and

But she could not reduce her vision to words, since it was no single shape colored upon the dark, but rather a

general excitement, an atmosphere, which, when she tried to visualize it, took form as a wind scouring the

"Impossible," she sighed, laughing at the ridiculous notion of putting any part of this into words.

"But I can'tI'm talking a sort of nonsensethe sort of nonsense one talks to oneself." She was dismayed

by the expression of longing and despair upon his face. "I was thinking about a mountain in the North of

"No. I was alone." She seemed to be disappointing the desire of a child. His face fell.

"I can't explain." She could not explain that she was essentially alone there. "It's not a mountain in the North

"Oh, I see," she sighed. "That's why it's so impossible." She turned upon him almost fiercely. "You must try

"I won't," he replied roughly, "because I" He stopped. He realized that the moment had come to impart that

news of the utmost importance which he had tried to impart to Mary Datchet, to Rodney upon the

Embankment, to the drunken tramp upon the seat. How should he offer it to Katharine? He looked quickly at

her. He saw that she was only half attentive to him; only a section of her was exposed to him. The sight

roused in him such desperation that he had much ado to control his impulse to rise and leave the house. Her

hand lay loosely curled upon the table. He seized it and grasped it firmly as if to make sure of her existence

Some roundness or warmth essential to that statement was absent from his voice, and she had merely to shake

her head very slightly for him to drop her hand and turn away in shame at his own impotence. He thought that

she had detected his wish to leave her. She had discerned the break in his resolution, the blankness in the

heart of his vision. It was true that he had been happier out in the street, thinking of her, than now that he was

in the same room with her. He looked at her with a guilty expression on his face. But her look expressed

neither disappointment nor reproach. Her pose was easy, and she seemed to give effect to a mood of quiet

speculation by the spinning of her ruby ring upon the polished table. Denham forgot his despair in wondering

"You don't believe me?" he said. His tone was humble, and made her smile at him.

"As far as I understand youbut what should you advise me to do with this ring?" she asked, holding it out.

"I should advise you to let me keep it for you," he replied, in the same tone of halfhumorous gravity.

"After what you've said, I can hardly trust youunless you'll unsay what you've said?"

"But I think you ARE in love with me. . . . As I am with you," she added casually enough. "At least," she said

slipping her ring back to its old position, "what other word describes the state we're in?"

In order to explain to her his state of mind, Ralph recounted his experience with the photograph, the letter,

"And then you went raving about the streets," she mused. "Well, it's bad enough. But my state is worse than

yours, because it hasn't anything to do with facts. It's an hallucination, pure and simplean intoxication. . . .

One can be in love with pure reason?" she hazarded. "Because if you're in love with a vision, I believe that

This conclusion seemed fantastic and profoundly unsatisfactory to Ralph, but after the astonishing variations

of his own sentiments during the past halfhour he could not accuse her of fanciful exaggeration.

"Rodney seems to know his own mind well enough," he said almost bitterly. The music, which had ceased,

had now begun again, and the melody of Mozart seemed to express the easy and exquisite love of the two

"Cassandra never doubted for a moment. But we" she glanced at him as if to ascertain his position, "we see

"In the midst of a hurricane," she concluded, as the window shook beneath the pressure of the wind. They

Here the door opened with considerable hesitation, and Mrs. Hilbery's head appeared, at first with an air of

caution, but having made sure that she had admitted herself to the diningroom and not to some more

unusual region, she came completely inside and seemed in no way taken aback by the sight she saw. She

seemed, as usual, bound on some quest of her own which was interrupted pleasantly but strangely by running

into one of those queer, unnecessary ceremonies that other people thought fit to indulge in.

"Please don't let me interrupt you, Mr." she was at a loss, as usual, for the name, and Katharine thought

that she did not recognize him. "I hope you've found something nice to read," she added, pointing to the book

upon the table. "Byronah, Byron. I've known people who knew Lord Byron," she said.

Katharine, who had risen in some confusion, could not help smiling at the thought that her mother found it

perfectly natural and desirable that her daughter should be reading Byron in the diningroom late at night

alone with a strange young man. She blessed a disposition that was so convenient, and felt tenderly towards

her mother and her mother's eccentricities. But Ralph observed that although Mrs. Hilbery held the book so

"My dear mother, why aren't you in bed?" Katharine exclaimed, changing astonishingly in the space of a

minute to her usual condition of authoritative good sense. "Why are you wandering about?"

"I'm sure I should like your poetry better than I like Lord Byron's," said Mrs. Hilbery, addressing Ralph

"Mr. Denham doesn't write poetry; he has written articles for father, for the Review," Katharine said, as if

"Oh dear! How dull!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, with a sudden laugh that rather puzzled her daughter.

Ralph found that she had turned upon him a gaze that was at once very vague and very penetrating.

"But I'm sure you read poetry at night. I always judge by the expression of the eyes," Mrs. Hilbery continued.

("The windows of the soul," she added parenthetically.) "I don't know much about the law," she went on,

"though many of my relations were lawyers. Some of them looked very handsome, too, in their wigs. But I

think I do know a little about poetry," she added. "And all the things that aren't written down, butbut"

She waved her hand, as if to indicate the wealth of unwritten poetry all about them. "The night and the stars,

the dawn coming up, the barges swimming past, the sun setting. . . . Ah dear," she sighed, "well, the sunset is

very lovely too. I sometimes think that poetry isn't so much what we write as what we feel, Mr. Denham."

During this speech of her mother's Katharine had turned away, and Ralph felt that Mrs. Hilbery was talking to

him apart, with a desire to ascertain something about him which she veiled purposely by the vagueness of her

words. He felt curiously encouraged and heartened by the beam in her eye rather than by her actual words.

From the distance of her age and sex she seemed to be waving to him, hailing him as a ship sinking beneath

the horizon might wave its flag of greeting to another setting out upon the same voyage. He bent his head,

saying nothing, but with a curious certainty that she had read an answer to her inquiry that satisfied her. At

any rate, she rambled off into a description of the Law Courts which turned to a denunciation of English

justice, which, according to her, imprisoned poor men who couldn't pay their debts. "Tell me, shall we ever

do without it all?" she asked, but at this point Katharine gently insisted that her mother should go to bed.

Looking back from halfway up the staircase, Katharine seemed to see Denham's eyes watching her steadily

and intently with an expression that she had guessed in them when he stood looking at the windows across

The tray which brought Katharine's cup of tea the next morning brought, also, a note from her mother,

announcing that it was her intention to catch an early train to StratfordonAvon that very day.

"Please find out the best way of getting there," the note ran, "and wire to dear Sir John Burdett to expect me,

with my love. I've been dreaming all night of you and Shakespeare, dearest Katharine."

This was no momentary impulse. Mrs. Hilbery had been dreaming of Shakespeare any time these six months,

toying with the idea of an excursion to what she considered the heart of the civilized world. To stand six feet

above Shakespeare's bones, to see the very stones worn by his feet, to reflect that the oldest man's oldest

mother had very likely seen Shakespeare's daughtersuch thoughts roused an emotion in her, which she

expressed at unsuitable moments, and with a passion that would not have been unseemly in a pilgrim to a

sacred shrine. The only strange thing was that she wished to go by herself. But, naturally enough, she was

well provided with friends who lived in the neighborhood of Shakespeare's tomb, and were delighted to

welcome her; and she left later to catch her train in the best of spirits. There was a man selling violets in the

street. It was a fine day. She would remember to send Mr. Hilbery the first daffodil she saw. And, as she ran

back into the hall to tell Katharine, she felt, she had always felt, that Shakespeare's command to leave his

bones undisturbed applied only to odious curiositymongersnot to dear Sir John and herself. Leaving her

daughter to cogitate the theory of Anne Hathaway's sonnets, and the buried manuscripts here referred to, with

the implied menace to the safety of the heart of civilization itself, she briskly shut the door of her taxicab,

The house was oddly different without her. Katharine found the maids already in possession of her room,

which they meant to clean thoroughly during her absence. To Katharine it seemed as if they had brushed

away sixty years or so with the first flick of their damp dusters. It seemed to her that the work she had tried to

do in that room was being swept into a very insignificant heap of dust. The china shepherdesses were already

shining from a bath of hot water. The writingtable might have belonged to a professional man of methodical

Gathering together a few papers upon which she was at work, Katharine proceeded to her own room with the

intention of looking through them, perhaps, in the course of the morning. But she was met on the stairs by

Cassandra, who followed her up, but with such intervals between each step that Katharine began to feel her

purpose dwindling before they had reached the door. Cassandra leant over the banisters, and looked down

"Doesn't everything look odd this morning?" she inquired. "Are you really going to spend the morning with

The dull old letters, which would have turned the heads of the most sober of collectors, were laid upon a

table, and, after a moment's pause, Cassandra, looking grave all of a sudden, asked Katharine where she

should find the "History of England" by Lord Macaulay. It was downstairs in Mr. Hilbery's study. The

cousins descended together in search of it. They diverged into the drawingroom for the good reason that the

"I wonder what he was like?" It was a question that Katharine had often asked herself lately.

"Oh, a fraud like the rest of themat least Henry says so," Cassandra replied. "Though I don't believe

Down they went into Mr. Hilbery's study, where they began to look among his books. So desultory was this

examination that some fifteen minutes failed to discover the work they were in search of.

"Must you read Macaulay's History, Cassandra?" Katharine asked, with a stretch of her arms.

"Oh, no, Katharine. Please stay and help me. You seeyou seeI told William I'd read a little every day.

"I mean as I am. Katharine," she said impulsively, "do let's be married on the same day."

"Here's your Macaulay," said Katharine, turning round with the book in her hand. "I should say you'd better

"Damn Lord Macaulay!" cried Cassandra, slapping the book upon the table. "Would you rather not talk?"

"I know I shan't be able to settle to Macaulay," said Cassandra, looking ruefully at the dull red cover of the

prescribed volume, which, however, possessed a talismanic property, since William admired it. He had

"No. William never tried to educate me." As she spoke she saw the light fade from Cassandra's face, as if she

had implied some other, more mysterious, relationship. She was stung with compunction. She marveled at

her own rashness in having influenced the life of another, as she had influenced Cassandra's life.

"But I'm fearfully serious," said Cassandra, with a little shudder, and her look showed that she spoke the

truth. She turned and glanced at Katharine as she had never glanced at her before. There was fear in her

glance, which darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh, Katharine had everythingbeauty, mind,

character. She could never compete with Katharine; she could never be safe so long as Katharine brooded

over her, dominating her, disposing of her. She called her cold, unseeing, unscrupulous, but the only sign she

gave outwardly was a curious oneshe reached out her hand and grasped the volume of history. At that

moment the bell of the telephone rang and Katharine went to answer it. Cassandra, released from observation,

dropped her book and clenched her hands. She suffered more fiery torture in those few minutes than she had

suffered in the whole of her life; she learnt more of her capacities for feeling. But when Katharine reappeared

"Why did you mean Ralph Denham? What has William told you about Ralph Denham?" The accusation that

Katharine was calm, callous, and indifferent was not possible in face of her present air of animation. She gave

Cassandra no time to frame an answer. "Now, when are you and William going to be married?" she asked.

Cassandra made no reply for some moments. It was, indeed, a very difficult question to answer. In

conversation the night before, William had indicated to Cassandra that, in his belief, Katharine was becoming

engaged to Ralph Denham in the diningroom. Cassandra, in the rosy light of her own circumstances, had

been disposed to think that the matter must be settled already. But a letter which she had received that

morning from William, while ardent in its expression of affection, had conveyed to her obliquely that he

would prefer the announcement of their engagement to coincide with that of Katharine's. This document

Cassandra now produced, and read aloud, with considerable excisions and much hesitation.

". . . a thousand pitiesahemI fear we shall cause a great deal of natural annoyance. If, on the other hand,

what I have reason to think will happen, should happenwithin reasonable time, and the present position is

not in any way offensive to you, delay would, in my opinion, serve all our interests better than a premature

"Very like William," Katharine exclaimed, having gathered the drift of these remarks with a speed that, by

"I quite understand his feelings," Cassandra replied. "I quite agree with them. I think it would be much better,

Cassandra was silent. The prospect appalled her. Katharine had been telephoning to Ralph Denham; she

looked queer, too; she must be, or about to become, engaged to him. But if Cassandra could have overheard

the conversation upon the telephone, she would not have felt so certain that it tended in that direction. It was

A long pause followed. Ralph began a sentence, which he canceled with the word, "Nothing." Suddenly,

together, at the same moment, they said goodbye. And yet, if the telephone had been miraculously

connected with some higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and the savor of salt, Katharine

could hardly have breathed in a keener sense of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on the crest of it. She was

amazed to find herself already committed by William and Cassandra to marry the owner of the halting voice

she had just heard on the telephone. The tendency of her spirit seemed to be in an altogether different

direction; and of a different nature. She had only to look at Cassandra to see what the love that results in an

engagement and marriage means. She considered for a moment, and then said: "If you don't want to tell

people yourselves, I'll do it for you. I know William has feelings about these matters that make it very

"Because he's fearfully sensitive about other people's feelings," said Cassandra. "The idea that he could upset

This interpretation of what she was used to call William's conventionality was new to Katharine. And yet she

"And then he worships beauty. He wants life to be beautiful in every part of it. Have you ever noticed how

exquisitely he finishes everything? Look at the address on that envelope. Every letter is perfect."

Whether this applied also to the sentiments expressed in the letter, Katharine was not so sure; but when

William's solicitude was spent upon Cassandra it not only failed to irritate her, as it had done when she was

the object of it, but appeared, as Cassandra said, the fruit of his love of beauty.

"I hope we shall have a great many children," said Cassandra. "He loves children."

This remark made Katharine realize the depths of their intimacy better than any other words could have done;

she was jealous for one moment; but the next she was humiliated. She had known William for years, and she

had never once guessed that he loved children. She looked at the queer glow of exaltation in Cassandra's

eyes, through which she was beholding the true spirit of a human being, and wished that she would go on

talking about William for ever. Cassandra was not unwilling to gratify her. She talked on. The morning

slipped away. Katharine scarcely changed her position on the edge of her father's writingtable, and

And yet it must be confessed that there were vast lapses in the attention which Katharine bestowed upon her

cousin. The atmosphere was wonderfully congenial for thoughts of her own. She lost herself sometimes in

such deep reverie that Cassandra, pausing, could look at her for moments unperceived. What could Katharine

be thinking about, unless it were Ralph Denham? She was satisfied, by certain random replies, that Katharine

had wandered a little from the subject of William's perfections. But Katharine made no sign. She always

ended these pauses by saying something so natural that Cassandra was deluded into giving fresh examples of

her absorbing theme. Then they lunched, and the only sign that Katharine gave of abstraction was to forget to

help the pudding. She looked so like her mother, as she sat there oblivious of the tapioca, that Cassandra was

"Nonsense," said Katharine, with more irritation than the remark seemed to call for.

In truth, now that her mother was away, Katharine did feel less sensible than usual, but as she argued it to

herself, there was much less need for sense. Secretly, she was a little shaken by the evidence which the

morning had supplied of her immense capacity forwhat could one call it?rambling over an infinite

variety of thoughts that were too foolish to be named. She was, for example, walking down a road in

Northumberland in the August sunset; at the inn she left her companion, who was Ralph Denham, and was

transported, not so much by her own feet as by some invisible means, to the top of a high hill. Here the

scents, the sounds among the dry heatherroots, the grassblades pressed upon the palm of her hand, were all

so perceptible that she could experience each one separately. After this her mind made excursions into the

dark of the air, or settled upon the surface of the sea, which could be discovered over there, or with equal

unreason it returned to its couch of bracken beneath the stars of midnight, and visited the snow valleys of the

moon. These fancies would have been in no way strange, since the walls of every mind are decorated with

some such tracery, but she found herself suddenly pursuing such thoughts with an extreme ardor, which

became a desire to change her actual condition for something matching the conditions of her dream. Then she

started; then she awoke to the fact that Cassandra was looking at her in amazement.

Cassandra would have liked to feel certain that, when Katharine made no reply at all or one wide of the mark,

she was making up her mind to get married at once, but it was difficult, if this were so, to account for some

remarks that Katharine let fall about the future. She recurred several times to the summer, as if she meant to

spend that season in solitary wandering. She seemed to have a plan in her mind which required Bradshaws

Cassandra was driven finally, by her own unrest, to put on her clothes and wander out along the streets of

Chelsea, on the pretence that she must buy something. But, in her ignorance of the way, she became

panicstricken at the thought of being late, and no sooner had she found the shop she wanted, than she fled

back again in order to be at home when William came. He came, indeed, five minutes after she had sat down

by the teatable, and she had the happiness of receiving him alone. His greeting put her doubts of his

"Yes. But she says she's not engaged. She doesn't seem to think she's ever going to be engaged."

"They telephoned this morning, and she behaves very oddly. She forgets to help the pudding," Cassandra

"My dear child, after what I saw and heard last night, it's not a question of guessing or suspecting. Either she's

He left his sentence unfinished, for at this point Katharine herself appeared. With his recollections of the

scene the night before, he was too selfconscious even to look at her, and it was not until she told him of her

mother's visit to StratfordonAvon that he raised his eyes. It was clear that he was greatly relieved. He

"No. Nothing's been touched," said Katharine. "Everything's exactly the same." But as she said this, with a

decision which seemed to make it imply that more than the sofa was unchanged, she held out a cup into

which she had forgotten to pour any tea. Being told of her forgetfulness, she frowned with annoyance, and

said that Cassandra was demoralizing her. The glance she cast upon them, and the resolute way in which she

plunged them into speech, made William and Cassandra feel like children who had been caught prying. They

followed her obediently, making conversation. Any one coming in might have judged them acquaintances

met, perhaps, for the third time. If that were so, one must have concluded that the hostess suddenly bethought

her of an engagement pressing for fulfilment. First Katharine looked at her watch, and then she asked

William to tell her the right time. When told that it was ten minutes to five she rose at once, and said:

She left the room, holding her unfinished bread and butter in her hand. William glanced at Cassandra.

William looked perturbed. He knew more of Katharine than Cassandra did, but even he could not tell. In a

second Katharine was back again dressed in outdoor things, still holding her bread and butter in her bare

"If I'm late, don't wait for me," she said. "I shall have dined," and so saying, she left them.

"But she can't" William exclaimed, as the door shut, "not without any gloves and bread and butter in her

hand!" They ran to the window, and saw her walking rapidly along the street towards the City. Then she

The incident impressed them both as having something queer and ominous about it out of all proportion to its

"It's the sort of way Aunt Maggie behaves," said Cassandra, as if in explanation.

William shook his head, and paced up and down the room looking extremely perturbed.

"This is what I've been foretelling," he burst out. "Once set the ordinary conventions asideThank Heaven

Mrs. Hilbery is away. But there's Mr. Hilbery. How are we to explain it to him? I shall have to leave you."

"You never can tell. He may be on his way already. Or suppose Mrs. Milvainyour Aunt Celiaor Mrs.

Cosham, or any other of your aunts or uncles should be shown in and find us alone together. You know what

Cassandra was equally stricken by the sight of William's agitation, and appalled by the prospect of his

"We might hide," she exclaimed wildly, glancing at the curtain which separated the room with the relics.

She saw that he was losing his temper with the difficulties of the situation. Her instinct told her that an appeal

to his affection, at this moment, would be extremely illjudged. She controlled herself, sat down, poured out

a fresh cup of tea, and sipped it quietly. This natural action, arguing complete selfmastery, and showing her

in one of those feminine attitudes which William found adorable, did more than any argument to compose his

agitation. It appealed to his chivalry. He accepted a cup. Next she asked for a slice of cake. By the time the

cake was eaten and the tea drunk the personal question had lapsed, and they were discussing poetry.

Insensibly they turned from the question of dramatic poetry in general, to the particular example which

reposed in William's pocket, and when the maid came in to clear away the teathings, William had asked

Cassandra bent her head in silence, but she showed a little of what she felt in her eyes, and thus fortified,

William felt confident that it would take more than Mrs. Milvain herself to rout him from his position. He

Meanwhile Katharine walked rapidly along the street. If called upon to explain her impulsive action in

leaving the teatable, she could have traced it to no better cause than that William had glanced at Cassandra;

Cassandra at William. Yet, because they had glanced, her position was impossible. If one forgot to pour out a

cup of tea they rushed to the conclusion that she was engaged to Ralph Denham. She knew that in half an

hour or so the door would open, and Ralph Denham would appear. She could not sit there and contemplate

seeing him with William's and Cassandra's eyes upon them, judging their exact degree of intimacy, so that

they might fix the weddingday. She promptly decided that she would meet Ralph out of doors; she still had

time to reach Lincoln's Inn Fields before he left his office. She hailed a cab, and bade it take her to a shop for

selling maps which she remembered in Great Queen Street, since she hardly liked to be set down at his door.

Arrived at the shop, she bought a large scale map of Norfolk, and thus provided, hurried into Lincoln's Inn

Fields, and assured herself of the position of Messrs. Hoper and Grateley's office. The great gas chandeliers

were alight in the office windows. She conceived that he sat at an enormous table laden with papers beneath

one of them in the front room with the three tall windows. Having settled his position there, she began

walking to and fro upon the pavement. Nobody of his build appeared. She scrutinized each male figure as it

approached and passed her. Each male figure had, nevertheless, a look of him, due, perhaps, to the

professional dress, the quick step, the keen glance which they cast upon her as they hastened home after the

day's work. The square itself, with its immense houses all so fully occupied and stern of aspect, its

atmosphere of industry and power, as if even the sparrows and the children were earning their daily bread, as

if the sky itself, with its gray and scarlet clouds, reflected the serious intention of the city beneath it, spoke of

him. Here was the fit place for their meeting, she thought; here was the fit place for her to walk thinking of

him. She could not help comparing it with the domestic streets of Chelsea. With this comparison in her mind,

she extended her range a little, and turned into the main road. The great torrent of vans and carts was

sweeping down Kingsway; pedestrians were streaming in two currents along the pavements. She stood

fascinated at the corner. The deep roar filled her ears; the changing tumult had the inexpressible fascination

of varied life pouring ceaselessly with a purpose which, as she looked, seemed to her, somehow, the normal

purpose for which life was framed; its complete indifference to the individuals, whom it swallowed up and

rolled onwards, filled her with at least a temporary exaltation. The blend of daylight and of lamplight made

her an invisible spectator, just as it gave the people who passed her a semitransparent quality, and left the

faces pale ivory ovals in which the eyes alone were dark. They tended the enormous rush of the currentthe

great flow, the deep stream, the unquenchable tide. She stood unobserved and absorbed, glorying openly in

the rapture that had run subterraneously all day. Suddenly she was clutched, unwilling, from the outside, by

the recollection of her purpose in coming there. She had come to find Ralph Denham. She hastily turned back

into Lincoln's Inn Fields, and looked for her landmarkthe light in the three tall windows. She sought in

vain. The faces of the houses had now merged in the general darkness, and she had difficulty in determining

which she sought. Ralph's three windows gave back on their ghostly glass panels only a reflection of the gray

and greenish sky. She rang the bell, peremptorily, under the painted name of the firm. After some delay she

was answered by a caretaker, whose pail and brush of themselves told her that the working day was over and

the workers gone. Nobody, save perhaps Mr. Grateley himself, was left, she assured Katharine; every one

The news woke Katharine completely. Anxiety gained upon her. She hastened back into Kingsway, looking

at people who had miraculously regained their solidity. She ran as far as the Tube station, overhauling clerk

after clerk, solicitor after solicitor. Not one of them even faintly resembled Ralph Denham. More and more

plainly did she see him; and more and more did he seem to her unlike any one else. At the door of the station

she paused, and tried to collect her thoughts. He had gone to her house. By taking a cab she could be there

probably in advance of him. But she pictured herself opening the drawingroom door, and William and

Cassandra looking up, and Ralph's entrance a moment later, and the glancesthe insinuations. No; she could

not face it. She would write him a letter and take it at once to his house. She bought paper and pencil at the

bookstall, and entered an A.B.C. shop, where, by ordering a cup of coffee, she secured an empty table, and

"I came to meet you and I have missed you. I could not face William and Cassandra. They want us" here

she paused. "They insist that we are engaged," she substituted, "and we couldn't talk at all, or explain

anything. I want" Her wants were so vast, now that she was in communication with Ralph, that the pencil

was utterly inadequate to conduct them on to the paper; it seemed as if the whole torrent of Kingsway had to

run down her pencil. She gazed intently at a notice hanging on the goldencrusted wall opposite. ". . . to say

all kinds of things," she added, writing each word with the painstaking of a child. But, when she raised her

eyes again to meditate the next sentence, she was aware of a waitress, whose expression intimated that it was

closing time, and, looking round, Katharine saw herself almost the last person left in the shop. She took up

her letter, paid her bill, and found herself once more in the street. She would now take a cab to Highgate. But

at that moment it flashed upon her that she could not remember the address. This check seemed to let fall a

barrier across a very powerful current of desire. She ransacked her memory in desperation, hunting for the

name, first by remembering the look of the house, and then by trying, in memory, to retrace the words she

had written once, at least, upon an envelope. The more she pressed the farther the words receded. Was the

house an Orchard Something, on the street a Hill? She gave it up. Never, since she was a child, had she felt

anything like this blankness and desolation. There rushed in upon her, as if she were waking from some

dream, all the consequences of her inexplicable indolence. She figured Ralph's face as he turned from her

door without a word of explanation, receiving his dismissal as a blow from herself, a callous intimation that

she did not wish to see him. She followed his departure from her door; but it was far more easy to see him

marching far and fast in any direction for any length of time than to conceive that he would turn back to

Highgate. Perhaps he would try once more to see her in Cheyne Walk? It was proof of the clearness with

which she saw him, that she started forward as this possibility occurred to her, and almost raised her hand to

beckon to a cab. No; he was too proud to come again; he rejected the desire and walked on and on, on and

onIf only she could read the names of those visionary streets down which he passed! But her imagination

betrayed her at this point, or mocked her with a sense of their strangeness, darkness, and distance. Indeed,

instead of helping herself to any decision, she only filled her mind with the vast extent of London and the

impossibility of finding any single figure that wandered off this way and that way, turned to the right and to

the left, chose that dingy little back street where the children were playing in the road, and soShe roused

herself impatiently. She walked rapidly along Holborn. Soon she turned and walked as rapidly in the other

direction. This indecision was not merely odious, but had something that alarmed her about it, as she had

been alarmed slightly once or twice already that day; she felt unable to cope with the strength of her own

desires. To a person controlled by habit, there was humiliation as well as alarm in this sudden release of what

appeared to be a very powerful as well as an unreasonable force. An aching in the muscles of her right hand

now showed her that she was crushing her gloves and the map of Norfolk in a grip sufficient to crack a more

solid object. She relaxed her grasp; she looked anxiously at the faces of the passersby to see whether their

eyes rested on her for a moment longer than was natural, or with any curiosity. But having smoothed out her

gloves, and done what she could to look as usual, she forgot spectators, and was once more given up to her

desperate desire to find Ralph Denham. It was a desire nowwild, irrational, unexplained, resembling

something felt in childhood. Once more she blamed herself bitterly for her carelessness. But finding herself

opposite the Tube station, she pulled herself up and took counsel swiftly, as of old. It flashed upon her that

she would go at once to Mary Datchet, and ask her to give her Ralph's address. The decision was a relief, not

only in giving her a goal, but in providing her with a rational excuse for her own actions. It gave her a goal

certainly, but the fact of having a goal led her to dwell exclusively upon her obsession; so that when she rang

the bell of Mary's flat, she did not for a moment consider how this demand would strike Mary. To her

extreme annoyance Mary was not at home; a charwoman opened the door. All Katharine could do was to

accept the invitation to wait. She waited for, perhaps, fifteen minutes, and spent them in pacing from one end

of the room to the other without intermission. When she heard Mary's key in the door she paused in front of

the fireplace, and Mary found her standing upright, looking at once expectant and determined, like a person

who has come on an errand of such importance that it must be broached without preface.

"Yes, yes," Katharine said, brushing these remarks aside, as if they were in the way.

"Oh yes," she said, thinking that she had had tea hundreds of years ago, somewhere or other.

Mary paused, took off her gloves, and, finding matches, proceeded to light the fire.

She was holding a pencil and preparing to write on the envelope. She waited with an imperious expression.

"The Apple Orchard, Mount Ararat Road, Highgate," Mary said, speaking slowly and rather strangely.

"Oh, I remember now!" Katharine exclaimed, with irritation at her own stupidity. "I suppose it wouldn't take

twenty minutes to drive there?" She gathered up her purse and gloves and seemed about to go.

"But you won't find him," said Mary, pausing with a match in her hand. Katharine, who had already turned

"But he has left the office," she replied. "The only question is will he have reached home yet? He went to see

me at Chelsea; I tried to meet him and missed him. He will have found no message to explain. So I must find

Katharine immediately dropped all that she was holding; her strained expression relaxed, and exclaiming, "Of

course! Why didn't I think of that!" she seized the telephone receiver and gave her number. Mary looked at

her steadily, and then left the room. At length Katharine heard, through all the superimposed weight of

London, the mysterious sound of feet in her own house mounting to the little room, where she could almost

see the pictures and the books; she listened with extreme intentness to the preparatory vibrations, and then

Katharine hung up the receiver. She walked the length of the room in such acute disappointment that she did

not at first perceive Mary's absence. Then she called in a harsh and peremptory tone:

Mary was taking off her outdoor things in the bedroom. She heard Katharine call her. "Yes," she said, "I

shan't be a moment." But the moment prolonged itself, as if for some reason Mary found satisfaction in

making herself not only tidy, but seemly and ornamented. A stage in her life had been accomplished in the

last months which left its traces for ever upon her bearing. Youth, and the bloom of youth, had receded,

leaving the purpose of her face to show itself in the hollower cheeks, the firmer lips, the eyes no longer

spontaneously observing at random, but narrowed upon an end which was not near at hand. This woman was

now a serviceable human being, mistress of her own destiny, and thus, by some combination of ideas, fit to

be adorned with the dignity of silver chains and glowing brooches. She came in at her leisure and asked:

Katharine was once more irresistibly drawn to gaze upon an imaginary map of London, to follow the twists

"I'll ring up his home and ask whether he's back." Mary crossed to the telephone and, after a series of brief

"Ah!" She applied her ear to the telephone once more. "They've had a message. He won't be back to dinner."

Very pale, and with her large eyes fixed not so much upon Mary as upon vistas of unresponding blankness,

Katharine addressed herself also not so much to Mary as to the unrelenting spirit which now appeared to

"I really don't know." Slackly lying back in her armchair, she watched the little flames beginning to creep

among the coals indifferently, as if they, too, were very distant and indifferent.

"Possibly he may come here," Mary continued, without altering the abstract tone of her voice. "It would be

worth your while to wait if you want to see him tonight." She bent forward and touched the wood, so that

Mary rose, went to the table, spread out her papers under the greenshaded lamp and, with an action that was

becoming a habit, twisted a lock of hair round and round in her fingers. Once she looked unperceived at her

visitor, who never moved, who sat so still, with eyes so intent, that you could almost fancy that she was

watching something, some face that never looked up at her. Mary found herself unable to go on writing. She

turned her eyes away, but only to be aware of the presence of what Katharine looked at. There were ghosts in

the room, and one, strangely and sadly, was the ghost of herself. The minutes went by.

"What would be the time now?" said Katharine at last. The halfhour was not quite spent.

A loud knocking at the door interrupted them. Mary went to open it, and returning with some note or parcel,

"Of course you had a right to come," Mary repeated, laying the note upon the table.

"No," said Katharine. "Except that when one's desperate one has a sort of right. I am desperate. How do I

know what's happening to him now? He may do anything. He may wander about the streets all night.

Her look, passing beyond Mary, beyond the verge of the room and out beyond any words that came her way,

wildly and passionately, convinced Mary that she, at any rate, could not follow such a glance to its end. She

was baffled; she tried to think herself back again into the height of her love for Ralph. Pressing her fingers

And yet, what had she known? She could not remember it any more. She pressed her eyeballs until they

struck stars and suns into her darkness. She convinced herself that she was stirring among ashes. She

desisted. She was astonished at her discovery. She did not love Ralph any more. She looked back dazed into

the room, and her eyes rested upon the table with its lamplit papers. The steady radiance seemed for a

second to have its counterpart within her; she shut her eyes; she opened them and looked at the lamp again;

another love burnt in the place of the old one, or so, in a momentary glance of amazement, she guessed before

the revelation was over and the old surroundings asserted themselves. She leant in silence against the

Katharine made no reply and seemed unaware of her words. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.

"Perhaps he's waiting in the street again tonight," she exclaimed. "I'll go now. I might find him."

"It's far more likely that he'll come here," said Mary, and Katharine, after considering for a moment, said:

She sank down into her chair again, and took up the same position which Mary had compared to the position

of one watching an unseeing face. She watched, indeed, not a face, but a procession, not of people, but of life

itself: the good and bad; the meaning; the past, the present, and the future. All this seemed apparent to her,

and she was not ashamed of her extravagance so much as exalted to one of the pinnacles of existence, where

it behoved the world to do her homage. No one but she herself knew what it meant to miss Ralph Denham on

that particular night; into this inadequate event crowded feelings that the great crises of life might have failed

to call forth. She had missed him, and knew the bitterness of all failure; she desired him, and knew the

torment of all passion. It did not matter what trivial accidents led to this culmination. Nor did she care how

When the dinner was ready Mary told her to come, and she came submissively, as if she let Mary direct her

movements for her. They ate and drank together almost in silence, and when Mary told her to eat more, she

ate more; when she was told to drink wine, she drank it. Nevertheless, beneath this superficial obedience,

Mary knew that she was following her own thoughts unhindered. She was not inattentive so much as remote;

she looked at once so unseeing and so intent upon some vision of her own that Mary gradually felt more than

protectiveshe became actually alarmed at the prospect of some collision between Katharine and the forces

of the outside world. Directly they had done, Katharine announced her intention of going.

Mary saw that it would be useless to try to stop her. All she could do was to insist upon coming too, but she

met with no opposition; Katharine seemed indifferent to her presence. In a few minutes they were walking

along the Strand. They walked so rapidly that Mary was deluded into the belief that Katharine knew where

she was going. She herself was not attentive. She was glad of the movement along lamplit streets in the

open air. She was fingering, painfully and with fear, yet with strange hope, too, the discovery which she had

stumbled upon unexpectedly that night. She was free once more at the cost of a gift, the best, perhaps, that

she could offer, but she was, thank Heaven, in love no longer. She was tempted to spend the first instalment

of her freedom in some dissipation; in the pit of the Coliseum, for example, since they were now passing the

door. Why not go in and celebrate her independence of the tyranny of love? Or, perhaps, the top of an

omnibus bound for some remote place such as Camberwell, or Sidcup, or the Welsh Harp would suit her

better. She noticed these names painted on little boards for the first time for weeks. Or should she return to

her room, and spend the night working out the details of a very enlightened and ingenious scheme? Of all

possibilities this appealed to her most, and brought to mind the fire, the lamplight, the steady glow which had

Now Katharine stopped, and Mary woke to the fact that instead of having a goal she had evidently none. She

paused at the edge of the crossing, and looked this way and that, and finally made as if in the direction of

"Look herewhere are you going?" Mary cried, catching her by the hand. "We must take that cab and go

home." She hailed a cab and insisted that Katharine should get in, while she directed the driver to take them

Katharine submitted. "Very well," she said. "We may as well go there as anywhere else."

A gloom seemed to have fallen on her. She lay back in her corner, silent and apparently exhausted. Mary, in

spite of her own preoccupation, was struck by her pallor and her attitude of dejection.

"It may be too late," Katharine replied. Without understanding her, Mary began to pity her for what she was

"Nonsense," she said, taking her hand and rubbing it. "If we don't find him there we shall find him

"He may refuse ever to speak to me again," she said in a low voice, almost to herself.

The exaggeration was so immense that Mary did not attempt to cope with it, save by keeping hold of

Katharine's wrist. She half expected that Katharine might open the door suddenly and jump out. Perhaps

"Don't be frightened," she said, with a little laugh. "I'm not going to jump out of the cab. It wouldn't do much

"I ought to have apologized," Katharine continued, with an effort, "for bringing you into all this business; I

haven't told you half, either. I'm no longer engaged to William Rodney. He is to marry Cassandra Otway. It's

all arrangedall perfectly right. . . . And after he'd waited in the streets for hours and hours, William made

me bring him in. He was standing under the lamppost watching our windows. He was perfectly white when

he came into the room. William left us alone, and we sat and talked. It seems ages and ages ago, now. Was it

last night? Have I been out long? What's the time?" She sprang forward to catch sight of a clock, as if the

"Only halfpast eight!" she exclaimed. "Then he may be there still." She leant out of the window and told the

"But if he's not there, what shall I do? Where could I find him? The streets are so crowded."

Mary had no doubt but that somehow or other they would find him. But suppose they did find him? She

began to think of Ralph with a sort of strangeness, in her effort to understand how he could be capable of

satisfying this extraordinary desire. Once more she thought herself back to her old view of him and could,

with an effort, recall the haze which surrounded his figure, and the sense of confused, heightened exhilaration

which lay all about his neighborhood, so that for months at a time she had never exactly heard his voice or

seen his faceor so it now seemed to her. The pain of her loss shot through her. Nothing would ever make

upnot success, or happiness, or oblivion. But this pang was immediately followed by the assurance that

now, at any rate, she knew the truth; and Katharine, she thought, stealing a look at her, did not know the

The cab, which had been caught in the traffic, was now liberated and sped on down Sloane Street. Mary was

conscious of the tension with which Katharine marked its progress, as if her mind were fixed upon a point in

front of them, and marked, second by second, their approach to it. She said nothing, and in silence Mary

began to fix her mind, in sympathy at first, and later in forgetfulness of her companion, upon a point in front

of them. She imagined a point distant as a low star upon the horizon of the dark. There for her too, for them

both, was the goal for which they were striving, and the end for the ardors of their spirits was the same: but

where it was, or what it was, or why she felt convinced that they were united in search of it, as they drove

"At last," Katharine breathed, as the cab drew up at the door. She jumped out and scanned the pavement on

either side. Mary, meanwhile, rang the bell. The door opened as Katharine assured herself that no one of the

people within view had any likeness to Ralph. On seeing her, the maid said at once:

Katharine vanished from Mary's sight. The door shut between them, and Mary walked slowly and

Katharine turned at once to the diningroom. But with her fingers upon the handle, she held back. Perhaps

she realized that this was a moment which would never come again. Perhaps, for a second, it seemed to her

that no reality could equal the imagination she had formed. Perhaps she was restrained by some vague fear or

anticipation, which made her dread any exchange or interruption. But if these doubts and fears or this

supreme bliss restrained her, it was only for a moment. In another second she had turned the handle and,

biting her lip to control herself, she opened the door upon Ralph Denham. An extraordinary clearness of sight

seemed to possess her on beholding him. So little, so single, so separate from all else he appeared, who had

been the cause of these extreme agitations and aspirations. She could have laughed in his face. But, gaining

upon this clearness of sight against her will, and to her dislike, was a flood of confusion, of relief, of

certainty, of humility, of desire no longer to strive and to discriminate, yielding to which, she let herself sink

Nobody asked Katharine any questions next day. If crossexamined she might have said that nobody spoke

to her. She worked a little, wrote a little, ordered the dinner, and sat, for longer than she knew, with her head

on her hand piercing whatever lay before her, whether it was a letter or a dictionary, as if it were a film upon

the deep prospects that revealed themselves to her kindling and brooding eyes. She rose once, and going to

the bookcase, took out her father's Greek dictionary and spread the sacred pages of symbols and figures

before her. She smoothed the sheets with a mixture of affectionate amusement and hope. Would other eyes

look on them with her one day? The thought, long intolerable, was now just bearable.

She was quite unaware of the anxiety with which her movements were watched and her expression scanned.

Cassandra was careful not to be caught looking at her, and their conversation was so prosaic that were it not

for certain jolts and jerks between the sentences, as if the mind were kept with difficulty to the rails, Mrs.

Milvain herself could have detected nothing of a suspicious nature in what she overheard.

William, when he came in late that afternoon and found Cassandra alone, had a very serious piece of news to

impart. He had just passed Katharine in the street and she had failed to recognize him.

"That doesn't matter with me, of course, but suppose it happened with somebody else? What would they

think? They would suspect something merely from her expression. She lookedshe looked"he

To Cassandra the significant thing was that Katharine had gone out without telling her, and she interpreted

this to mean that she had gone out to meet Ralph Denham. But to her surprise William drew no comfort from

"Once throw conventions aside," he began, "once do the things that people don't do" and the fact that you

are going to meet a young man is no longer proof of anything, except, indeed, that people will talk.

Cassandra saw, not without a pang of jealousy, that he was extremely solicitous that people should not talk

about Katharine, as if his interest in her were still proprietary rather than friendly. As they were both ignorant

of Ralph's visit the night before they had not that reason to comfort themselves with the thought that matters

were hastening to a crisis. These absences of Katharine's, moreover, left them exposed to interruptions which

almost destroyed their pleasure in being alone together. The rainy evening made it impossible to go out; and,

indeed, according to William's code, it was considerably more damning to be seen out of doors than surprised

within. They were so much at the mercy of bells and doors that they could hardly talk of Macaulay with any

conviction, and William preferred to defer the second act of his tragedy until another day.

Under these circumstances Cassandra showed herself at her best. She sympathized with William's anxieties

and did her utmost to share them; but still, to be alone together, to be running risks together, to be partners in

the wonderful conspiracy, was to her so enthralling that she was always forgetting discretion, breaking out

into exclamations and admirations which finally made William believe that, although deplorable and

When the door did open, he started, but braved the forthcoming revelation. It was not Mrs. Milvain, however,

but Katharine herself who entered, closely followed by Ralph Denham. With a set expression which showed

what an effort she was making, Katharine encountered their eyes, and saying, "We're not going to interrupt

you," she led Denham behind the curtain which hung in front of the room with the relics. This refuge was

none of her willing, but confronted with wet pavements and only some belated museum or Tube station for

shelter, she was forced, for Ralph's sake, to face the discomforts of her own house. Under the street lamps she

Thus separated, the two couples remained occupied for some time with their own affairs. Only the lowest

murmurs penetrated from one section of the room to the other. At length the maid came in to bring a message

that Mr. Hilbery would not be home for dinner. It was true that there was no need that Katharine should be

informed, but William began to inquire Cassandra's opinion in such a way as to show that, with or without

"But don't you think it's a little unsociable?" he hazarded. "Why not do something amusing?go to the play,

for instance? Why not ask Katharine and Ralph, eh?" The coupling of their names in this manner caused

"Oh, I know nothing about that. I only thought we might amuse ourselves, as your uncle's out."

He proceeded on his embassy with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment which caused him to turn

aside with his hand on the curtain, and to examine intently for several moments the portrait of a lady,

optimistically said by Mrs. Hilbery to be an early work of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Then, with some unnecessary

fumbling, he drew aside the curtain, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, repeated his message and

suggested that they should all spend the evening at the play. Katharine accepted the suggestion with such

cordiality that it was strange to find her of no clear mind as to the precise spectacle she wished to see. She left

the choice entirely to Ralph and William, who, taking counsel fraternally over an evening paper, found

themselves in agreement as to the merits of a musichall. This being arranged, everything else followed

easily and enthusiastically. Cassandra had never been to a musichall. Katharine instructed her in the peculiar

delights of an entertainment where Polar bears follow directly upon ladies in full evening dress, and the stage

is alternately a garden of mystery, a milliner's bandbox, and a fried fish shop in the Mile End Road.

Whatever the exact nature of the program that night, it fulfilled the highest purposes of dramatic art, so far, at

No doubt the actors and the authors would have been surprised to learn in what shape their efforts reached

those particular eyes and ears; but they could not have denied that the effect as a whole was tremendous. The

hall resounded with brass and strings, alternately of enormous pomp and majesty, and then of sweetest

lamentation. The reds and creams of the background, the lyres and harps and urns and skulls, the

protuberances of plaster, the fringes of scarlet plush, the sinking and blazing of innumerable electric lights,

could scarcely have been surpassed for decorative effect by any craftsman of the ancient or modern world.

Then there was the audience itself, bareshouldered, tufted and garlanded in the stalls, decorous but festal in

the balconies, and frankly fit for daylight and street life in the galleries. But, however they differed when

looked at separately, they shared the same huge, lovable nature in the bulk, which murmured and swayed and

quivered all the time the dancing and juggling and lovemaking went on in front of it, slowly laughed and

reluctantly left off laughing, and applauded with a helterskelter generosity which sometimes became

unanimous and overwhelming. Once William saw Katharine leaning forward and clapping her hands with an

abandonment that startled him. Her laugh rang out with the laughter of the audience.

For a second he was puzzled, as if this laughter disclosed something that he had never suspected in her. But

then Cassandra's face caught his eye, gazing with astonishment at the buffoon, not laughing, too deeply intent

and surprised to laugh at what she saw, and for some moments he watched her as if she were a child.

The performance came to an end, the illusion dying out first here and then there, as some rose to put on their

coats, others stood upright to salute "God Save the King," the musicians folded their music and encased their

instruments, and the lights sank one by one until the house was empty, silent, and full of great shadows.

Looking back over her shoulder as she followed Ralph through the swing doors, Cassandra marveled to see

how the stage was already entirely without romance. But, she wondered, did they really cover all the seats in

The success of this entertainment was such that before they separated another expedition had been planned

for the next day. The next day was Saturday; therefore both William and Ralph were free to devote the whole

afternoon to an expedition to Greenwich, which Cassandra had never seen, and Katharine confused with

Dulwich. On this occasion Ralph was their guide. He brought them without accident to Greenwich.

What exigencies of state or fantasies of imagination first gave birth to the cluster of pleasant places by which

London is surrounded is matter of indifference now that they have adapted themselves so admirably to the

needs of people between the ages of twenty and thirty with Saturday afternoons to spend. Indeed, if ghosts

have any interest in the affections of those who succeed them they must reap their richest harvests when the

fine weather comes again and the lovers, the sightseers, and the holidaymakers pour themselves out of trains

and omnibuses into their old pleasuregrounds. It is true that they go, for the most part, unthanked by name,

although upon this occasion William was ready to give such discriminating praise as the dead architects and

painters received seldom in the course of the year. They were walking by the river bank, and Katharine and

Ralph, lagging a little behind, caught fragments of his lecture. Katharine smiled at the sound of his voice; she

listened as if she found it a little unfamiliar, intimately though she knew it; she tested it. The note of

assurance and happiness was new. William was very happy. She learnt every hour what sources of his

happiness she had neglected. She had never asked him to teach her anything; she had never consented to read

Macaulay; she had never expressed her belief that his play was second only to the works of Shakespeare. She

followed dreamily in their wake, smiling and delighting in the sound which conveyed, she knew, the

Then she murmured, "How can Cassandra" but changed her sentence to the opposite of what she meant to

say and ended, "how could she herself have been so blind?" But it was unnecessary to follow out such riddles

when the presence of Ralph supplied her with more interesting problems, which somehow became involved

with the little boat crossing the river, the majestic and careworn City, and the steamers homecoming with

their treasury, or starting in search of it, so that infinite leisure would be necessary for the proper

disentanglement of one from the other. He stopped, moreover, and began inquiring of an old boatman as to

the tides and the ships. In thus talking he seemed different, and even looked different, she thought, against the

river, with the steeples and towers for background. His strangeness, his romance, his power to leave her side

and take part in the affairs of men, the possibility that they should together hire a boat and cross the river, the

speed and wildness of this enterprise filled her mind and inspired her with such rapture, half of love and half

of adventure, that William and Cassandra were startled from their talk, and Cassandra exclaimed, "She looks

as if she were offering up a sacrifice! Very beautiful," she added quickly, though she repressed, in deference

to William, her own wonder that the sight of Ralph Denham talking to a boatman on the banks of the Thames

That afternoon, what with tea and the curiosities of the Thames tunnel and the unfamiliarity of the streets,

passed so quickly that the only method of prolonging it was to plan another expedition for the following day.

Hampton Court was decided upon, in preference to Hampstead, for though Cassandra had dreamt as a child

of the brigands of Hampstead, she had now transferred her affections completely and for ever to William III.

Accordingly, they arrived at Hampton Court about lunchtime on a fine Sunday morning. Such unity marked

their expressions of admiration for the redbrick building that they might have come there for no other

purpose than to assure each other that this palace was the stateliest palace in the world. They walked up and

down the Terrace, four abreast, and fancied themselves the owners of the place, and calculated the amount of

"The only hope for us," said Katharine, "is that William shall die, and Cassandra shall be given rooms as the

"Or" Cassandra began, but checked herself from the liberty of envisaging Katharine as the widow of a

distinguished lawyer. Upon this, the third day of junketing, it was tiresome to have to restrain oneself even

from such innocent excursions of fancy. She dared not question William; he was inscrutable; he never

seemed even to follow the other couple with curiosity when they separated, as they frequently did, to name a

plant, or examine a fresco. Cassandra was constantly studying their backs. She noticed how sometimes the

impulse to move came from Katharine, and sometimes from Ralph; how, sometimes, they walked slow, as if

in profound intercourse, and sometimes fast, as if in passionate. When they came together again nothing

"We have been wondering whether they ever catch a fish . . ." or, "We must leave time to visit the Maze."

Then, to puzzle her further, William and Ralph filled in all interstices of mealtimes or railway journeys with

perfectly goodtempered arguments; or they discussed politics, or they told stories, or they did sums together

upon the backs of old envelopes to prove something. She suspected that Katharine was absentminded, but it

was impossible to tell. There were moments when she felt so young and inexperienced that she almost wished

herself back with the silkworms at Stogdon House, and not embarked upon this bewildering intrigue.

These moments, however, were only the necessary shadow or chill which proved the substance of her bliss,

and did not damage the radiance which seemed to rest equally upon the whole party. The fresh air of spring,

the sky washed of clouds and already shedding warmth from its blue, seemed the reply vouchsafed by nature

to the mood of her chosen spirits. These chosen spirits were to be found also among the deer, dumbly

basking, and among the fish, set still in midstream, for they were mute sharers in a benignant state not

needing any exposition by the tongue. No words that Cassandra could come by expressed the stillness, the

brightness, the air of expectancy which lay upon the orderly beauty of the grass walks and gravel paths down

which they went walking four abreast that Sunday afternoon. Silently the shadows of the trees lay across the

broad sunshine; silence wrapt her heart in its folds. The quivering stillness of the butterfly on the halfopened

flower, the silent grazing of the deer in the sun, were the sights her eye rested upon and received as the

But the afternoon wore on, and it became time to leave the gardens. As they drove from Waterloo to Chelsea,

Katharine began to have some compunction about her father, which, together with the opening of offices and

the need of working in them on Monday, made it difficult to plan another festival for the following day. Mr.

Hilbery had taken their absence, so far, with paternal benevolence, but they could not trespass upon it

indefinitely. Indeed, had they known it, he was already suffering from their absence, and longing for their

He had no dislike of solitude, and Sunday, in particular, was pleasantly adapted for letterwriting, paying

calls, or a visit to his club. He was leaving the house on some such suitable expedition towards teatime

when he found himself stopped on his own doorstep by his sister, Mrs. Milvain. She should, on hearing that

no one was at home, have withdrawn submissively, but instead she accepted his halfhearted invitation to

come in, and he found himself in the melancholy position of being forced to order tea for her and sit in the

drawingroom while she drank it. She speedily made it plain that she was only thus exacting because she had

"Katharine is out this afternoon," he remarked. "Why not come round later and discuss it with herwith us

"My dear Trevor, I have particular reasons for wishing to talk to you alone. . . . Where is Katharine?"

"She's out with her young man, naturally. Cassandra plays the part of chaperone very usefully. A charming

young woman thata great favorite of mine." He turned his stone between his fingers, and conceived

different methods of leading Celia away from her obsession, which, he supposed, must have reference to the

"Yes, with Cassandra," Mr. Hilbery agreed urbanely, pleased at the diversion. "I think they said they were

going to Hampton Court, and I rather believe they were taking a protege of mine, Ralph Denham, a very

clever fellow, too, to amuse Cassandra. I thought the arrangement very suitable." He was prepared to dwell at

some length upon this safe topic, and trusted that Katharine would come in before he had done with it.

"Hampton Court always seems to me an ideal spot for engaged couples. There's the Maze, there's a nice place

for having teaI forget what they call itand then, if the young man knows his business he contrives to

take his lady upon the river. Full of possibilitiesfull. Cake, Celia?" Mr. Hilbery continued. "I respect my

dinner too much, but that can't possibly apply to you. You've never observed that feast, so far as I can

Her brother's affability did not deceive Mrs. Milvain; it slightly saddened her; she well knew the cause of it.

"Ralph Denham?" said Mr. Hilbery, in relief that her mind had taken this turn. "A very interesting young

man. I've a great belief in him. He's an authority upon our mediaeval institutions, and if he weren't forced to

"Yes, his father died some years ago," said Mr. Hilbery, who was prepared to draw upon his imagination, if

necessary, to keep Mrs. Milvain supplied with facts about the private history of Ralph Denham since, for

"A legal family?" Mrs. Milvain inquired. "I fancy I've seen the name somewhere."

Mr. Hilbery shook his head. "I should be inclined to doubt whether they were altogether in that walk of life,"

he observed. "I fancy that Denham once told me that his father was a corn merchant. Perhaps he said a

stockbroker. He came to grief, anyhow, as stockbrokers have a way of doing. I've a great respect for

Denham," he added. The remark sounded to his ears unfortunately conclusive, and he was afraid that there

was nothing more to be said about Denham. He examined the tips of his fingers carefully. "Cassandra's

grown into a very charming young woman," he started afresh. "Charming to look at, and charming to talk to,

though her historical knowledge is not altogether profound. Another cup of tea?"

Mrs. Milvain had given her cup a little push, which seemed to indicate some momentary displeasure. But she

"It is Cassandra that I have come about," she began. "I am very sorry to say that Cassandra is not at all what

you think her, Trevor. She has imposed upon your and Maggie's goodness. She has behaved in a way that

would have seemed incrediblein this house of all houseswere it not for other circumstances that are still

"It all sounds very black," he remarked urbanely, continuing his examination of his fingernails. "But I own I

Mrs. Milvain became rigid, and emitted her message in little short sentences of extreme intensity.

"Who has Cassandra gone out with? William Rodney. Who has Katharine gone out with? Ralph Denham.

Why are they for ever meeting each other round street corners, and going to musichalls, and taking cabs late

at night? Why will Katharine not tell me the truth when I question her? I understand the reason now.

Katharine has entangled herself with this unknown lawyer; she has seen fit to condone Cassandra's conduct."

"Ah, well, Katharine will no doubt have some explanation to give me," Mr. Hilbery replied imperturbably.

"It's a little too complicated for me to take in all at once, I confessand, if you won't think me rude, Celia, I

"She has condoned Cassandra's conduct and entangled herself with Ralph Denham," she repeated. She stood

very erect with the dauntless air of one testifying to the truth regardless of consequences. She knew from past

discussions that the only way to counter her brother's indolence and indifference was to shoot her statements

at him in a compressed form once finally upon leaving the room. Having spoken thus, she restrained herself

from adding another word, and left the house with the dignity of one inspired by a great ideal.

She had certainly framed her remarks in such a way as to prevent her brother from paying his call in the

region of Knightsbridge. He had no fears for Katharine, but there was a suspicion at the back of his mind that

Cassandra might have been, innocently and ignorantly, led into some foolish situation in one of their

unshepherded dissipations. His wife was an erratic judge of the conventions; he himself was lazy; and with

Katharine absorbed, very naturallyHere he recalled, as well as he could, the exact nature of the charge.

"She has condoned Cassandra's conduct and entangled herself with Ralph Denham." From which it appeared

that Katharine was NOT absorbed, or which of them was it that had entangled herself with Ralph Denham?

From this maze of absurdity Mr. Hilbery saw no way out until Katharine herself came to his help, so that he

No sooner had he heard the young people come in and go upstairs than he sent a maid to tell Miss Katharine

that he wished to speak to her in the study. She was slipping furs loosely onto the floor in the drawingroom

in front of the fire. They were all gathered round, reluctant to part. The message from her father surprised

Katharine, and the others caught from her look, as she turned to go, a vague sense of apprehension.

Mr. Hilbery was reassured by the sight of her. He congratulated himself, he prided himself, upon possessing a

daughter who had a sense of responsibility and an understanding of life profound beyond her years.

Moreover, she was looking today unusual; he had come to take her beauty for granted; now he remembered

it and was surprised by it. He thought instinctively that he had interrupted some happy hour of hers with

"I'm sorry to bother you, my dear. I heard you come in, and thought I'd better make myself disagreeable at

onceas it seems, unfortunately, that fathers are expected to make themselves disagreeable. Now, your Aunt

Celia has been to see me; your Aunt Celia has taken it into her head apparently that you and Cassandra have

beenlet us say a little foolish. This going about togetherthese pleasant little partiesthere's been some

kind of misunderstanding. I told her I saw no harm in it, but I should just like to hear from yourself. Has

Katharine did not reply at once, and Mr. Hilbery tapped the coal encouragingly with the poker. Then she said,

"I don't see why I should answer Aunt Celia's questions. I've told her already that I won't."

Mr. Hilbery was relieved and secretly amused at the thought of the interview, although he could not license

"Very good. Then you authorize me to tell her that she's been mistaken, and there was nothing but a little fun

in it? You've no doubt, Katharine, in your own mind? Cassandra is in our charge, and I don't intend that

people should gossip about her. I suggest that you should be a little more careful in future. Invite me to your

She did not respond, as he had hoped, with any affectionate or humorous reply. She meditated, pondering

something or other, and he reflected that even his Katharine did not differ from other women in the capacity

"Have you a guilty conscience?" he inquired lightly. "Tell me, Katharine," he said more seriously, struck by

"I've been meaning to tell you for some time," she said, "I'm not going to marry William."

"You're not going!" he exclaimed, dropping the poker in his immense surprise. "Why? When? Explain

"Oh, some time agoa week, perhaps more." Katharine spoke hurriedly and indifferently, as if the matter

Mr. Hilbery had seldom felt more completely at a loss. He thought that Katharine was treating the matter with

curious unconcern; she scarcely seemed aware of the gravity of what she was saying; he did not understand

the position at all. But his desire to smooth everything over comfortably came to his relief. No doubt there

was some quarrel, some whimsey on the part of William, who, though a good fellow, was a little exacting

sometimessomething that a woman could put right. But though he inclined to take the easiest view of his

"I confess I find great difficulty in following you. I should like to hear William's side of the story," he said

"I wouldn't let him," said Katharine. "I know it must seem to you very strange," she added. "But I assure you,

This appeal for delay was much to Mr. Hilbery's liking. But his conscience would not suffer it. People were

talking. He could not endure that his daughter's conduct should be in any way considered irregular. He

wondered whether, in the circumstances, it would be better to wire to his wife, to send for one of his sisters,

to forbid William the house, to pack Cassandra off homefor he was vaguely conscious of responsibilities

in her direction, too. His forehead was becoming more and more wrinkled by the multiplicity of his anxieties,

which he was sorely tempted to ask Katharine to solve for him, when the door opened and William Rodney

appeared. This necessitated a complete change, not only of manner, but of position also.

"Here's William," Katharine exclaimed, in a tone of relief. "I've told father we're not engaged," she said to

William's manner was marked by the utmost formality. He bowed very slightly in the direction of Mr.

Hilbery, and stood erect, holding one lapel of his coat, and gazing into the center of the fire. He waited for

Mr. Hilbery also assumed an appearance of formidable dignity. He had risen to his feet, and now bent the top

"I should like your account of this affair, Rodneyif Katharine no longer prevents you from speaking."

After a perceptible pause William bent his head, and Katharine said, as if by an afterthought:

Mr. Hilbery swayed to and fro, and moved his lips as if to utter remarks which remained unspoken.

"I can only suggest that you should postpone any decision until the effect of this misunderstanding has had

"There's been no misunderstanding," Katharine interposed. "Nothing at all." She moved a few paces across

the room, as if she intended to leave them. Her preoccupied naturalness was in strange contrast to her father's

pomposity and to William's military rigidity. He had not once raised his eyes. Katharine's glance, on the other

hand, ranged past the two gentlemen, along the books, over the tables, towards the door. She was paying the

least possible attention, it seemed, to what was happening. Her father looked at her with a sudden clouding

and troubling of his expression. Somehow his faith in her stability and sense was queerly shaken. He no

longer felt that he could ultimately entrust her with the whole conduct of her own affairs after a superficial

show of directing them. He felt, for the first time in many years, responsible for her.

"Look here, we must get to the bottom of this," he said, dropping his formal manner and addressing Rodney

as if Katharine were not present. "You've had some difference of opinion, eh? Take my word for it, most

people go through this sort of thing when they're engaged. I've seen more trouble come from long

engagements than from any other form of human folly. Take my advice and put the whole matter out of your

mindsboth of you. I prescribe a complete abstinence from emotion. Visit some cheerful seaside resort,

He was struck by William's appearance, which seemed to him to indicate profound feeling resolutely held in

check. No doubt, he reflected, Katharine had been very trying, unconsciously trying, and had driven him to

take up a position which was none of his willing. Mr. Hilbery certainly did not overrate William's sufferings.

No minutes in his life had hitherto extorted from him such intensity of anguish. He was now facing the

consequences of his insanity. He must confess himself entirely and fundamentally other than Mr. Hilbery

thought him. Everything was against him. Even the Sunday evening and the fire and the tranquil library scene

were against him. Mr. Hilbery's appeal to him as a man of the world was terribly against him. He was no

longer a man of any world that Mr. Hilbery cared to recognize. But some power compelled him, as it had

compelled him to come downstairs, to make his stand here and now, alone and unhelped by any one, without

Mr. Hilbery's face turned a curious dull purple. He looked at his daughter. He nodded his head, as if to

convey his silent command to her to leave the room; but either she did not notice it or preferred not to obey.

"You have the impudence" Mr. Hilbery began, in a dull, low voice that he himself had never heard before,

when there was a scuffling and exclaiming in the hall, and Cassandra, who appeared to be insisting against

"Uncle Trevor," she exclaimed, "I insist upon telling you the truth!" She flung herself between Rodney and

her uncle, as if she sought to intercept their blows. As her uncle stood perfectly still, looking very large and

imposing, and as nobody spoke, she shrank back a little, and looked first at Katharine and then at Rodney.

"You have the impudence to tell me this in Katharine's presence?" Mr. Hilbery continued, speaking with

"I am aware, quite aware" Rodney's words, which were broken in sense, spoken after a pause, and with his

eyes upon the ground, nevertheless expressed an astonishing amount of resolution. "I am quite aware what

you must think of me," he brought out, looking Mr. Hilbery directly in the eyes for the first time.

"I could express my views on the subject more fully if we were alone," Mr. Hilbery returned.

"But you forget me," said Katharine. She moved a little towards Rodney, and her movement seemed to testify

mutely to her respect for him, and her alliance with him. "I think William has behaved perfectly rightly, and,

Cassandra, too, gave an indescribably slight movement which seemed to draw the three of them into alliance

together. Katharine's tone and glance made Mr. Hilbery once more feel completely at a loss, and in addition,

painfully and angrily obsolete; but in spite of an awful inner hollowness he was outwardly composed.

"Cassandra and Rodney have a perfect right to settle their own affairs according to their own wishes; but I see

no reason why they should do so either in my room or in my house. . . . I wish to be quite clear on this point,

He paused, and his pause seemed to signify that he was extremely thankful for his daughter's deliverance.

Cassandra turned to Katharine, who drew her breath as if to speak and checked herself; Rodney, too, seemed

to await some movement on her part; her father glanced at her as if he half anticipated some further

revelation. She remained perfectly silent. In the silence they heard distinctly steps descending the staircase,

"I'll come back," she said, and as she spoke she opened the door and went out. They could hear her

Mr. Hilbery was left confronting the guilty couple, who remained standing as if they did not accept their

dismissal, and the disappearance of Katharine had brought some change into the situation. So, in his secret

heart, Mr. Hilbery felt that it had, for he could not explain his daughter's behavior to his own satisfaction.

"Uncle Trevor," Cassandra exclaimed impulsively, "don't be angry, please. I couldn't help it; I do beg you to

Her uncle still refused to acknowledge her identity, and still talked over her head as if she did not exist.

"Uncle Trevor, we wanted to tell you," Cassandra replied for him. "We waited" she looked appealingly at

"Yes? What were you waiting for?" her uncle asked sharply, looking at her at last.

The words died on her lips. It was apparent that she was straining her ears as if to catch some sound outside

"This is a most unpleasant business for all parties," he concluded, sinking into his chair again, hunching his

shoulders and regarding the flames. He seemed to speak to himself, and Rodney and Cassandra looked at him

"Why don't you sit down?" he said suddenly. He spoke gruffly, but the force of his anger was evidently spent,

or some preoccupation had turned his mood to other regions. While Cassandra accepted his invitation,

"I think Cassandra can explain matters better in my absence," he said, and left the room, Mr. Hilbery giving

Meanwhile, in the diningroom next door, Denham and Katharine were once more seated at the mahogany

table. They seemed to be continuing a conversation broken off in the middle, as if each remembered the

precise point at which they had been interrupted, and was eager to go on as quickly as possible. Katharine,

having interposed a short account of the interview with her father, Denham made no comment, but said:

"Or stay together. It's only marriage that's out of the question," Katharine replied.

"But at least," he renewed, "we've established the fact that my lapses are still in some odd way connected

with you; yours have nothing to do with me. Katharine," he added, his assumption of reason broken up by his

agitation, "I assure you that we are in lovewhat other people call love. Remember that night. We had no

doubts whatever then. We were absolutely happy for half an hour. You had no lapse until the day after; I had

no lapse until yesterday morning. We've been happy at intervals all day until Iwent off my head, and you,

"Ah," she exclaimed, as if the subject chafed her, "I can't make you understand. It's not boredomI'm never

bored. Realityreality," she ejaculated, tapping her finger upon the table as if to emphasize and perhaps

explain her isolated utterance of this word. "I cease to be real to you. It's the faces in a storm againthe

vision in a hurricane. We come together for a moment and we part. It's my fault, too. I'm as bad as you

They were trying to explain, not for the first time, as their weary gestures and frequent interruptions showed,

what in their common language they had christened their "lapses"; a constant source of distress to them, in

the past few days, and the immediate reason why Ralph was on his way to leave the house when Katharine,

listening anxiously, heard him and prevented him. What was the cause of these lapses? Either because

Katharine looked more beautiful, or more strange, because she wore something different, or said something

unexpected, Ralph's sense of her romance welled up and overcame him either into silence or into inarticulate

expressions, which Katharine, with unintentional but invariable perversity, interrupted or contradicted with

some severity or assertion of prosaic fact. Then the vision disappeared, and Ralph expressed vehemently in

his turn the conviction that he only loved her shadow and cared nothing for her reality. If the lapse was on her

side it took the form of gradual detachment until she became completely absorbed in her own thoughts, which

carried her away with such intensity that she sharply resented any recall to her companion's side. It was

useless to assert that these trances were always originated by Ralph himself, however little in their later

stages they had to do with him. The fact remained that she had no need of him and was very loath to be

reminded of him. How, then, could they be in love? The fragmentary nature of their relationship was but too

Thus they sat depressed to silence at the diningroom table, oblivious of everything, while Rodney paced the

drawingroom overhead in such agitation and exaltation of mind as he had never conceived possible, and

Cassandra remained alone with her uncle. Ralph, at length, rose and walked gloomily to the window. He

pressed close to the pane. Outside were truth and freedom and the immensity only to be apprehended by the

mind in loneliness, and never communicated to another. What worse sacrilege was there than to attempt to

violate what he perceived by seeking to impart it? Some movement behind him made him reflect that

Katharine had the power, if she chose, to be in person what he dreamed of her spirit. He turned sharply to

implore her help, when again he was struck cold by her look of distance, her expression of intentness upon

some far object. As if conscious of his look upon her she rose and came to him, standing close by his side,

and looking with him out into the dusky atmosphere. Their physical closeness was to him a bitter enough

comment upon the distance between their minds. Yet distant as she was, her presence by his side transformed

the world. He saw himself performing wonderful deeds of courage; saving the drowning, rescuing the forlorn.

Impatient with this form of egotism, he could not shake off the conviction that somehow life was wonderful,

romantic, a master worth serving so long as she stood there. He had no wish that she should speak; he did not

look at her or touch her; she was apparently deep in her own thoughts and oblivious of his presence.

The door opened without their hearing the sound. Mr. Hilbery looked round the room, and for a moment

failed to discover the two figures in the window. He started with displeasure when he saw them, and observed

them keenly before he appeared able to make up his mind to say anything. He made a movement finally that

warned them of his presence; they turned instantly. Without speaking, he beckoned to Katharine to come to

him, and, keeping his eyes from the region of the room where Denham stood, he shepherded her in front of

him back to the study. When Katharine was inside the room he shut the study door carefully behind him as if

"Now, Katharine," he said, taking up his stand in front of the fire, "you will, perhaps, have the kindness to

explain" She remained silent. "What inferences do you expect me to draw?" he said sharply. . . . "You tell

me that you are not engaged to Rodney; I see you on what appear to be extremely intimate terms with

anotherwith Ralph Denham. What am I to conclude? Are you," he added, as she still said nothing,

His sense of relief was great; he had been certain that her answer would have confirmed his suspicions, but

that anxiety being set at rest, he was the more conscious of annoyance with her for her behavior.

"Then all I can say is that you've very strange ideas of the proper way to behave. . . . People have drawn

certain conclusions, nor am I surprised. . . . The more I think of it the more inexplicable I find it," he went on,

his anger rising as he spoke. "Why am I left in ignorance of what is going on in my own house? Why am I

left to hear of these events for the first time from my sister? Most disagreeable most upsetting. How I'm to

explain to your Uncle Francisbut I wash my hands of it. Cassandra goes tomorrow. I forbid Rodney the

house. As for the other young man, the sooner he makes himself scarce the better. After placing the most

implicit trust in you, Katharine" He broke off, disquieted by the ominous silence with which his words

were received, and looked at his daughter with the curious doubt as to her state of mind which he had felt

before, for the first time, this evening. He perceived once more that she was not attending to what he said, but

was listening, and for a moment he, too, listened for sounds outside the room. His certainty that there was

some understanding between Denham and Katharine returned, but with a most unpleasant suspicion that there

was something illicit about it, as the whole position between the young people seemed to him gravely illicit.

"I'll speak to Denham," he said, on the impulse of his suspicion, moving as if to go.

At these words, which seemed to imply a determination to goto go for ever, Mr. Hilbery returned to his

position in front of the fire, and began swaying slightly from side to side without for the moment making any

"I understood you to say that you were not engaged to him," he said at length, fixing his eyes upon his

"It should be a matter of indifference to you, then, whether he comes here or notI will not have you

listening to other things when I am speaking to you!" he broke off angrily, perceiving a slight movement on

her part to one side. "Answer me frankly, what is your relationship with this young man?"

"I refuse to explain," she returned, and as she said it the front door banged to. "There!" she exclaimed. "He is

gone!" She flashed such a look of fiery indignation at her father that he lost his selfcontrol for a moment.

She looked for a moment like a wild animal caged in a civilized dwellingplace. She glanced over the walls

covered with books, as if for a second she had forgotten the position of the door. Then she made as if to go,

"These emotions have been very upsetting, naturally," he said. His manner had regained all its suavity, and he

spoke with a soothing assumption of paternal authority. "You've been placed in a very difficult position, as I

understand from Cassandra. Now let us come to terms; we will leave these agitating questions in peace for

the present. Meanwhile, let us try to behave like civilized beings. Let us read Sir Walter Scott. What d'you

He made his own choice, and before his daughter could protest or make her escape, she found herself being

Yet Mr. Hilbery had grave doubts, as he read, whether the process was more than skindeep. Civilization had

been very profoundly and unpleasantly overthrown that evening; the extent of the ruin was still

undetermined; he had lost his temper, a physical disaster not to be matched for the space of ten years or so;

and his own condition urgently required soothing and renovating at the hands of the classics. His house was

in a state of revolution; he had a vision of unpleasant encounters on the staircase; his meals would be

poisoned for days to come; was literature itself a specific against such disagreeables? A note of hollowness

Considering that Mr. Hilbery lived in a house which was accurately numbered in order with its fellows, and

that he filled up forms, paid rent, and had seven more years of tenancy to run, he had an excuse for laying

down laws for the conduct of those who lived in his house, and this excuse, though profoundly inadequate, he

found useful during the interregnum of civilization with which he now found himself faced. In obedience to

those laws, Rodney disappeared; Cassandra was dispatched to catch the eleventhirty on Monday morning;

Denham was seen no more; so that only Katharine, the lawful occupant of the upper rooms, remained, and

Mr. Hilbery thought himself competent to see that she did nothing further to compromise herself. As he bade

her good morning next day he was aware that he knew nothing of what she was thinking, but, as he reflected

with some bitterness, even this was an advance upon the ignorance of the previous mornings. He went to his

study, wrote, tore up, and wrote again a letter to his wife, asking her to come back on account of domestic

difficulties which he specified at first, but in a later draft more discreetly left unspecified. Even if she started

the very moment that she got it, he reflected, she would not be home till Tuesday night, and he counted

lugubriously the number of hours that he would have to spend in a position of detestable authority alone with

What was she doing now, he wondered, as he addressed the envelope to his wife. He could not control the

telephone. He could not play the spy. She might be making any arrangements she chose. Yet the thought did

not disturb him so much as the strange, unpleasant, illicit atmosphere of the whole scene with the young

Had he known it, Katharine was far enough withdrawn, both physically and spiritually, from the telephone.

She sat in her room with the dictionaries spreading their wide leaves on the table before her, and all the pages

which they had concealed for so many years arranged in a pile. She worked with the steady concentration that

is produced by the successful effort to think down some unwelcome thought by means of another thought.

Having absorbed the unwelcome thought, her mind went on with additional vigor, derived from the victory;

on a sheet of paper lines of figures and symbols frequently and firmly written down marked the different

stages of its progress. And yet it was broad daylight; there were sounds of knocking and sweeping, which

proved that living people were at work on the other side of the door, and the door, which could be thrown

open in a second, was her only protection against the world. But she had somehow risen to be mistress in her

Steps approached her unheard. It is true that they were steps that lingered, divagated, and mounted with the

deliberation natural to one past sixty whose arms, moreover, are full of leaves and blossoms; but they came

on steadily, and soon a tap of laurel boughs against the door arrested Katharine's pencil as it touched the

page. She did not move, however, and sat blankeyed as if waiting for the interruption to cease. Instead, the

door opened. At first, she attached no meaning to the moving mass of green which seemed to enter the room

independently of any human agency. Then she recognized parts of her mother's face and person behind the

"From Shakespeare's tomb!" exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, dropping the entire mass upon the floor, with a gesture

that seemed to indicate an act of dedication. Then she flung her arms wide and embraced her daughter.

"You've come back?" said Katharine, very vaguely, standing up to receive the embrace.

Although she recognized her mother's presence, she was very far from taking part in the scene, and yet felt it

to be amazingly appropriate that her mother should be there, thanking God emphatically for unknown

blessings, and strewing the floor with flowers and leaves from Shakespeare's tomb.

"Nothing else matters in the world!" Mrs. Hilbery continued. "Names aren't everything; it's what we feel

that's everything. I didn't want silly, kind, interfering letters. I didn't want your father to tell me. I knew it

"You knew it?" Katharine repeated her mother's words softly and vaguely, looking past her. "How did you

know it?" She began, like a child, to finger a tassel hanging from her mother's cloak.

"The first evening you told me, Katharine. Oh, and thousands of times dinnerpartiestalking about

Katharine seemed to consider each of these proofs separately. Then she said gravely:

"Yes, there's Cassandra," said Mrs. Hilbery. "I own I was a little grudging at first, but, after all, she plays the

piano so beautifully. Do tell me, Katharine," she asked impulsively, "where did you go that evening she

"Ah!" said Mrs. Hilbery, with a slight note of disappointment in her voice. "I had my little romancemy

little speculation." She looked at her daughter. Katharine faltered beneath that innocent and penetrating gaze;

"Don't marry unless you're in love!" said Mrs. Hilbery very quickly. "But," she added, glancing momentarily

"To meet here, to meet in his house, to meet in the street." Mrs. Hilbery ran over these phrases as if she were

trying chords that did not quite satisfy her ear. It was plain that she had her sources of information, and,

indeed, her bag was stuffed with what she called "kind letters" from the pen of her sisterinlaw.

"What a comfort he was in that shophow he took me and found the ruins at oncehow SAFE I felt with

"Safe? Oh, no, he's fearfully rashhe's always taking risks. He wants to throw up his profession and live in a

little cottage and write books, though he hasn't a penny of his own, and there are any number of sisters and

"Yes. Rather a finelooking old lady, with white hair." Katharine began to describe her visit, and soon Mrs.

Hilbery elicited the facts that not only was the house of excruciating ugliness, which Ralph bore without

complaint, but that it was evident that every one depended on him, and he had a room at the top of the house,

"A wretched old bird in a corner, with half its feathers out," she said, with a tenderness in her voice that

seemed to commiserate the sufferings of humanity while resting assured in the capacity of Ralph Denham to

"But, Katharine, you ARE in love!" at which Katharine flushed, looked startled, as if she had said something

Hastily Mrs. Hilbery asked for further details of this extraordinary house, and interposed a few speculations

about the meeting between Keats and Coleridge in a lane, which tided over the discomfort of the moment,

and drew Katharine on to further descriptions and indiscretions. In truth, she found an extraordinary pleasure

in being thus free to talk to some one who was equally wise and equally benignant, the mother of her earliest

childhood, whose silence seemed to answer questions that were never asked. Mrs. Hilbery listened without

making any remark for a considerable time. She seemed to draw her conclusions rather by looking at her

daughter than by listening to her, and, if crossexamined, she would probably have given a highly inaccurate

version of Ralph Denham's lifehistory except that he was penniless, fatherless, and lived at Highgateall of

which was much in his favor. But by means of these furtive glances she had assured herself that Katharine

was in a state which gave her, alternately, the most exquisite pleasure and the most profound alarm.

"It's all done in five minutes at a Registry Office nowadays, if you think the Church service a little

"But we don't want to be married," Katharine replied emphatically, and added, "Why, after all, isn't it

Again Mrs. Hilbery looked discomposed, and, in her trouble, took up the sheets which were lying upon the

table, and began turning them over this way and that, and muttering to herself as she glanced:

"A plus B minus C equals 'x y z'. It's so dreadfully ugly, Katharine. That's what I feelso dreadfully ugly."

Katharine took the sheets from her mother's hand and began shuffling them absentmindedly together, for her

"But he doesn't ask it of you?" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. "Not that grave young man with the steady brown

Mrs. Hilbery, her eyes growing blank, peered down the enormously long corridor of days at the far end of

which the little figures of herself and her husband appeared fantastically attired, clasping hands upon a

"We were in a little boat going out to a ship at night," she began. "The sun had set and the moon was rising

over our heads. There were lovely silver lights upon the waves and three green lights upon the steamer in the

middle of the bay. Your father's head looked so grand against the mast. It was life, it was death. The great sea

The ancient fairytale fell roundly and harmoniously upon Katharine's ears. Yes, there was the enormous

space of the sea; there were the three green lights upon the steamer; the cloaked figures climbed up on deck.

And so, voyaging over the green and purple waters, past the cliffs and the sandy lagoons and through pools

crowded with the masts of ships and the steeples of churcheshere they were. The river seemed to have

brought them and deposited them here at this precise point. She looked admiringly at her mother, that ancient

"Who knows," exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, continuing her reveries, "where we are bound for, or why, or who has

sent us, or what we shall findwho knows anything, except that love is our faithlove" she crooned, and

the soft sound beating through the dim words was heard by her daughter as the breaking of waves solemnly in

order upon the vast shore that she gazed upon. She would have been content for her mother to repeat that

word almost indefinitelya soothing word when uttered by another, a riveting together of the shattered

fragments of the world. But Mrs. Hilbery, instead of repeating the word love, said pleadingly:

"And you won't think those ugly thoughts again, will you, Katharine?" at which words the ship which

Katharine had been considering seemed to put into harbor and have done with its seafaring. Yet she was in

great need, if not exactly of sympathy, of some form of advice, or, at least, of the opportunity of setting forth

"But then," she said, ignoring the difficult problem of ugliness, "you knew you were in love; but we're

different. It seems," she continued, frowning a little as she tried to fix the difficult feeling, "as if something

came to an end suddenlygave outfadedan illusionas if when we think we're in love we make it

upwe imagine what doesn't exist. That's why it's impossible that we should ever marry. Always to be

finding the other an illusion, and going off and forgetting about them, never to be certain that you cared, or

that he wasn't caring for some one not you at all, the horror of changing from one state to the other, being

happy one moment and miserable the nextthat's the reason why we can't possibly marry. At the same

time," she continued, "we can't live without each other, because" Mrs. Hilbery waited patiently for the

sentence to be completed, but Katharine fell silent and fingered her sheet of figures.

"We have to have faith in our vision," Mrs. Hilbery resumed, glancing at the figures, which distressed her

vaguely, and had some connection in her mind with the household accounts, "otherwise, as you say" She

cast a lightning glance into the depths of disillusionment which were, perhaps, not altogether unknown to her.

"Believe me, Katharine, it's the same for every onefor me, toofor your father," she said earnestly, and

sighed. They looked together into the abyss and, as the elder of the two, she recovered herself first and asked:

Katharine looked at her as if, indeed, she were some magician. Once more she felt that instead of being a

grown woman, used to advise and command, she was only a foot or two raised above the long grass and the

little flowers and entirely dependent upon the figure of indefinite size whose head went up into the sky,

Mrs. Hilbery nodded her head in a manner which indicated complete understanding, and the immediate

conception of certain plans for the future. She swept up her flowers, breathed in their sweetness, and,

The case upon which Ralph Denham was engaged that afternoon was not apparently receiving his full

attention, and yet the affairs of the late John Leake of Dublin were sufficiently confused to need all the care

that a solicitor could bestow upon them, if the widow Leake and the five Leake children of tender age were to

receive any pittance at all. But the appeal to Ralph's humanity had little chance of being heard today; he was

no longer a model of concentration. The partition so carefully erected between the different sections of his

life had been broken down, with the result that though his eyes were fixed upon the last Will and Testament,

He tried every device that had proved effective in the past for keeping up the partitions of the mind, until he

could decently go home; but a little to his alarm he found himself assailed so persistently, as if from outside,

by Katharine, that he launched forth desperately into an imaginary interview with her. She obliterated a

bookcase full of law reports, and the corners and lines of the room underwent a curious softening of outline

like that which sometimes makes a room unfamiliar at the moment of waking from sleep. By degrees, a pulse

or stress began to beat at regular intervals in his mind, heaping his thoughts into waves to which words fitted

themselves, and without much consciousness of what he was doing, he began to write on a sheet of draft

paper what had the appearance of a poem lacking several words in each line. Not many lines had been set

down, however, before he threw away his pen as violently as if that were responsible for his misdeeds, and

tore the paper into many separate pieces. This was a sign that Katharine had asserted herself and put to him a

remark that could not be met poetically. Her remark was entirely destructive of poetry, since it was to the

effect that poetry had nothing whatever to do with her; all her friends spent their lives in making up phrases,

she said; all his feeling was an illusion, and next moment, as if to taunt him with his impotence, she had sunk

into one of those dreamy states which took no account whatever of his existence. Ralph was roused by his

passionate attempts to attract her attention to the fact that he was standing in the middle of his little private

room in Lincoln's Inn Fields at a considerable distance from Chelsea. The physical distance increased his

desperation. He began pacing in circles until the process sickened him, and then took a sheet of paper for the

composition of a letter which, he vowed before he began it, should be sent that same evening.

It was a difficult matter to put into words; poetry would have done it better justice, but he must abstain from

poetry. In an infinite number of halfobliterated scratches he tried to convey to her the possibility that

although human beings are woefully illadapted for communication, still, such communion is the best we

know; moreover, they make it possible for each to have access to another world independent of personal

affairs, a world of law, of philosophy, or more strangely a world such as he had had a glimpse of the other

evening when together they seemed to be sharing something, creating something, an ideala vision flung

out in advance of our actual circumstances. If this golden rim were quenched, if life were no longer circled by

an illusion (but was it an illusion after all?), then it would be too dismal an affair to carry to an end; so he

wrote with a sudden spurt of conviction which made clear way for a space and left at least one sentence

standing whole. Making every allowance for other desires, on the whole this conclusion appeared to him to

justify their relationship. But the conclusion was mystical; it plunged him into thought. The difficulty with

which even this amount was written, the inadequacy of the words, and the need of writing under them and

over them others which, after all, did no better, led him to leave off before he was at ail satisfied with his

production, and unable to resist the conviction that such rambling would never be fit for Katharine's eye. He

felt himself more cut off from her than ever. In idleness, and because he could do nothing further with words,

he began to draw little figures in the blank spaces, heads meant to resemble her head, blots fringed with

flames meant to representperhaps the entire universe. From this occupation he was roused by the message

that a lady wished to speak to him. He had scarcely time to run his hands through his hair in order to look as

much like a solicitor as possible, and to cram his papers into his pocket, already overcome with shame that

another eye should behold them, when he realized that his preparations were needless. The lady was Mrs.

"I hope you're not disposing of somebody's fortune in a hurry," she remarked, gazing at the documents on his

table, "or cutting off an entail at one blow, because I want to ask you to do me a favor. And Anderson won't

keep his horse waiting. (Anderson is a perfect tyrant, but he drove my dear father to the Abbey the day they

buried him.) I made bold to come to you, Mr. Denham, not exactly in search of legal assistance (though I

don't know who I'd rather come to, if I were in trouble), but in order to ask your help in settling some

tiresome little domestic affairs that have arisen in my absence. I've been to StratfordonAvon (I must tell

you all about that one of these days), and there I got a letter from my sisterinlaw, a dear kind goose who

likes interfering with other people's children because she's got none of her own. (We're dreadfully afraid that

she's going to lose the sight of one of her eyes, and I always feel that our physical ailments are so apt to turn

into mental ailments. I think Matthew Arnold says something of the same kind about Lord Byron.) But that's

The effect of these parentheses, whether they were introduced for that purpose or represented a natural

instinct on Mrs. Hilbery's part to embellish the bareness of her discourse, gave Ralph time to perceive that she

possessed all the facts of their situation and was come, somehow, in the capacity of ambassador.

"I didn't come here to talk about Lord Byron," Mrs. Hilbery continued, with a little laugh, "though I know

that both you and Katharine, unlike other young people of your generation, still find him worth reading." She

paused. "I'm so glad you've made Katharine read poetry, Mr. Denham!" she exclaimed, "and feel poetry, and

Ralph, whose hand was grasped and whose tongue almost refused to articulate, somehow contrived to say

that there were moments when he felt hopeless, utterly hopeless, though he gave no reason for this statement

"It's the Church of England service you both object to?" Mrs. Hilbery inquired innocently.

"You would marry her in Westminster Abbey if the worst came to the worst?" Mrs. Hilbery inquired.

"I would marry her in St. Paul's Cathedral," Ralph replied. His doubts upon this point, which were always

roused by Katharine's presence, had vanished completely, and his strongest wish in the world was to be with

her immediately, since every second he was away from her he imagined her slipping farther and farther from

him into one of those states of mind in which he was unrepresented. He wished to dominate her, to possess

"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery. She thanked Him for a variety of blessings: for the conviction with

which the young man spoke; and not least for the prospect that on her daughter's weddingday the noble

cadences, the stately periods, the ancient eloquence of the marriage service would resound over the heads of a

distinguished congregation gathered together near the very spot where her father lay quiescent with the other

poets of England. The tears filled her eyes; but she remembered simultaneously that her carriage was waiting,

It was a strange drive. For Denham it was without exception the most unpleasant he had ever taken. His only

wish was to go as straightly and quickly as possible to Cheyne Walk; but it soon appeared that Mrs. Hilbery

either ignored or thought fit to baffle this desire by interposing various errands of her own. She stopped the

carriage at postoffices, and coffeeshops, and shops of inscrutable dignity where the aged attendants had to

be greeted as old friends; and, catching sight of the dome of St. Paul's above the irregular spires of Ludgate

Hill, she pulled the cord impulsively, and gave directions that Anderson should drive them there. But

Anderson had reasons of his own for discouraging afternoon worship, and kept his horse's nose obstinately

towards the west. After some minutes, Mrs. Hilbery realized the situation, and accepted it goodhumoredly,

"Never mind," she said, "we'll go to St. Paul's another day, and it may turn out, though I can't promise that it

Ralph was scarcely aware of what she went on to say. Her mind and body both seemed to have floated into

another region of quicksailing clouds rapidly passing across each other and enveloping everything in a

vaporous indistinctness. Meanwhile he remained conscious of his own concentrated desire, his impotence to

Suddenly Mrs. Hilbery pulled the cord with such decision that even Anderson had to listen to the order which

she leant out of the window to give him. The carriage pulled up abruptly in the middle of Whitehall before a

large building dedicated to one of our Government offices. In a second Mrs. Hilbery was mounting the steps,

and Ralph was left in too acute an irritation by this further delay even to speculate what errand took her now

to the Board of Education. He was about to jump from the carriage and take a cab, when Mrs. Hilbery

"There's plenty of room for us all," she was saying. "Plenty of room. We could find space for FOUR of you,

William," she added, opening the door, and Ralph found that Rodney had now joined their company. The two

men glanced at each other. If distress, shame, discomfort in its most acute form were ever visible upon a

human face, Ralph could read them all expressed beyond the eloquence of words upon the face of his

unfortunate companion. But Mrs. Hilbery was either completely unseeing or determined to appear so. She

went on talking; she talked, it seemed to both the young men, to some one outside, up in the air. She talked

about Shakespeare, she apostrophized the human race, she proclaimed the virtues of divine poetry, she began

to recite verses which broke down in the middle. The great advantage of her discourse was that it was

selfsupporting. It nourished itself until Cheyne Walk was reached upon half a dozen grunts and murmurs.

There was something airy and ironical in her voice and expression as she turned upon the doorstep and

looked at them, which filled both Rodney and Denham with the same misgivings at having trusted their

fortunes to such an ambassador; and Rodney actually hesitated upon the threshold and murmured to Denham:

"You go in, Denham. I . . ." He was turning tail, but the door opening and the familiar look of the house

asserting its charm, he bolted in on the wake of the others, and the door shut upon his escape. Mrs. Hilbery

led the way upstairs. She took them to the drawingroom. The fire burnt as usual, the little tables were laid

"Ah," she said, "Katharine's not here. She must be upstairs in her room. You have something to say to her, I

know, Mr. Denham. You can find your way?" she vaguely indicated the ceiling with a gesture of her hand.

She had become suddenly serious and composed, mistress in her own house. The gesture with which she

dismissed him had a dignity that Ralph never forgot. She seemed to make him free with a wave of her hand to

The Hilberys' house was tall, possessing many stories and passages with closed doors, all, once he had passed

the drawingroom floor, unknown to Ralph. He mounted as high as he could and knocked at the first door he

He was conscious of a large window, full of light, of a bare table, and of a long lookingglass. Katharine had

risen, and was standing with some white papers in her hand, which slowly fluttered to the ground as she saw

her visitor. The explanation was a short one. The sounds were inarticulate; no one could have understood the

meaning save themselves. As if the forces of the world were all at work to tear them asunder they sat,

clasping hands, near enough to be taken even by the malicious eye of Time himself for a united couple, an

"Don't move, don't go," she begged of him, when he stooped to gather the papers she had let fall. But he took

them in his hands and, giving her by a sudden impulse his own unfinished dissertation, with its mystical

Katharine read his sheets to an end; Ralph followed her figures as far as his mathematics would let him. They

came to the end of their tasks at about the same moment, and sat for a time in silence.

"Those were the papers you left on the seat at Kew," said Ralph at length. "You folded them so quickly that I

She blushed very deeply; but as she did not move or attempt to hide her face she had the appearance of some

one disarmed of all defences, or Ralph likened her to a wild bird just settling with wings trembling to fold

themselves within reach of his hand. The moment of exposure had been exquisitely painfulthe light shed

startlingly vivid. She had now to get used to the fact that some one shared her loneliness. The bewilderment

was half shame and half the prelude to profound rejoicing. Nor was she unconscious that on the surface the

whole thing must appear of the utmost absurdity. She looked to see whether Ralph smiled, but found his gaze

fixed on her with such gravity that she turned to the belief that she had committed no sacrilege but enriched

herself, perhaps immeasurably, perhaps eternally. She hardly dared steep herself in the infinite bliss. But his

glance seemed to ask for some assurance upon another point of vital interest to him. It beseeched her mutely

to tell him whether what she had read upon his confused sheet had any meaning or truth to her. She bent her

Ralph nearly tore the page from her hand in shame and despair when he saw her actually contemplating the

He was convinced that it could mean nothing to another, although somehow to him it conveyed not only

Katharine herself but all those states of mind which had clustered round her since he first saw her pouring out

tea on a Sunday afternoon. It represented by its circumference of smudges surrounding a central blot all that

encircling glow which for him surrounded, inexplicably, so many of the objects of life, softening their sharp

outline, so that he could see certain streets, books, and situations wearing a halo almost perceptible to the

physical eye. Did she smile? Did she put the paper down wearily, condemning it not only for its inadequacy

but for its falsity? Was she going to protest once more that he only loved the vision of her? But it did not

occur to her that this diagram had anything to do with her. She said simply, and in the same tone of

He received her assurance with profound joy. Quietly and steadily there rose up behind the whole aspect of

life that soft edge of fire which gave its red tint to the atmosphere and crowded the scene with shadows so

deep and dark that one could fancy pushing farther into their density and still farther, exploring indefinitely.

Whether there was any correspondence between the two prospects now opening before them they shared the

same sense of the impending future, vast, mysterious, infinitely stored with undeveloped shapes which each

would unwrap for the other to behold; but for the present the prospect of the future was enough to fill them

with silent adoration. At any rate, their further attempts to communicate articulately were interrupted by a

knock on the door, and the entrance of a maid who, with a due sense of mystery, announced that a lady

When Katharine rose, with a profound sigh, to resume her duties, Ralph went with her, and neither of them

formulated any guess, on their way downstairs, as to who this anonymous lady might prove to be. Perhaps the

fantastic notion that she was a little black hunchback provided with a steel knife, which she would plunge

into Katharine's heart, appeared to Ralph more probable than another, and he pushed first into the

diningroom to avert the blow. Then he exclaimed "Cassandra!" with such heartiness at the sight of

Cassandra Otway standing by the diningroom table that she put her finger to her lips and begged him to be

"Nobody must know I'm here," she explained in a sepulchral whisper. "I missed my train. I have been

wandering about London all day. I can bear it no longer. Katharine, what am I to do?"

Katharine pushed forward a chair; Ralph hastily found wine and poured it out for her. If not actually fainting,

"William's upstairs," said Ralph, as soon as she appeared to be recovered. "I'll go and ask him to come down

to you." His own happiness had given him a confidence that every one else was bound to be happy too. But

Cassandra had her uncle's commands and anger too vividly in her mind to dare any such defiance. She

became agitated and said that she must leave the house at once. She was not in a condition to go, had they

known where to send her. Katharine's common sense, which had been in abeyance for the past week or two,

still failed her, and she could only ask, "But where's your luggage?" in the vague belief that to take lodgings

depended entirely upon a sufficiency of luggage. Cassandra's reply, "I've lost my luggage," in no way helped

"You've lost your luggage," she repeated. Her eyes rested upon Ralph, with an expression which seemed

better fitted to accompany a profound thanksgiving for his existence or some vow of eternal devotion than a

question about luggage. Cassandra perceived the look, and saw that it was returned; her eyes filled with tears.

She faltered in what she was saying. She began bravely again to discuss the question of lodging when

Katharine, who seemed to have communicated silently with Ralph, and obtained his permission, took her

ruby ring from her finger and giving it to Cassandra, said: "I believe it will fit you without any alteration."

These words would not have been enough to convince Cassandra of what she very much wished to believe

"Why don't you tell us you're glad?" Cassandra was so glad that the tears ran down her cheeks. The certainty

of Katharine's engagement not only relieved her of a thousand vague fears and selfreproaches, but entirely

quenched that spirit of criticism which had lately impaired her belief in Katharine. Her old faith came back to

her. She seemed to behold her with that curious intensity which she had lost; as a being who walks just

beyond our sphere, so that life in their presence is a heightened process, illuminating not only ourselves but a

considerable stretch of the surrounding world. Next moment she contrasted her own lot with theirs and gave

"I won't take that unless William gives it me himself," she said. "Keep it for me, Katharine."

"I assure you everything's perfectly all right," said Ralph. "Let me tell William"

He was about, in spite of Cassandra's protest, to reach the door, when Mrs. Hilbery, either warned by the

parlormaid or conscious with her usual prescience of the need for her intervention, opened the door and

"My dear Cassandra!" she exclaimed. "How delightful to see you back again! What a coincidence!" she

observed, in a general way. "William is upstairs. The kettle boils over. Where's Katharine, I say? I go to look,

and I find Cassandra!" She seemed to have proved something to her own satisfaction, although nobody felt

"She missed her train," Katharine interposed, seeing that Cassandra was unable to speak.

"Life," began Mrs. Hilbery, drawing inspiration from the portraits on the wall apparently, "consists in missing

trains and in finding" But she pulled herself up and remarked that the kettle must have boiled completely

To Katharine's agitated mind it appeared that this kettle was an enormous kettle, capable of deluging the

house in its incessant showers of steam, the enraged representative of all those household duties which she

had neglected. She ran hastily up to the drawingroom, and the rest followed her, for Mrs. Hilbery put her

arm round Cassandra and drew her upstairs. They found Rodney observing the kettle with uneasiness but

with such absence of mind that Katharine's catastrophe was in a fair way to be fulfilled. In putting the matter

straight no greetings were exchanged, but Rodney and Cassandra chose seats as far apart as possible, and sat

down with an air of people making a very temporary lodgment. Either Mrs. Hilbery was impervious to their

discomfort, or chose to ignore it, or thought it high time that the subject was changed, for she did nothing but

"So much earth and so much water and that sublime spirit brooding over it all," she mused, and went on to

sing her strange, halfearthly song of dawns and sunsets, of great poets, and the unchanged spirit of noble

loving which they had taught, so that nothing changes, and one age is linked with another, and no one dies,

and we all meet in spirit, until she appeared oblivious of any one in the room. But suddenly her remarks

seemed to contract the enormously wide circle in which they were soaring and to alight, airily and

"Katharine and Ralph," she said, as if to try the sound. "William and Cassandra."

"I feel myself in an entirely false position," said William desperately, thrusting himself into this breach in her

reflections. "I've no right to be sitting here. Mr. Hilbery told me yesterday to leave the house. I'd no intention

"I feel the same too," Cassandra interrupted. "After what Uncle Trevor said to me last night"

"I have put you into a most odious position," Rodney went on, rising from his seat, in which movement he

was imitated simultaneously by Cassandra. "Until I have your father's consent I have no right to speak to

youlet alone in this house, where my conduct"he looked at Katharine, stammered, and fell

silent"where my conduct has been reprehensible and inexcusable in the extreme," he forced himself to

continue. "I have explained everything to your mother. She is so generous as to try and make me believe that

I have done no harmyou have convinced her that my behavior, selfish and weak as it wasselfish and

Two emotions seemed to be struggling in Katharine; one the desire to laugh at the ridiculous spectacle of

William making her a formal speech across the teatable, the other a desire to weep at the sight of something

childlike and honest in him which touched her inexpressibly. To every one's surprise she rose, stretched out

"You've nothing to reproach yourself withyou've been always" but here her voice died away, and the

tears forced themselves into her eyes, and ran down her cheeks, while William, equally moved, seized her

hand and pressed it to his lips. No one perceived that the drawingroom door had opened itself sufficiently to

admit at least half the person of Mr. Hilbery, or saw him gaze at the scene round the teatable with an

expression of the utmost disgust and expostulation. He withdrew unseen. He paused outside on the landing

trying to recover his selfcontrol and to decide what course he might with most dignity pursue. It was

obvious to him that his wife had entirely confused the meaning of his instructions. She had plunged them all

into the most odious confusion. He waited a moment, and then, with much preliminary rattling of the handle,

opened the door a second time. They had all regained their places; some incident of an absurd nature had now

set them laughing and looking under the table, so that his entrance passed momentarily unperceived.

"It's astonishing what a distance they roll," said Ralph, stooping to turn up the corner of the hearthrug.

"Don't troubledon't bother. We shall find it" Mrs. Hilbery began, and then saw her husband and

Mr. Hilbery looked instinctively at the carpet. Remarkably enough, the ring had rolled to the very point

where he stood. He saw the rubies touching the tip of his boot. Such is the force of habit that he could not

refrain from stooping, with an absurd little thrill of pleasure at being the one to find what others were looking

for, and, picking the ring up, he presented it, with a bow that was courtly in the extreme, to Cassandra.

Whether the making of a bow released automatically feelings of complaisance and urbanity, Mr. Hilbery

found his resentment completely washed away during the second in which he bent and straightened himself.

Cassandra dared to offer her cheek and received his embrace. He nodded with some degree of stiffness to

Rodney and Denham, who had both risen upon seeing him, and now altogether sat down. Mrs. Hilbery

seemed to have been waiting for the entrance of her husband, and for this precise moment in order to put to

him a question which, from the ardor with which she announced it, had evidently been pressing for utterance

"Oh, Trevor, please tell me, what was the date of the first performance of 'Hamlet'?"

In order to answer her Mr. Hilbery had to have recourse to the exact scholarship of William Rodney, and

before he had given his excellent authorities for believing as he believed, Rodney felt himself admitted once

more to the society of the civilized and sanctioned by the authority of no less a person than Shakespeare

himself. The power of literature, which had temporarily deserted Mr. Hilbery, now came back to him,

pouring over the raw ugliness of human affairs its soothing balm, and providing a form into which such

passions as he had felt so painfully the night before could be molded so that they fell roundly from the tongue

in shapely phrases, hurting nobody. He was sufficiently sure of his command of language at length to look at

Katharine and again at Denham. All this talk about Shakespeare had acted as a soporific, or rather as an

incantation upon Katharine. She leaned back in her chair at the head of the teatable, perfectly silent, looking

vaguely past them all, receiving the most generalized ideas of human heads against pictures, against

yellowtinted walls, against curtains of deep crimson velvet. Denham, to whom he turned next, shared her

immobility under his gaze. But beneath his restraint and calm it was possible to detect a resolution, a will, set

now with unalterable tenacity, which made such turns of speech as Mr. Hilbery had at command appear oddly

irrelevant. At any rate, he said nothing. He respected the young man; he was a very able young man; he was

likely to get his own way. He could, he thought, looking at his still and very dignified head, understand

Katharine's preference, and, as he thought this, he was surprised by a pang of acute jealousy. She might have

married Rodney without causing him a twinge. This man she loved. Or what was the state of affairs between

them? An extraordinary confusion of emotion was beginning to get the better of him, when Mrs. Hilbery,

who had been conscious of a sudden pause in the conversation, and had looked wistfully at her daughter once

"Don't stay if you want to go, Katharine. There's the little room over there. Perhaps you and Ralph"

"We're engaged," said Katharine, waking with a start, and looking straight at her father. He was taken aback

by the directness of the statement; he exclaimed as if an unexpected blow had struck him. Had he loved her to

see her swept away by this torrent, to have her taken from him by this uncontrollable force, to stand by

helpless, ignored? Oh, how he loved her! How he loved her! He nodded very curtly to Denham.

"I gathered something of the kind last night," he said. "I hope you'll deserve her." But he never looked at his

daughter, and strode out of the room, leaving in the minds of the women a sense, half of awe, half of

amusement, at the extravagant, inconsiderate, uncivilized male, outraged somehow and gone bellowing to his

lair with a roar which still sometimes reverberates in the most polished of drawingrooms. Then Katharine,

The lamps were lit; their luster reflected itself in the polished wood; good wine was passed round the

dinnertable; before the meal was far advanced civilization had triumphed, and Mr. Hilbery presided over a

feast which came to wear more and more surely an aspect, cheerful, dignified, promising well for the future.

To judge from the expression in Katharine's eyes it promised somethingbut he checked the approach

They went upstairs and he saw Katharine and Denham abstract themselves directly Cassandra had asked

whether she might not play him something some Mozart? some Beethoven? She sat down to the piano; the

door closed softly behind them. His eyes rested on the closed door for some seconds unwaveringly, but, by

degrees, the look of expectation died out of them, and, with a sigh, he listened to the music.

Katharine and Ralph were agreed with scarcely a word of discussion as to what they wished to do, and in a

moment she joined him in the hall dressed for walking. The night was still and moonlit, fit for walking,

though any night would have seemed so to them, desiring more than anything movement, freedom from

"At last!" she breathed, as the front door shut. She told him how she had waited, fidgeted, thought he was

never coming, listened for the sound of doors, half expected to see him again under the lamppost, looking at

the house. They turned and looked at the serene front with its goldrimmed windows, to him the shrine of so

much adoration. In spite of her laugh and the little pressure of mockery on his arm, he would not resign his

belief, but with her hand resting there, her voice quickened and mysteriously moving in his ears, he had not

How they came to find themselves walking down a street with many lamps, corners radiant with light, and a

steady succession of motor omnibuses plying both ways along it, they could neither of them tell; nor

account for the impulse which led them suddenly to select one of these wayfarers and mount to the very front

seat. After curving through streets of comparative darkness, so narrow that shadows on the blinds were

pressed within a few feet of their faces, they came to one of those great knots of activity where the lights,

having drawn close together, thin out again and take their separate ways. They were borne on until they saw

"Yes, I am rather," she replied, becoming conscious that the splendid race of lights drawn past her eyes by the

superb curving and swerving of the monster on which she sat was at an end. They had followed some such

course in their thoughts too; they had been borne on, victors in the forefront of some triumphal car, spectators

of a pageant enacted for them, masters of life. But standing on the pavement alone, this exaltation left them;

they were glad to be alone together. Ralph stood still for a moment to light his pipe beneath a lamp.

"As you like," she replied. She thought, looking at the sky above Chancery Lane, how the roof was the same

everywhere; how she was now secure of all that this lofty blue and its steadfast lights meant to her; reality,

"I've something on my mind," said Ralph abruptly. "I mean I've been thinking of Mary Datchet. We're very

She had turned before she answered him. She had no wish to see any one tonight; it seemed to her that the

immense riddle was answered; the problem had been solved; she held in her hands for one brief moment the

globe which we spend our lives in trying to shape, round, whole, and entire from the confusion of chaos. To

"I could defend myself," he said, almost defiantly. "But what's the use, if one feels a thing? I won't be with

"Of course, you must tell her," said Katharine, and now felt anxious for him to do what appeared to be

necessary if he, too, were to hold his globe for a moment round, whole, and entire.

"I wishI wish" she sighed, for melancholy came over her and obscured at least a section of her clear

"I regret nothing," said Ralph firmly. She leant towards him almost as if she could thus see what he saw. She

thought how obscure he still was to her, save only that more and more constantly he appeared to her a fire

"What a fire!" she thought to herself. She thought of him blazing splendidly in the night, yet so obscure that

to hold his arm, as she held it, was only to touch the opaque substance surrounding the flame that roared

"Why nothing?" she asked hurriedly, in order that he might say more and so make more splendid, more red,

"What are you thinking of, Katharine?" he asked suspiciously, noticing her tone of dreaminess and the inapt

"I was thinking of youyes, I swear it. Always of you, but you take such strange shapes in my mind. You've

destroyed my loneliness. Am I to tell you how I see you? No, tell metell me from the beginning."

Beginning with spasmodic words, he went on to speak more and more fluently, more and more passionately,

feeling her leaning towards him, listening with wonder like a child, with gratitude like a woman. She

"But it was foolish to stand outside and look at the windows. Suppose William hadn't seen you. Would you

He capped her reproof with wonderment that a woman of her age could have stood in Kingsway looking at

"No, I'm a person who can't tell things," she pleaded. "I shall say something ridiculoussomething about

But he persuaded her into a broken statement, beautiful to him, charged with extreme excitement as she spoke

of the dark red fire, and the smoke twined round it, making him feel that he had stepped over the threshold

into the faintly lit vastness of another mind, stirring with shapes, so large, so dim, unveiling themselves only

in flashes, and moving away again into the darkness, engulfed by it. They had walked by this time to the

street in which Mary lived, and being engrossed by what they said and partly saw, passed her staircase

without looking up. At this time of night there was no traffic and scarcely any footpassengers, so that they

could pace slowly without interruption, arminarm, raising their hands now and then to draw something

They brought themselves by these means, acting on a mood of profound happiness, to a state of

clearsightedness where the lifting of a finger had effect, and one word spoke more than a sentence. They

lapsed gently into silence, traveling the dark paths of thought side by side towards something discerned in the

distance which gradually possessed them both. They were victors, masters of life, but at the same time

absorbed in the flame, giving their life to increase its brightness, to testify to their faith. Thus they had

walked, perhaps, twice or three times up and down Mary Datchet's street before the recurrence of a light

burning behind a thin, yellow blind caused them to stop without exactly knowing why they did so. It burned

"That is the light in Mary's room," said Ralph. "She must be at home." He pointed across the street.

"Is she alone, working at this time of night? What is she working at?" she wondered. "Why should we

interrupt her?" she asked passionately. "What have we got to give her? She's happy too," she added. "She has

her work." Her voice shook slightly, and the light swam like an ocean of gold behind her tears.

He crossed the road immediately, and went up the steps into Mary's house. Katharine stood where he left her,

looking at the window and expecting soon to see a shadow move across it; but she saw nothing; the blinds

conveyed nothing; the light was not moved. It signaled to her across the dark street; it was a sign of triumph

shining there for ever, not to be extinguished this side of the grave. She brandished her happiness as if in

salute; she dipped it as if in reverence. "How they burn!" she thought, and all the darkness of London seemed

set with fires, roaring upwards; but her eyes came back to Mary's window and rested there satisfied. She had

waited some time before a figure detached itself from the doorway and came across the road, slowly and

"I didn't go inI couldn't bring myself," he broke off. He had stood outside Mary's door unable to bring

himself to knock; if she had come out she would have found him there, the tears running down his cheeks,

They stood for some moments, looking at the illuminated blinds, an expression to them both of something

impersonal and serene in the spirit of the woman within, working out her plans far into the night her plans

for the good of a world that none of them were ever to know. Then their minds jumped on and other little

figures came by in procession, headed, in Ralph's view, by the figure of Sally Seal.

"Your mother and Mary?" he went on. "Rodney and Cassandra? Old Joan up at Highgate?" He stopped in his

enumeration, not finding it possible to link them together in any way that should explain the queer

combination which he could perceive in them, as he thought of them. They appeared to him to be more than

individuals; to be made up of many different things in cohesion; he had a vision of an orderly world.

"It's all so easyit's all so simple," Katherine quoted, remembering some words of Sally Seal's, and wishing

Ralph to understand that she followed the track of his thought. She felt him trying to piece together in a

laborious and elementary fashion fragments of belief, unsoldered and separate, lacking the unity of phrases

fashioned by the old believers. Together they groped in this difficult region, where the unfinished, the

unfulfilled, the unwritten, the unreturned, came together in their ghostly way and wore the semblance of the

complete and the satisfactory. The future emerged more splendid than ever from this construction of the

present. Books were to be written, and since books must be written in rooms, and rooms must have hangings,

and outside the windows there must be land, and an horizon to that land, and trees perhaps, and a hill, they

sketched a habitation for themselves upon the outline of great offices in the Strand and continued to make an

account of the future upon the omnibus which took them towards Chelsea; and still, for both of them, it swam

As the night was far advanced they had the whole of the seats on the top of the omnibus to choose from, and

the roads, save for an occasional couple, wearing even at midnight, an air of sheltering their words from the

public, were deserted. No longer did the shadow of a man sing to the shadow of a piano. A few lights in

bedroom windows burnt but were extinguished one by one as the omnibus passed them.

They dismounted and walked down to the river. She felt his arm stiffen beneath her hand, and knew by this

token that they had entered the enchanted region. She might speak to him, but with that strange tremor in his

voice, those eyes blindly adoring, whom did he answer? What woman did he see? And where was she

walking, and who was her companion? Moments, fragments, a second of vision, and then the flying waters,

the winds dissipating and dissolving; then, too, the recollection from chaos, the return of security, the earth

firm, superb and brilliant in the sun. From the heart of his darkness he spoke his thanksgiving; from a region

as far, as hidden, she answered him. On a June night the nightingales sing, they answer each other across the

plain; they are heard under the window among the trees in the garden. Pausing, they looked down into the

river which bore its dark tide of waters, endlessly moving, beneath them. They turned and found themselves

opposite the house. Quietly they surveyed the friendly place, burning its lamps either in expectation of them

or because Rodney was still there talking to Cassandra. Katharine pushed the door half open and stood upon

the threshold. The light lay in soft golden grains upon the deep obscurity of the hushed and sleeping

household. For a moment they waited, and then loosed their hands. "Good night," he breathed. "Good night,"