A COMEDY OF MASKS


By Ernest Dowson & Arthur Moore


Chapter 1

In that intricate and obscure locality which stretches between the Tower 
and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majority of 
Londoners, to whom the 'Port of London' is an expression purely 
geographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found a certain 
dry-dock called Blackpool, but better known from time immemorial to 
skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to the sea in ships, as 
'Rainham's Dock.'
Many years ago, in the days of the first Rainham and of wooden ships, it 
had been no doubt a flourishing ship-yard; and, indeed, models of wooden 
leviathans of the period, which had been turned out, not a few, in those 
palmy days, were still dusty ornaments of its somewhat antique office. But 
as time went on and the age of iron intervened, and the advance on the 
Clyde and the Tyne had made Thames ship building a thing of the past, 
Blackpool Dock had ceased to be of commercial importance. No more ships 
were built there, and fewer ships put in to be overhauled and painted; 
while even these were for the most part of a class viewed at Lloyd's with 
scant favour, which seemed, like the yard itself, to have fallen some what 
behind the day. The original Rainham had not bequeathed his energy along 
with his hoards to his descendants; and, indeed, the last of these, Philip 
Rainham, a man of weak health, whose tastes, although these were veiled in 
obscurity, were supposed to trench little upon shipping let the business 
jog along so much after its own fashion that the popular view hinted at its 
imminent dissolution. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemed the 
normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest, and work 
still came in, almost by tradition, with a certain steadiness - when the 
hammers of the riveters and the shipwrights awoke the echoes from sunrise 
to sunset, with a ferocious regularity which the present proprietor could 
almost deplore, there was still a suggestion of mildewed antiquity about it 
all that was, at least to the nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And 
when the ships were painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its 
more regular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its sordid 
surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool Dock, as 
Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial motive was 
pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by the spirit of the 
picturesque.
Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark a young artist, in whose work some 
excellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the hand of the 
master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined to plume himself on 
having discovered, in his search after originality, the artistic points of 
a dockyard.
It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad some years 
before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance that promised to be 
permanent, that Lightmark had decided his study should certainly be the 
river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the house of his foreman - an 
eighteenth-century house, full of carved oak mantels and curious alcoves, a 
ramshackle structure within the dock gates, with a quaint balcony 
staircase, like the approach to a Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. 
In London these apartments were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, 
none of whom lived nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of 
conduct too flagrantly eccentric alleging necessity of living on the spot: 
an explanation somewhat droll, in the face of his constant lengthy 
absences, during the whole of the winter, when he handed the reins of 
government to his manager, and took care of a diseased lung in a warmer 
climate. To Lightmark, however, dining with his friend for the first time 
on chops burnt barbarously and an inferior pudding, residence even in a 
less salubrious quarter than Blackpool would have been amply justified, in 
view of the many charming effects - for the most part coldly sad and white 
- which the river offered, towards evening, from the window of his friend's 
dining-room.
After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's invitation 
to make his property the point of view from which he could most 
conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he worked hard for 
months, with an industry that came upon his friend as a surprise, at the 
uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and the sharp-pointed masts that 
rose so trenchantly above them. He had generated a habit of coming and 
going, as he pleased, without consideration of his host's absences; and 
latterly, in the early spring - whose caprices in England Rainham was never 
in a hurry to encounter - the easel and painting tools of the assiduous 
artist had become an almost constant feature of the landscape.
Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the finish of 
May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which had occupied him 
for some months, and which he hoped to have completed for Rainham's return. 
As he stood on the wharf, which ran down to the river-side, leaning back 
against a crane of ancient pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' 
distance critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain 
complacency.
"It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head poised a 
little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And, by Jove! what 
matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it, and if it's sold - and, 
confound it! it must be sold - it will be a case of three figures."
He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctive - it may have been the 
result of his meditation - he fell to jingling some coins in it. They were 
not very many, but just then, though he was a young gentleman keenly alive 
to the advantages of a full purse, their paucity hardly troubled him. He 
felt, for the once, assured of his facility, and doubtless had a vista of 
unlimited commissions and the world at his feet, for he drew himself up to 
his full height of six feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile 
that had no longer its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he 
stood there, in his light, lax dress and the fullness of his youth, he had 
(his art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look 
upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows and the 
favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history. Not a 
beautiful man, by any means, but he best type of English comeliness: ruddy 
coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but without a suggestion of 
brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade lighter than his hair - which, 
although he wore it cropped, showed a tendency to be curling concealed a 
mouth that was his only question able feature. It was not the sensitive 
mouth of the through and through artist, and the lines of it were 
vacillating. The lips, had they not been hidden, would have surprised by 
their fullness, contradicting, in some part, the curious coldness of his 
light blue eyes. All said, however, he remained a singularly handsome 
fellow; and the slight consciousness which he occasionally betrayed that 
his personality was pleasing hardly detracted from it; it was, after all, a 
harmless vanity that his friends could afford to overlook. Just then his 
thoughts, which had wandered many leagues from the warehouses of Blackpool, 
were brought up sharply by the noise of an approaching footstep. He started 
slightly, but a moment later greeted the new-comer with a pleasant smile of 
recognition. It was Rainham's foreman and general manager, with whom the 
artist, as with most persons with whom he was often in contact, was on 
excellent, and even familiar, terms.
"Look here, Bullen," he said, twisting the easel round a little, "the 
picture is practically finished. A few more strokes - I shall do them at 
home - and it is ready for the Academy. How do you like it?"
Mr. Bullen bent down his burly form and honoured the little canvas with a 
respectful scrutiny.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, sir, I suppose?" he suggested, pointing with a 
huge forefinger at the background a little uncertainly.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, Bullen, certainly! And those masts are from the 
ships in the Commercial Docks. But the river, the atmosphere - that's the 
point how do they strike you?"
"Well, it's beautiful, sir," remarked Bullen cordially; "painted like the 
life, you may say. But isn't it just a little smudgy, sir?"
"That's the beauty of it, Bullen. It's impressionism, you Philistine! - a 
sort of modified impressionism, you know, to suit the hangers. 'Gad, 
Bullen, you ought to be a hanger yourself! Bullen, my dear man, if it 
wasn't that you do know how to paint a ship's side, I would even go so far 
as to say that you have all the qualifications of an Academician."
"Ah, if it comes to that, Mr. Lightmark, I dare say I could put them up to 
some dodges. I am a judge of 'composition'."
"Composition? The devil you are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound which 
they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The man looked 
puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds well," continued 
Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail of a barge.
"I've a nephew in the Royal Artillery, sir," said Mr. Bullen; "but I fear 
he is a bad lot."
"Oh, they all are!" said Lightmark, "an abandoned crew."
His eyes wandered off to the bridge over which the road ran, dividing the 
dry-dock from the outer basin and wharf on which they stood. A bevy of 
factory girls in extensive hats stuck with brilliant Whitechapel feathers 
were passing; one of them, who was pretty, caught Lightmark's eyes and 
flung him a saucy compliment, which he returned with light badinage in kind 
that made the foreman grin.
"They know a fine man when they see one, as well as my lady," he said. Then 
he added, as if by an after-thought, lowering his voice a little: "By the 
way, Mr. Lightmark, there was a young lady - a young person here yesterday 
- making inquiries."
Lightmark bent down, frowning a little at a fly which had entangled itself 
on his palette.
"Yes?" he remarked tentatively, when the offender had been removed.
"It was a young lady come after someone, who, she said, had been here 
lately: a Mr. Dighton or Crichton was the name, I think. It was the dockman 
she asked."
"Nobody comes here of that name that I know of," said Lightmark.
"Not to my knowledge," said Bullen.
"Curious!" remarked Lightmark gravely.
"Very, sir!" said Bullen, with equal gravity.
Lightmark looked up abruptly: the two men's eyes met, and they both 
laughed, the artist a little nervously.
"What did you tell her, Bullen?"
"No such person known here, sir. I hold with minding my own business, and 
asking no questions."
"An excellent maxim, Bullen!" said Lightmark, preparing to pack up his 
easel. "I have long believed you to be a man of discretion. Well, I must 
even be moving."
"You know the governor is back, sir?"
Lightmark dropped the paint-brush he was cleaning, with a movement of 
genuine surprise.
"I never knew it," he said; "I will run up and have a yarn with him. I 
thought he wasn't expected till tomorrow at the earliest?"
"Nor he was, Mr.Lightmark. But he travelled right through from Italy, and 
got to London late last night. He slept at the Great Eastern, and I went up 
to him in the City this morning. He hasn't been here more than half a 
hour."
"Nobody told me, said Lightmark. 'Gad! I am glad. I will take him up the 
picture. Will you carry the other traps into the house, Bullen?"
He packed them up, and then stood a trifle irresolutely, his hand feeling 
over the coins in his pocket. Presently he produced two of them, a 
sovereign and a shilling.
"By the way, Bullen!" he said, "there is a little function common in your 
trade, the gift of a new hat. It costs a guinea, I am told; though judging 
from the general appearance of longshoremen, the result seems a little 
inadequate. Bullen, we are pretty old friends now, and I expect I shall not 
be down here so often just at present. Allow me - to give you a new hat."
The foreman's huge fist closed on the artist's slender one.
"Thank you, sir! You are such a facetious gentleman. You may depend upon 
me."
"I do," said Lightmark, with a sudden lapse into seriousness, and frowning 
a little.
If something had cast a shadow over the artist for the moment, he must have 
had a faculty of quick recovery, for there was certainly no shade of 
constraint upon his handsome face when a minute later he made his way up 
the balcony steps and into the office labelled 'Private,' and, depositing 
his canvas upon the floor, treated his friend to a prolonged handshaking.
"My dear Dick!" said Rainham, "this is a pleasant surprise. I had not the 
remotest notion you were here."
"I thought you were at Bordighera, till Bullen told me of your arrival ten 
minutes ago," said Lightmark, with a frank laugh. "And how well - "
Rainham held up his hand - a very white, nervous hand, with one ring of 
quaint pattern on the forefinger - deprecatingly.
"My dear fellow, I know exactly what you are going to say. Don't be 
conventional - don't say it. I have a fraudulent countenance if I do look 
well; and I don't, and I am not. I am as bad as I ever was."
"Well, come now, Rainham, at any rate you are no worse."
"Oh, I am no worse!" admitted the dry-dock proprietor. "But, then, I could 
not afford to be much worse. However, my health is a subject which palls on 
me after a time. Tell me about yourself."
He looked up with a smile, in which an onlooker might have detected a spark 
of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested topic was not 
without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man of middle height, and 
of no apparent distinction, and his face, with all its petulant lines of 
lassitude and ill-health - the wear and tear of forty years having done 
with him the work of fifty - struck one who saw Philip Rainham for the 
first time by nothing so much as by its ugliness. And yet few persons who 
knew him would have hesitated to allow to his nervous, suffering visage a 
certain indefinable charm. The large head set on a figure markedly 
ungraceful, on which the clothes seldom fitted, was shapely and refined, 
although the features were indefensible, even grotesque. And his mouth, 
with its con strained thin lips and the acrid lines about it, was 
unmistakably a strong one. His deep-set eyes, moreover, of a dark gray 
colour, gleamed from under his thick eye brows with a pleasant directness; 
while his smile, which some people called cynical, as his habit of speech 
most certainly was, was found by others extraordinarily sympathetic.
"Yes, tell me about yourself, Dick," he said again.
"I have done a picture, if that is what you mean, besides some portraits; I 
have worked down here like a galley-slave for the last three months."
"And is the queer little estaminet in Soho still in evidence? Do the men of 
tomorrow still meet there nightly and weigh the claims of the men of 
today?"
Lightmark smiled a trifle absently; his eyes had wandered off to his 
picture in the corner.
"Oh, I believe so!" he said at last; "I dine there occasionally when I have 
time. But I have been going out a good deal lately, and I hardly ever do 
have time.Ö May I smoke, by the way?"
Rainham nodded gently, and the artist pulled out his case and started a 
fragrant cigarette.
"You see, Rainham," he continued, sending a blue ring sailing across the 
room, "I am not so young as I was last year, and I have seen a good deal 
more of the world."
"I see, Dick," said Rainham. "Well, go on!"
"I mean," he explained, "that those men who meet at Brodonowski's are very 
good fellows, and deuced clever, and all that; but I doubt if they are the 
sort of men it is well to get too much mixed up with. They are rather 
outre, you know; though, of course, they are awfully good fellows in their 
way."
"Precisely!" said Rainham, "you are becoming a very Solomon, Dick!"
He sat playing idly with the ring on his forefinger, watching the artists 
smoke with the same curiously obscure smile. It had the effect on Lightmark 
now, as Rainham's smile did on many people, however innocent it might be of 
satiric intention, of in fusing his next remarks with the accent of 
apology.
"You see, Rainham, one has to think of what will help one on, as well as 
what one likes. There is a man I have come to know lately - a very good man 
too, a barrister - who is always dinning that into me. He has introduced me 
to some very useful people, and is always urging me not to commit myself. 
And Brodonowski's is rather committal, you know. However, we must dine 
there together again one day, soon, and then you will understand it."
"Oh, I understand it, Dick!" said Rainham. "But let me see the picture 
while the light lasts."
"Oh yes!" cried Lightmark eagerly. "We must not forget the picture." He 
hoisted it up to a suitable light, and Rainham stood by the bow-window, 
from which one almost obtained the point of view which the artist had 
chosen, regarding it in a critical silence.
"What do you call it?" he asked at last.
"'The Gray River'," said Lightmark; then a little impatiently: "But how do 
you find it? Are you waiting for a tripod?"
"I don't think I shall tell you. By falling into personal criticism, unless 
one is either dishonest or trivial, one runs the risk of losing a friend."
"Oh, nonsense, man! It's not such a daub as that. I will risk your 
candour."
Rainham shrugged his shoulder.
"If you will have it, Dick - only, don't think that I am to be coaxed into 
compliments."
"Is it bad?" asked Lightmark sceptically.
"On the contrary, it is surprisingly good. It's clever, and pretty: sure to 
be hung, sure to sell. Only you have come down a peg. The sentiment about 
that river is very pretty, and that mist is eminently pictorial; but it's 
not the river you would have painted last year; and that mist - I have seen 
it in a good many pictures now - is a mist that one can't quite believe in. 
It's the art that pays, but its not the art you talked at Brodonowski's 
last summer, that is all."
Lightmark tugged at his moustache a little ruefully. Rainham had an idea 
that his ups and downs were tremendous. His mind was a mountainous country, 
and if he had elations, he had also depressions as acute. Yet his 
elasticity was enormous, and he could throw off troublesome intruders, in 
the shape of memories or regrets, with the ease of a sow-worm casting its 
skin. And so now his confidence was only shaken for a moment, and he was 
able to reply gaily to Rainham's last thrust:
"My dear fellow, I expect I talked a good deal of trash last year, after 
all" - a statement which the other did not find it worth while to deny.
They had resumed their places at the table, and Lightmark, with a half-
sheet of notepaper before him, was dashing off profiles. They were all the 
same - the head of a girl: a childish face with a straight, small nose and 
rough hair gathered up high above her head in a plain knot. Rainham, 
leaning over, watched him with an amused smile.
"The current infatuation, Dick, or the last but one?"
"No," he said; "only a girl I know. Awfully pretty, isn't she?"
Rainham, who was a little short sighted, took up the paper carelessly. He 
dropped it after a minute with a slight start.
"I think I know her," he said. "You have a knack of catching faces. Is it 
Miss Sylvester?"
"Yes; it is Eve Sylvester," said Lightmark. "Do you know them? I see a good 
deal of them now."
"I have known them a good many years," said Rainham.
"They have never spoken of you to me," said Lightmark.
"No? I dare say not. Why should they?" He was silent for a moment, looking 
thoughtfully at his ring. Then he said abruptly: "I think I know mow who 
your friend the barrister is, Dick. I recognise the style. It is Charles 
Sylvester, is it not?"
"You are a wizard," answered the other, laughing. "Yes, it is." Then he 
asked: "Don't you think she is awfully pretty?"
"Miss Sylvester?Ö Very likely; she was a very pretty child. You know, she 
had not come out last year. Are you going?"
Lightmark had pulled out his watch absently, and he leapt up as he 
discovered the lateness of the hour.
"Heavens, yes! I am dining out, and I shall barely have time to dress. I 
will fetch my traps tomorrow; then we might dine together afterwards."
"As you like," said the elder man. "I have no engagements yet."
Lightmark left him with a genial nod, and a moment later Rainham saw him 
through the window passing with long impetuous strides across the bridge. 
Then he returned to his desk, and wrote a letter or two until the light 
failed, when he pushed his chair back, and sat, pen in hand, looking 
meditatively, vaguely, at the antiquated maps upon the walls.
Presently his eye fell on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its scribble of 
a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some time, starting a 
little, and covering it with his blotting-paper, when Mrs. Bullen, his 
housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea - a freak of his nerves which made 
him smile when she had gone.
Even then he left his tea for a long time, cooling and untasted, while he 
sat lethargically lolling back, and regarding from time to time the 
pencilled profile with his sad eyes.


Chapter 2

The period of Lightmark's boyhood had not been an altogether happy one. His 
earliest recollections carried him back to a time when he lived a 
wandering, desolate life with his father and mother, in an endless series 
of Continental hotels and pensions. He was prepared to assert, with 
confidence, that his mother had been a very beautiful person, who carried 
an air of the most abundant affection for him on the numerous occasions 
when she received her friends. Of his father, who had, as far as possible, 
ignored his existence, he remembered very little.
During these years there had been frequent difficulties, the nature of 
which he had since learnt entirely to comprehend; controversies with white-
waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble tradespeople, generally 
followed by a severance of hastily-cemented friendships, and a departure of 
apparently unpremeditated abruptness.
When his mother died, he was sent to a fairly good school in England, where 
his father occasionally visited him, and where he had been terribly bullied 
at first, and had afterwards learned to bully in turn. He spent his 
holidays in London, at the house of his grandmother - an excellent old 
lady, who petted and scolded him almost simultaneously, who talked 
mysteriously about his 'poor dear father,' and took care that he went to 
church regularly, and had dancing-lessons three times a week.
His father's death, which occurred at Monaco somewhat unexpectedly, and on 
the subject of which his grandmother maintained a certain reserve,affected 
the boy but little; in fact, the first real grief which he could remember 
to have experienced was when the old lady herself died - he was then 
nineteen years old - leaving him her blessing and a sum of Consols 
sufficient to produce an income of about £250 a year.
The boy's inclinations leaned in the direction of Oxford, and in this he 
was supported by his only-surviving relative, his uncle, Colonel Lightmark, 
a loud voiced cavalry officer, who had been the terror of Richard's 
juvenile existence, and who, as executor of the old lady's will, was fully 
aware of the position in which her death had left him, and her desire that 
he should go into the Church.
At one of the less fashionable colleges, which he selected because he was 
enamoured of its picturesque inner quadrangle, and of the quaint Dutch 
glass in the chapel windows, Lightmark was popular with his peers, and, for 
his first term, in tolerably good odour with the dons, who decided, on his 
coming up to matriculate, that he ought to read for honours - And he did 
read for honours, after a fashion, for nearly a scholastic year; after 
which an unfortunate excursion to Abingdon, and a boisterous re-entry into 
the University precincts, at the latter part of which the junior proctor 
and his satellites were painfully conspicuous, ended in his being 'sent 
down' for a term. Whereupon he decided to travel, a decision prompted as 
much by a not unnatural desire to avoid avuncular criticism as by a 
constitutional yearning for the sunny South. Besides, one could live for 
next to nothing abroad.
During the next few years his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of mystery 
which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true,saw him 
occasionally at this time; for, indeed, it was soon after his first arrival 
in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's acquaintance, sealed by their 
subsequent journey together to Rome. But Rainham was discreet. Lightmark 
before long informed his uncle, with whom he at first communicated through 
the post on the subject of dividends, that he was studying Art, to which 
his uncle had replied:
"Don't be a d-d fool. Come back and take your degree."
This letter Dick had light-heartedly ignored, and he received his next 
cheque from his uncle's solicitors, together with a polite request that he 
would keep them informed as to his wanderings, and an intimation that his 
uncle found it more convenient to make them the channel of correspondence 
for the future.
At Paris it was generally conceded that, for an Englishman, the delicacy of 
Lightmark's touch, and the daring of his conception and execution, were 
really marvellous; and if only he could draw! But he was too impatient for 
the end to spend the necessary time in perfecting the means.
At Rome he tried his hand at sculpture, and made a few sketches which his 
attractive personality rather than their intrinsic merit enabled him to 
sell. The camaraderie of the Cafe Greco welcomed him with open arms; and he 
was to be encountered, in the season, at the most fashionable studio tea-
parties and diplomatic dances. Before long his talent in the direction of 
seizing likenesses secured him a well-paid post as caricaturist-in-chief on 
the staff of a Republican journal of more wit than discretion; and it was 
in this capacity that he gained his literary experience. On the eve of the 
suppression of this enterprising organ the Minister of Police thought it a 
favourable opportunity to express to Lightmark privately his opinion that 
he was not likely to find the atmosphere of Rome particularly salubrious 
during the next few months. Whereupon our friend had shrugged his 
shoulders, and after ironically thanking the official for his disinterested 
advice, he had given a farewell banquet of great splendour at the Greco, 
packed up palettes and paint-boxes, and started for London, where his 
friends persuaded him that his talent would be recognised. And at London he 
had arrived, travelling by ruinously easy stages, and breaking the journey 
at Florence, where he sketched and smoked pipes innumerable on the Lung 
Arno; at Venice, where he affected cigarettes, and indulged in a desperate 
flirtation with a pretty black-eyed marchesa; at Monaco, where he gambled; 
and at Paris, where he spent his winnings, and foregathered with his 
friends of the Quartier Latin.
His empty pockets suggested the immediate necessity for work in a manner 
more emphatic than agreeable. His uncle, upon whom he called at his club, 
invited him to dinner, lectured him with considerable eloquence, and 
practically declined to have any more to do with the young reprobate; which 
shook Lightmark's faith in the teaching of parables.
However, he set to work in the two little rooms beneath the tiles which he 
rented in Bloomsbury, and which served him as bed room and studio; and for 
a few weeks he finished sketches by day, and wrote sonnets for magazines, 
and frivolous articles for dailies, by night. And, strange to say, though 
there were times when success seemed very hard to grasp, and when he was 
obliged to forestall quarter-day, and even to borrow money from Rainham 
when that bird of passage was within reach - he sold sketches from time to 
time; he obtained commissions for portraits; and the editors occasionally 
read and retained his contributions.
In course of time he moved further west, to the then unfashionable 
neighbourhood of Holland Park, and devoted his energies to the production 
of a work which should make an impression at the Academy. It was his first 
large picture in oils, an anonymous portrait, treated with all the audacity 
and chic of the modern French school, of a fair-haired girl in a quaint 
fancy dress, standing under the soft light of Japanese lanterns, in a 
conservatory, with a background of masses of flowers.
And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists who were 
intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in their expressions 
of approval.
"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these critics 
dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of discussion. "Of course 
it's good enough, but it's not exactly their style, you know The old 
buffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't understand it - "
And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this 
criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham bought a 
wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the committee sat in 
judgment, the work was already on the high seas on its way to New York.
After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less 
important nature - few landscapes, which appeared on the walls of Bond 
Street galleries and were transferred in course of time to fashionable 
drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated thought admirable 
because they were so 'like.' Moreover, he could flatter discreetly, and he 
took care not to bore his sitter; two admirable qualities in a portrait-
painter who desires to succeed.


Chapter 3

It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to the 
Sylvesters. Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a man who 
would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was an opportunity 
to add a hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by constituting himself a 
patron of art, a position not often attained by young barristers even when, 
as in Sylvester's case, they have already designs upon a snug constituency.
Sylvester began by giving his protege a commission to paint his mother's 
portrait, and before this work was finished a very appreciable degree of 
intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester family and the young painter, 
who found no difficulty in gratifying a woman-of-the-world's passion for 
small-talk and fashionable intelligence - judiciously culled from the 
columns of the daily newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the 
scissors and paste-brush.
With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task. She was a girl who had from a 
very early age been accustomed to have her impressions moulded by her self-
assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at first, had been careful to 
show that he regarded Lightmark as an object of his patronage rather than 
as a friend who could meet him on his own exalted level. He had been known, 
in his earlier years, to speak somewhat contemptuously of 'artists'; and, 
indeed, his want of sympathy with Bohemians in general had given Eve 
occasion for much wondering mental comment, when her brother first spoke of 
introducing the portrait-painter to the family circle.
However, brotherly rule over a girl's opinions is apt to be disestablished 
when she draws near the autumn of her teens; and after her emancipation 
from the school room and short frocks, Miss Eve began to think it was time 
that she should be allowed to entertain and express views of her own. And 
after her first ball, an occasion on which her programme had speedily been 
besieged, and the debutante marked as dangerous by the observant mothers of 
marriageable sons and daughters - after this important function, even 
Charles had begun to regard his pretty sister with a certain amount of 
deference. He certainly had reason to congratulate himself on having so 
attractive a young person to pour out his coffee and compose his 
'buttonholes' before he started for chambers in the morning. Eve was at an 
age when the wild-rose tints of a complexion fostered by judicious walks 
and schoolroom teas had not yet yielded to the baneful influence of late 
dinners and the other orgies which society conducts in an unduly heated 
atmosphere. Her figure was still almost childishly slim, but graceful, and 
straight enough to defy criticism in the ballroom or the saddle. Her eyes 
were gray, with a curious, starry expression in their depths, which always 
suggested that the smile which was so often on her lips was quite ready to 
exaggerate the dimples in her cheeks. Her hair was refractory, from her own 
point of view; but Lightmark found the tangled brown masses, which she wore 
gathered into a loose knot high at the back of her shapely head, entirely 
charming, and suggestive, in a way, of one of Lancret's wood nymphs.
She could never bring herself to believe that her nose was pretty, although 
in the seclusion of her chamber she had frankly criticised her reflected 
image; and perhaps it was a trifle too small for most critics. Still, her 
admirers declared that, especially in profile, it was delightfully piquant 
and vastly preferable to the uninteresting aquilines which adorned the 
countenances of her mother and brother. A provoking, childish, charming 
face, when all was said: it was not wonderful that Lightmark would fain put 
it upon canvas. And, indeed, so far as the young girl herself was 
concerned, he had already a conditional promise. She had no objection 
whatever to make, provided that Charles was first consulted; only she had 
no dress that would meet the occasion. And when Lightmark protested that 
the airy white garment, with here and there a suggestion of cream-coloured 
lace and sulphur ribbons, which she was wearing, was entirely right, she 
scouted the idea with scorn.
"This old frock, Mr. Lightmark," she exclaimed, with a pretty display of 
disdain for his taste, "why, I've worn the old thing for months! No; if 
Charles says I may have my portrait painted, I shall go straight off to 
Madame Sophie, and then you may paint me and send me to the Academy or 
Grosvenor in all my glory."
Lightmark had found it quite useless to protest, well as he knew that the 
ordinary French milliner can be warranted to succeed in producing a garment 
almost as unpaintable as a masculine black frock-coat.
On the afternoon of the day after Rainham's return to the dock, Lightmark 
was caressing his fair moustache upon the doorstep of the Sylvesters' 
house, No. 137, Park Street, West, a mansion of unpretending size, glorious 
in its summer coat of white paint, relieved only by the turquoise-blue 
tiles which surrounded the window-boxes, and the darker blue of the 
railings and front-door. He was calling ostensibly for the purpose of 
inquiring how Charles Sylvester liked the frame which he had selected for 
the recently-finished portrait; really in order to induce her brother to 
allow Eve to sit to him. Sounds as of discussion floated down the wide 
staircase; and when the servant opened the drawing-room door preparatory to 
announcing him, Lightmark heard - and it startled him - a well-remembered 
voice upraised in playful protest.
"No, 'pon my word, Mrs. Sylvester, my young scamp of a nephew hasn't done 
you justice, 'pon my soul he hasn't!"
At first he felt almost inclined to turn tail; though he had long been 
aware that the Sylvesters were cognisant of his relationship to the 
somewhat notorious old Colonel, and that they knew him, as everyone did, he 
had never contemplated the possibility of meeting his uncle there.
And when he had shaken hands in a bewildered manner with Mrs. Sylvester and 
Eve, he perceived that his uncle was greeting him with an almost paternal 
cordiality.
"Why, Dick, my boy, 'pon my soul I haven't seen you for an age! You mustn't 
neglect your gouty old uncle, you know, Dick; when are you going to paint 
his portrait, in review order, eh? Not until you've painted Miss Eve there, 
I'll be bound!"
The prodigal nephew needed all his by no means deficient stock of nerve to 
enable him to present an unmoved countenance to this unexpected attack of 
geniality. This, he thought, as he returned the other's greeting with as 
great a semblance of ease as he could muster - this was the uncle who had 
declined to recognise him when they met a few months ago, in the broadest 
daylight, in Pall Mall!
Presently, while he was trying to recover his equanimity by devoting 
himself to the cult of Eve, he heard the Colonel whisper in a confidential 
undertone to their hostess:
"Devilish clever fellow, my nephew, y'know, though perhaps I oughtn't to 
say so. Those newspaper beggars think very highly of him - the critics, 
y'know, and all that; why, 'pon my soul, I was reading something about him 
only this morning at the club in the what's-his-name - the Outcry. Said he 
ought to be in the Academy."
"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically, "you are quite right to be 
proud of him, Colonel Lightmark. Charles thinks he is very clever, and he 
is so pleased with my portrait. We want him to paint Eve, you know, only - 
Oh, do let me give you another cup of tea, Mr. Lightmark! Two lumps of 
sugar, I think?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Sylvester. Do you know, I have discovered that we have a 
mutual friend - that is to say, I found out not long ago, quite by 
accident, that my very good friend, Philip Rainham, has the pleasure of 
your acquaintance."
"Oh, really!" said Eve delightedly; "do you know Philip - Mr. Rainham? And 
have you seen him lately? We haven't heard anything of him for weeks and 
weeks - not since Christmas, have we, mamma?"
"Ah!" answered Lightmark, smiling, and letting his eyes wander over the 
white expanse of the Colonel's waistcoat, "I don't wonder at that. You see, 
he has been nursing himself on the Riviera all the winter, lucky dog! He 
only came back last night. I saw him at his dock, you know, down the river 
- such a jolly old place. I have been sketching there, on and off, nearly 
all the spring. He lets me make myself quite at home."
"Take care, Dick, my boy," said the Colonel sententiously, fixing his black-
rimmed eyeglass under the bushy white brow that shaded his right eye; 
"don't you let him entice you into that business. Don't pay nowadays! All 
the shipping goes up North, y'know. The poor old Thames is only used for 
regattas now, and penny steamers."
"How very nice for the Thames!" cried Eve. "Why, there's nothing I like 
more than regattas! I do so hope we shall go to Henley this year; but 
houseboats are so expensive, and it's no fun unless you have a houseboat. 
We had a punt last year, a sort of thing like a long butler's tray, and 
Charles got into fearful difficulties. You know, it looks so easy to push a 
punt along with a pole, but the pole has a wicked way of sticking in the 
mud at critical moments - when they are clearing the course, for instance. 
Oh, it was dreadful! Everybody was looking at us, and I felt like one of 
those horrid people who always get in the way at the Oxford and Cambridge 
boat-race!"
"Or the Derby dog, by Jove!" suggested the Colonel.
"I can sympathise with you fully, Miss Sylvester," said his nephew. "I 
shouldn't like to say how many times in the course of my first summer term 
at Oxford I found myself sprawling ignominiously in the Cherwell, instead 
of posing in a picturesque attitude in the stern of my punt. And one looked 
such a fool going up to college in wet things. But there aren't many 
regattas going on in the regions below London Bridge nowadays. It's not 
much like Henley or Marlow, though it's pretty enough in its way at times. 
You ought to get Rainham to invite you to the dock; you would create an 
impression on the natives, and of course he would be delighted. He's got a 
most amiable housekeeper, though I don't think she has heard of thin bread-
and-butter; and I have discovered that his foreman is a judge of art - a 
regular Ruskin."
"And how is poor Philip, Mr. Lightmark?" asked Mrs. Sylvester tentatively. 
"You must bring him here very soon, and make him give an account of 
himself."
"Oh," said Lightmark vaguely, "he's looking pretty fit, though he doesn't 
like to be told so. I really believe he would be unhappy if he were in 
robust health. He finds his damaged lung such a good pretext for neglecting 
the dock; and if it got quite well, half the occupation of his life would 
be gone."
Mrs. Sylvester and Eve both protested laughingly against this somewhat 
heartless view of the case; and after declining an offer of the back seats 
of the carriage, which was already waiting at the door to take Mrs. 
Sylvester and her daughter for their anteprandial drive in the Park, and 
expressing their regret that they had not seen Charles, uncle and nephew 
took their leave together.
"Dick, my boy," said the Colonel, when they were safely in the street, "you 
must come and dine with me. Not tonight; I am going to take Lady Dulminster 
to the French play. Let me have your address, or come and look me up at the 
club. I'm devilish glad you're getting on so well, my boy, though you were 
a fool not to stay up at Oxford and take your degree. After all, though, 
perhaps you aren't quite the cut for the Church or a fellowship, and the 
Sylvesters are devilish good people to know, Dick. Ta, ta! Don't forget to 
come and see me."
So saying, Dick's versatile uncle waved his cheroot by way of adieu, and 
clambered laboriously into a hansom.
"By Jove!" said the younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it 
is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded 
cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him 
three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet 
old Rainham, and take him round to Brodonowski's. What a ripping sunset!"
And he strolled light-heartedly through Grosvenor Square, the smoke of his 
cigarette fading away behind him.


Chapter 4

When Rainham pushed back the door of the dim little restaurant in Turk 
Street, Soho, he stood a moment, blinking his eyes a little in the sudden 
change from the bright summer sunshine, before he assured himself that his 
friend had not yet arrived. Half a dozen men were sitting about smoking or 
discussing various drinks. The faces of several were familiar to him, but 
there were none of them whom he knew; so he took his seat at a table near 
the door, and ordered a vermouth to occupy him until Lightmark, whose 
unpunctuality was notorious, should put in an appearance. In the interim 
his eyes strayed round the establishment, taking stock of the walls, with 
their rough decorations, and the clientele, and noting, not without a 
certain pleasure, that during the six months in which he had been absent 
neither had suffered much alteration.
Indeed, to Philip Rainham, who had doubtless in his blood the taint of 
Bohemia, Brodonowski's and the enthusiasm of its guests had a very definite 
charm. They were almost all of them artists; they were all of them young 
and ardent; and they had a habit of propounding their views, which were 
always of the most advanced nature, with a vehemence which to Rainham 
represented all the disinterestedness of youth. Very often they were 
exceedingly well worth knowing, though in the majority of cases the world 
had not found it out. He knew very few of them personally; he had been 
taken there first by Lightmark, when the latter was fresh from Paris, and 
had been himself more in touch with them. But he had often sat smoking 
silently a little outside the main group, listening, with a deferential air 
that sat upon his age somewhat oddly, to their audacious propaganda.
In his mind he would sometimes contrast the coterie with certain artistic 
houses, more socially important, which he had from time to time frequented: 
where earnest-eyed women in graceful garments - which certainly afforded a 
rest to the eye - dispensed tea from a samovar, and discoursed discreetly 
of the current Academy and the most recent symptomatic novel.
The delight of a visible, orderly culture permeating their manners and 
their conversation was a real one, and yet, Rainham reflected, it left one 
at the last a trifle weary, a little cold. It seemed to him that this 
restaurant, with its perennial smell of garlic, its discoloured knife 
handles, its frequentation of picturesque poverty, possessed actually a 
horizon that was somewhat less limited.
Indeed, the dingy room, its assemblage apart, had many traces of an 
artistic patronage. The rough walls were adorned, in imitation of the 
familiar Roman haunt, of which this was, so to speak, a colony, with a host 
of fantastic sketches: rapid silhouettes in charcoal, drawn for 
illustration or refutation in the heat of some strenuous, argument; 
caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly like, of the 
customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities, whose laurels 
Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there by an epigram or a 
doggerel couplet, damning the Philistine.
Rainham smiled as he recognised occasionally the grotesque travesty of a 
familiar face. Presently his eyes were arrested by a drawing which was new 
to him, a face of striking ugliness, offering advantages to the 
caricaturist of which, doubtless, he had not omitted to avail himself. It 
imposed itself on Rainham for the savage strength which it displayed, and 
for an element in its hideousness which suggested beauty. He was still 
absorbed in the study of this face when Lightmark entered and took his 
place opposite him with a brief apology for his tardiness. He was dressed 
well, with a white orchid in his button-hole, and looked prosperous and 
rosy. Some light badinage on this score from his various acquaintances in 
the restaurant he parried with a good-humoured nonchalance; then he betook 
himself to consideration of the menu.
"I have been calling on your friends the Sylvesters," he explained after 
awhile, "and I could not get away before. My uncle was there, by the way. 
You have heard me speak of him?"
"Your uncle, who holds such a lax view of the avuncular offices?"
Lightmark smiled a little self-congratulatory smile.
"Ah, that's changed. The old boy was deuced friendly - gave me his whole 
hand instead of two fingers, and asked me to dine with him. I think," he 
went on after a moment, "the Sylvesters have been putting in a good word 
for me. Or perhaps it was Mrs. Sylvester's portrait which did the job."
"Ah," said Rainham, "you have painted her, have you?"
Their fish occupied them in silence. Lightmark, a trifle flushed from his 
rapid walk, smiled from time to time absently, as though his thoughts were 
pleasant ones. The elder man thought he had seldom seen him looking more 
boyishly handsome. Presently his eyes again caught the head which had so 
struck his fancy.
"Is that yours, Dick?" he asked.
Lightmark followed the direction of his eyes to the opposite wall.
"I believe it is," he remarked, with a shade of deprecation in his manner. 
"It is Oswyn. Don't you know him?"
"I don't know him," said the other, sipping his thin Medoc. "But I think I 
should like to. What is he?"
"He will be here soon, no doubt, and then you will see for yourself. He is 
Oswyn! I knew him in Paris better than I do now. He was in B--'s studio; 
and B-- swore that he had a magnificent genius. He painted a monstrous 
picture which the Salon wouldn't hang; but B-- bought it, and hung it in 
his studio, where it frightened his models into fits. Last year he came to 
London, where he makes enough, when he is sober, by painting potboilers for 
the dealers, to keep him in absinthe and tobacco, which are apparently his 
sole sustenance. In the meanwhile he is painting a masterpiece; at least, 
so he will tell you. He is a virulent fanatic, whose art is the most 
monstrous thing imaginable. He is - but talk of the devilÖ"
He broke off and nodded to a little lean man of ambiguous age, in a 
strained coat, who entered at this moment with a rapid lurching gait. He 
sat down immediately opposite them, under Lightmark's presentment, with 
which Rainham curiously compared him. And it struck him that there was 
something in that oddly repulsive figure which Lightmark's superficial 
crayon had missed. The long, haggard face was there, with its ill-kempt 
hair and beard; and the lips, which, when they parted in a smile that was 
too full of irony, revealed the man's uneven, discoloured teeth. Rainham 
lost sight of his uncouthness in a sense of his extreme power. His eyes, 
which were restless and extraordinarily brilliant, met Rainham's presently; 
and the latter was conscious of a certain fascination in their sustained 
gaze. In spite of the air of savagery which pervaded the man, it was a 
movement of sympathy which, on the whole, he experienced towards him. And 
it seemed as if this sentiment were reciprocal, for when the German youth, 
who was the cupbearer of the establishment, had taken Oswyn's order, and 
had brought him absinthe in a long glass, he motioned it abruptly to the 
opposite table. Then he crossed over and accosted Lightmark, whom he had 
not hitherto appeared to recognise, with a word of greeting. Lightmark 
murmured his name and Rainham's, and the strange little man nodded to him 
not unamiably.
"I must smoke, if you don't mind," he said, after a moment.
They nodded assent, and he produced tobacco in a screw of newspaper from 
the pocket of his coat, and began rapidly to make cigarettes. Rainham 
watched the dexterous movements of his long nervous hands - the colour of 
old ivory - and found them noticeable.
"You are not an artist, I think," he suggested after a moment, fixing his 
curiously intent eyes on Rainham.
"No," admitted the other, smiling, "I am afraid I am not. I am only here on 
sufferance. I am a mender of ships."
"He is a connoisseur," put in Lightmark gaily. "It's an accident that he 
happens to be connected with shipping - a fortunate one, though, for he 
owns a most picturesque old shanty in the far East. But actually he does 
not know a rudder post from a jibboom."
"I suppose you have been painting it?" said Oswyn shortly.
Lightmark nodded.
"I have been painting the river from his wharf. The picture is just 
finished, and on the whole I am pleased with it. You should come in and 
give it a look, Oswyn, some time. You haven't seen my new studio."
"I never go west of Regent Street," said Oswyn brusquely.
Lightmark laughed a little nervously.
"Oswyn doesn't believe in me, you know, Philip," he explained lightly. "It 
is a humiliating thing to have to say, but I may as well say it, to save 
him the trouble. He is so infernally frank about it, you know. He thinks 
that I am a humbug, that I don't take my art seriously, and because, when I 
have painted my picture, I begin to think about the pieces of silver, he is 
not quite sure that I may not be a descendant of Judas. And then, worst of 
all, I have committed the unpardonable sin: I have been hung at Burlington 
House. Isn't that about it, Oswyn?"
The elder man laughed his low, mirthless laugh.
"We understand each other, Dick; but you don't quite do yourself justice - 
or me. I have an immense respect for your talent. I feel sure you will 
achieve greatness - in Burlington House."
"Well, it's a respectable institution," said the young man soberly.
Oswyn finished his drink at a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young man 
askance with his impressive eyes. Rainham noticed for the first time that 
he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only - or was it of 
sneering? - while the upper part of his face and his heavy brows frowned.
"By the way, Lightmark," he observed presently, "I have to congratulate you 
on your renown. There is quite a long panegyric on your picture in the 
Outcry this week. Do you know who wrote it?"
"Damn it, man!" broke out Lightmark, with a vehemence which, to Rainham, 
seemed uncalled-for, "how should I know? I haven't seen the rag for an 
age."
There was an angry light in his eyes, but it faded immediately.
Oswyn continued apologetically:
"I beg your pardon. It must be very annoying to you to be puffed 
indiscreetly. But I fancied, you know - "
Lightmark, flushing a little, interrupted him, laying his hand with a quick 
gesture, that night have contained an appeal in it, on the painter's frayed 
coat-sleeve.
"Your glass is empty, and we are about ready for our coffee. What will you 
take?"
Oswyn repeated his order, smiling still a little remotely, as he let the 
water trickle down from a scientific height to his glass, whipping the 
crystal green of its contents into a nebulous yellow. Rainham, who had 
listened to the little passage of arms in silence, felt troubled, uneasy. 
The air seemed thunderous, and was heavy with unspoken words. There 
appeared to be an under-current of understanding between the two painters 
which was the reverse of sympathetic, and made conversation difficult and 
volcanic. It caused him to remind himself, a trifle sadly, how little, 
after all, one knew of even one's nearest friend - and Lightmark, perhaps, 
occupied to him that relation - how much of the country of his mind 
remained perpetually undiscovered; and it made him wonder, as he had 
sometimes wondered before, whether the very open and sunny nature of the 
young painter, which was so large a part of his charm, had not its 
concealed shadows - how far, briefly, Lightmark's very frankness might not 
be a refinement of secretiveness.
If, however, a word here and there, a trait surprised, indefinable, led him 
on occasion to doubt of his dominant impression of Lightmark's character, 
these doubts were never of long duration; and he would dismiss them, barely 
entertained, even as a sort of disloyalty, to the limbo of stillborn 
fancies. And so now, with his accustomed generosity, he speedily flung 
himself into the breach, and did his best to drive the conversation into 
impersonal and presumably safer channels. He touched on the prospects of 
the Academy, of academic art, and art in general, and by-and-by, as Oswyn 
rose to the discussion, he became himself interested, and was actuated less 
by a wish to make conversation than to draw his new friend out. And as the 
artist leant forward, grew excited, with his white, lean face working into 
strange contortions - as he shot out his savage paradoxes, expounding the 
gospel of the new art a trifle thickly now, and rolling and as rapidly 
smoking perpetual cigarettes, he found him again strangely attractive.
He had flashes of insight, it seemed to Rainham; there was something in his 
caustic criticism which led him to believe that he could at another time 
have justified himself, defended reasonably and sanely a position that was 
at least tenable.
But the tide of his spleen invariably overtook him, and he abandoned 
exegesis for tirade. The bourgeois, limited scope of the art in vogue - 
this was the burden of his reiterated rabid attacks; art watered down to 
suit the public's insipid palate, and he quoted Chamfort furiously: 
'Combien de sots faut-il pour faire un public?' - the art of simpering 
prettiness, without root or fruit in life, the art of absolute convention. 
He ran over a list of successful names with an ever-growing rancour 
artistic hacks, the crew of them, the journalists of painting - with a side-
glance at Lightmark, who sat pulling his flaxen moustache, looking stiff 
and nervous - he would hang the lot of them tomorrow if he had his way, for 
corrupters of taste, or, better still, condemn them to perpetual 
incarceration in the company of their own daubs. These people - in fine, 
the mutual admiration society of incompetents - where was their 
justification, where would they be in a decade or so? The hangers-on of the 
fashionable world, caring for their art as a means of success, of acquiring 
guineas or a baronetcy or a couple of initials, who dropped the little 
technique they possessed as soon as they had a competency, and foisted 
their pictures most on people when they had forgotten how to paint. 
Pompiers, fumistes, makers of respectable pommade - as the painter's 
potations increased, his English became less fluent, and he was driven back 
constantly to the dialect of the Paris ateliers, which was more familiar to 
him than his mother-tongue. Ah! how he hated these people and their thread-
paper morality, and their sordid conception of art - a prettiness that 
would sell!
Rainham had heard it all before; it was full of spleen and rancour, 
unnecessarily violent, and, conceivably, unjust. But what he could not help 
recognising, in spite of his repulsion, was a certain nobility and 
singleness in the man, ruin as he was. Virtue came out of him; he had the 
saving quality of genius, and it was a veritable burning passion of 
perfection which masqueraded in his spleen. His conception of art for the 
sake of art only might be erroneous, but it was at least exalted; and the 
instinct which drove him always for his material directly to life, 
rejecting nothing as common or unclean - in the violence of his revolt, 
perhaps dwelling too uniformly on what was fundamentally ugly - might be 
disputable, but was obviously sincere. The last notion which Rainham took 
away with him, when they parted late in the evening (Oswyn having suddenly 
lapsed from the eloquence to the incoherency of drunkenness), was a wish to 
see more of him. He had given him his card, and he waited until he had seen 
him place it - after observing it for some moments attentively with lack-
lustre eyes - in the security of his waistcoat. And as the two friends 
walked towards Charing Cross, Rainham observed that he hoped he would call.
"He is a disreputable fellow," said Lightmark a little sullenly, "and an 
unprofitable acquaintance. You will find it less difficult to persuade him 
to make you a visit than to finish it." At which Rainham had merely 
shrugged his shoulders, finding his friend, perhaps for the first time, a 
little banal.


Chapter 5

A day or two later, as Rainham sat in his river-bound office struggling, by 
way of luncheon, with the most primitive of chops, his eyes, wandering away 
from a somewhat mechanic scrutiny of the Shipping Gazette, fell upon the 
shifting calendar on the mantelpiece.
The dial noted Thursday; and he reminded himself that on that day his 
friend Lady Garnett had a perennial habit of being at home to her 
intimates, on the list of whom Rainham could acknowledge, without undue 
vanity, his name occurred high. There was a touch of self-reproach in his 
added reminder that a week had elapsed since his return, and he had not 
already hastened to clasp the excellent old lady's hand. It was an 
unprecedented postponement and an infringement of a time-honoured habit; 
and Rainham had for his habit all the respect of a man who is always 
indolent and often ill; though it must be admitted that to his clerks, who 
viewed the trait complacently, and to the importunate Bullen, who resented 
it, he seemed to be only regular in his irregularity. He decided that at 
least this occasion should not be allowed to slip; a free afternoon would 
benefit him. He was always rather lavish of those licenses; and it seemed 
to him that the tintinnabulation of teacups in Lady Garnett's primrose and 
gray drawing-room would be a bearable change from the din of a hundred 
hammers, which had pelted him through the open windows all the morning. 
They were patching a little wooden barque with copper, and he paused a 
moment in the yard, leaning on his slim umbrella to admire the brilliant 
yellow of the renewed sheets, standing out in vivid blots against the 
tarnished verdigris of the old. To pass from Blackpool to the West, 
however, is a tardy process; and when Rainham reached the spruce little 
house in one of the most select of the discreet and uniform streets which 
adjoin Portman Square, he found the clatter of teacups for the most part 
over. There were, in fact, only two persons in the long room, which, with 
its open Erard, and its innumerable bibelots, and its plenitude of quaint, 
impossible chairs, seemed quite cosily exiguous. An old lady with a 
beautiful, refined face and a wealth of white hair, which was still 
charming to look at, sat in an attitude full of comfortable indolence, with 
a small pug in her lap, who bounced at Rainham with a bark of friendly 
recognition. A young lady at the other side of the room (she was at least 
young by courtesy), who was pouring out tea, stopped short in this 
operation to greet the new visitor with a little soft exclamation, in which 
pleasure and surprise mingled equally. The old lady also looked up smiling. 
She seemed both good-natured and distinguished, and she had the air - a 
sort of tired complacency - of a person who has been saying witty things 
for a whole afternoon, and is at last in the enjoyment of a well-deserved 
rest. She extended both hands to Rainham, who held them for a minute in his 
own, silently smiling down at her, before he released them to greet her 
companion.
She was a tall, pale girl in a black dress, whom at first sight the 
impartial observer might easily declare to be neither pretty nor young. As 
a matter of fact, she was younger than she seemed, for she was barely five-
and-twenty, although her face and manner belonged to a type which, even in 
girlhood, already forestalls some of the gravity and reserve that arrive 
with years. As for her beauty, there were those who disputed it altogether; 
and yet even when one had gone so far as to declare that Mary Masters was 
plain, one had, in justice, to add that she possessed none the less a 
distinct and delicate charm of her own. It was a daisy-like charm, 
differing in kind from the charm of Eve Sylvester, which was that of a 
violet or a child, perpetually perfuming the air. It could be traced at 
last - for she had not a good feature - to the possession of a pair of very 
soft and shy brown eyes, and of a voice, simply agreeable in conversation, 
which burgeoned out in song into the richest contralto imaginable, causing 
her to be known widely in society as 'the Miss Masters who sings.' Indeed, 
she had a wonderful musical talent, which she had cultivated largely. Her 
playing had even approved itself to the difficult Rubinstein; and, although 
she had a certain reputation for cleverness, the loss to society when she 
left the music-stool to mingle in it was generally felt not to be met by a 
corresponding gain; and, indeed, as a rule, people did not consider her 
separately. The generality were inclined simply to accept her, in relation 
to her aunt, Lady Garnett, with whom she had lived since she was a girl of 
sixteen, as any other of that witty old woman's impedimenta - her pug 
Mefistofele, or her matchless enamels, or her Watteau fans. As she came 
towards him now with a cup in her hand, her pale face a little flushed, her 
dark hair braided very plainly and neatly above her high forehead, Rainham 
could not help thinking that she would make an adorable old maid.
"You look well, Mary," he remarked, holding her at arm's length critically, 
with the freedom of an old friend. "You look insultingly well - I hope you 
don't mean it."
"I am afraid I do," laughed the girl. "I wish I could say as much for you."
Rainham shook his head with burlesque solemnity, and sank down with his 
fragile cup into the most comfortable of the Louis Quinze chairs which he 
could select.
"It's delightful to be back again," he remarked, letting his eyes wander 
round the familiar walls. "I know your things by heart, Lady Garnett: 
there's not one of them I could spare. Thanks, Mary, no sugar; cream, if 
you please. After all, I don't know anyone who has such charming rooms. Let 
me see if there is anything new. Yes, those enamels; introduce me, Mary, 
please. Yes, they are very nice - By the way, I picked up some old point 
for you at Genoa, only I have not unpacked it yet. But the Gustave Moreau, 
where is that? Ah, I see you have shifted it over the piano. Yes, it is 
exactly the same; you are all precisely the same; it's delightful, such 
constancy - delightful! I take it as a personal compliment. But where are 
all the delightful people?"
Lady Garnett smiled placidly.
"The delightful people have gone. To tell you the truth, I am just a little 
glad, especially as you have dropped in from the clouds, or the Riviera di 
Ponente - which is it, Philip?"
"To be frank with you, from neither. I have it on my conscience to tell you 
that I have been back some days. I wanted to come here before."
"Ah well, so long as you have come now!" said the old lady.
"Your knock was mystifying, Philip," put in the girl presently; "we 
expected nobody else but the Sylvesters, and when we heard your solitary 
step our hearts sank. We thought that Charles Sylvester had taken it into 
his head to come by himself."
"He is a terrible young man," said Lady Garnett; "he is almost as limited 
as his mamma, and he takes himself more seriously. When he is with his 
sister one can tolerate him, but alone - "
She held up her thin wrinkled hands with a little gesture of elision, at 
which her expressive shoulders assisted. She was of French extraction, the 
last survivor of an illustrious family; and reconciled as she had become to 
England - for years she had hardly left London - a slight and very pretty 
accent, and this trick of her shoulders, remained to remind people that her 
point of view was still essentially foreign. Rainham, who had from his 
boyhood found England somewhat a prison-house, adored her for this trait. 
The quaint old woman, indeed, with her smooth, well-bred voice, her 
elaborate complexion, her little dignified incongruities, had always been 
the greatest solace to him. She had the charm of all rococo things; she 
represented so much that had passed away, exhaling a sort of elegant 
wickedness to find a parallel to which one had to seek hack to the days of 
the Regency. Of course, in society, she passed for being very devout; and, 
indeed, her little pieties, her unfailing attendance at Mass on days of 
Obligation, at the chapel of the French Embassy hard by, struck Rainham as 
most edifying. Really, he perceived that her devout attitude was purely 
traditional, a form of good manners. She remained the same wicked, charming 
old Sadducee as before: her morocco-bound paroissien might appear on 
festivals and occasions; she still slept as often as not of nights with 
'Candide' under her pillow.
The knowledge of a certain sentiment which they shared towards the 
limitations of London (they were both persons strikingly without prejudice) 
lent a certain piquancy to their old-established relations, an allusive 
flavour to their conversationist was always highly seasoned with badinage - 
that puzzled many of their common acquaintance enormously.
Mary Masters, as a shy and serious maiden, fresh from a country parsonage, 
remembered well the astonishment, mingled with something not unlike awe, 
with which she had first heard them talk. Philip Rainham had been calling, 
as it might be now, when she arrived, and Lady Garnett had promptly 
introduced him to her as her godson, because, as she remarked lightly, if 
he were not, he ought to have been. To which Philip had replied, in a like 
humour, that it was all the same: if they hadn't that relation, at any rate 
their behaviour implied it.
It was a novelty in her small and serious experience to find herself in 
conjunction with such frivolity; she was almost inclined to be shocked. 
Nevertheless, in the ten years during which she had made her home in Parton 
Street, Mary Masters had surmounted her awe, if her astonishment still 
occasionally obtained. Neither her aunt nor Rainham had altered, nor had 
they grown perceptibly older.
Watching the latter today as he sat lolling back lazily, balancing his 
teacup, she was curiously reminded of her first impression of him: taking 
stock of her humorously, silently, in almost the same attitude, with the 
same sad eyes. And since Mary, too, had remained virtually unchanged, it is 
to the credit of the head of a particularly serious little daughter of the 
Puritans that she had ended by appreciating them both. In fact, she had 
discovered that neither of them was so frivolous as it appeared, or, at 
least, that there were visitors in Parton Street who seemed less frivolous, 
and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were penetrative, 
and often saw more than one would have imagined, and at last they believed 
that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's 
shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of 
tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, where the 
footlights are most pitiless, and where the gallery is only too lavish of 
its cat-calls at the smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who 
understood each other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they 
understand each other so well that they could afford to trifle? She had an 
idea that their silences were eloquent, and that they might well be lavish 
of the crudity of speech. Oh, they pretended very well! The young girl 
found something admirable in the hard, polished surface which her aunt 
presented to the world: her rouge and her diamonds, her little bird-like 
air of living only in the present, of being intensely interested, of having 
no regrets - a manner to which Rainham responded so fluently, with an 
assumption that she was right, that things were an excellent joke. After 
all, perhaps they pretended too much; at least, she found herself often, 
when they were present, falling away into reveries full of conjecture, from 
which, as happened now, she only awoke with a slight blush to find herself 
directly addressed.
"Wake up, Mary! we are talking of the Sylvesters. I was telling Philip that 
his little friend Eve has become entirely charming."
"Yes," said Mary slowly; "she is charming, certainly. Haven't you seen her, 
Philip? You used to be constantly there."
Rainham assumed the air of reflection.
"Really, I believe I used, when Eve was in short frocks, and Charles 
conspicuously absent. Like Lady Garnett, I find the barrister exhausting. 
He is very unlike his father."
"We are going to Switzerland with then this summer, you know, Philip. Will 
you join us?"
"Ah!" he put his cup down, not responding for a moment. "It would be 
delightful, but I am afraid impossible. You see, there's the dock; I have 
been away from it six months, and I shall have to repeat the process when 
the fogs begin. No, Lady Garnett, I won't be tempted."
She began to press him, and they fenced rapidly for some minutes, laughing. 
Rainham had just been induced to promise that he would at least consider 
the proposition, when the footman announced Mr. and Miss Sylvester. They 
came in a moment later: and while the barrister, a tall well-dressed man, 
with the shaven upper lip and neat whisker of his class, and a back which 
seemed to bend with difficulty, explained to Lady Garnett that his mother 
was suffering too much from neuralgia to come with them, Rainham resumed 
his acquaintance with the young girl. He had seen little of her during the 
past two years, and in the last of them, in which she had changed most, he 
had not seen her at all. It was with a slight shock, then, that he realised 
how completely she had grown up. He remembered her in so many phases of 
childhood and little girlhood, ranging up from a time when her speech was 
incoherent, and she had sat on his keen and played with his watch, to the 
more recent occasions when he had met her riding in the Park with her 
brother, and she had waved her little whip to him, looking particularly 
slim and pretty in the very trying costume which fashion prescribes for 
little girls who ride.
They had always been very good friends; she had been a most engaging little 
companion, and really, he reflected, he had been extremely fond of her. It 
gave him a distinct pain to reflect that their relation had, in the nature 
of things, come to an end. Gradually, as they talked, the young girl 
growing out of the first restraint of her shyness, and falling back into 
something of her old manner, the first painful impression of her entire 
strangeness left Rainham. In spite of her mature little society air, her 
engaging attempts at worldliness, she was, after all, not so grown-up as 
she seemed. The child gleamed out here and there quite daintily, and as he 
indulged in reminiscence, and reminded her of some of their more remote 
adventures, her merriment found utterance very childishly.
"Our most tragical encounter, though, was with the monkey. Have you 
forgotten that? It was on one of your birthdays - you had a good many of 
them in Florence - I forget which it was. You must have been about ten. I 
had taken you to the Zoological Gardens, such as they were."
Her laughter rippled out softly again.
"I remember," she nodded, "it was dreadful."
"Yes," he said; "we were at the monkey-cage; you had grow tired of feeding 
the ostrich with centesimi."
"Oh, Philip!" she interrupted him; "I never, never would have done such a 
thing. It was you who used to give the poor bird centesimi. I only used to 
watch."
"Ah, you connived at it, anyhow," he went on. "Well, we were feeding the 
monkeys, this time with melon-seeds, when we somehow aroused the ire of a 
particularly ugly brute, who must have been distantly connected with a 
bull. Anyhow, he made a grab at the scarlet berret you were wearing, just 
missed your hair, and demolished the cap."
"I remember," she laughed. "You tied your handkerchief round my head, like 
an old peasant woman, and took me back in a carriage. And mamma was 
dreadfully angry about the cap, because she had bought it at Biarritz, and 
couldn't replace it in Italy. She thought you ought to have taken steps to 
get it back."
"Dear me!" said Rainham solemnly, "why didn't I think of it before? I 
wonder if it's too late to do anything now."
The girl's laughter broke out again, this time attracting the attention of 
her brother, who was discussing the projected travels, with the aid of 
Bradshaw, at Mary Masters' side. He glanced at them askance, pulling at his 
collar in his stiff, nervous fashion a little uneasily.
"What a long time ago all that seems, Philip!" she remarked after awhile.
He was silent for a moment, examining his fingernails intently.
"Yes," he said rather sadly; "I suppose it does. I dare say you wouldn't 
care much for the Zoo now?"
"Oh, I shouldn't mind," she said gaily, "if you will take me."
But a move had been made opposite, and Charles Sylvester, coming up to 
them, overheard this last remark.
"I think we must be off," he said, consulting his watch. "Where is Rainham 
going to take you?"
"To Florence," she said, smiling, "to the Zoo."
"Ah, a good idea," he murmured. "Well, good-bye, Lady Garnett; good-day, 
Rainham. I am sorry to see you don't seem to have benefitted much by your 
winter abroad. I almost wonder you came back so soon. Was not it rather 
unwise? This treacherous climate, you know."
"Yes," said Rainham; "I, too, think you are right. I think I had much 
better have stayed - very much better."
"Ah, well," he said, "you must take care of yourself, and give us a look in 
if you have time."
Eve looked up at him, flushing a little, as though she found her brother's 
formal politeness lacking in hospitality. She was struck then, as she had 
not been yet during her visit, by a curious lassitude in her old friend's 
face. It affected her with an unconscious pity, causing her to second her 
brother's somewhat chilly invitation more cordially.
The humour which had shone in Rainham's eyes while they had been talking 
seemed to have gone out suddenly, like a lamp, leaving them blank and 
tired. It shocked her to realise how old and ill he had become.


Chapter 6

Indolence and ill-health, in the opinion of many the salient points in 
Philip Rainham's character, had left him at forty with little of the social 
habit. The circle of his intimates had sensibly narrowed, and for the rest 
he was becoming more and more conscious that people whom one does not know 
exceedingly well are not worth knowing at all. The process of dining out 
two or three times a week in the company of two or three persons whose 
claims on his attention were of the slenderest he found a process attended 
with less and less pleasure the older he grew. There were few houses now 
which he frequented, and this year, when he had made an effort to devote a 
couple of evenings to the renewal of some acquaintance of the winter, and 
had discovered, as he discovered anew each season, that the effort gave him 
no appreciable compensations for the disagreeables it involved, he made 
fresh resolutions of abstinence, and on the whole he kept them amazingly 
well.
For the most part, when he was not routed out by Lightmark (and since the 
young artist was in train to become a social acquisition this happened less 
frequently than of old), it was at Blackpool that he spent his evenings. He 
had, it is true, a standing invitation to dinner at Lady Garnett's when 
that old lady found herself at home; but Portman Square was remote, and 
evening dress, to a man with one lung in a climate which had so fickle a 
trick of registering itself either at the extreme top or bottom of the 
thermometer, presented various discomforts. His den behind the office - a 
little sitting-room with a bay - window facing Blackpool Reach, a room 
filled with books that had no relation to shipping, and hung round with 
etchings and pictures in those curiously low tones for which he had so 
unreasonable an affection - was what he cherished most in London. He read 
little now, but the mere presence of the books he loved best in rough, 
uneven cases, painted black, lining the walls, caressed him. As with 
persons one has loved and grown used to loving, it was not always needful 
that they should speak to him; it was sufficient, simply, that they should 
be there. Neither did he write on these long, interminable evenings, which 
were prolonged sometimes far into the night. He had ended by being able to 
smile at his literary ambitions of twenty, cultivating his indolence as 
something choice and original, finding his destiny appropriate.
He spent the time in interminable reveries, sitting with a volume before 
him, as often as not unopened, smoking incessantly, and looking out of the 
window. The habit amused himself fat times; it was so eminently symbolic of 
his destiny. Life, after all, had been to him nothing so much as that - a 
long looking out of window, the impartial spectatorship of a crowd of 
persons and passions from which he had come at last to seem strangely 
detached, almost as much as from this chameleon river, which he had 
observed with such satisfaction in all its manifold gradations of character 
and colour; its curious cold grayness in the beginning of an autumnal dawn; 
the illusion of warmth and depth which it sustained at noon, bringing up 
its burden of leviathans on the top of the flood; its sheen on moonless 
nights, when only little punctures, green and red and orange, and its 
audible stillness, reminded him that down in the obscurity the great 
polluted stream stole on wearily, monotonously, everlastingly to the sea. 
It was changeful and changeless. He thought he knew its effects by heart, 
but it had always new ones in reserve to surprise and delight him. He 
declared it at last to be inexhaustible. It was like a diamond on sunny 
days, flashing out light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless 
afternoon the light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving 
back the least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, 
which shine with the same parsimonious radiance.
One night, while he sat smoking in his wonted meditative fashion, he had a 
visitor - the painter Oswyn. He had almost forgotten his invitation, but he 
reminded himself of his first impression, and greeted him with a cordiality 
which the other seemed to find surprising. He took him into his sanctuary 
and found him whisky and a pipe; then he set himself to make the painter 
talk, a task which he found by no means arduous.
Oswyn was sober, and Rainham was surprised after awhile at his sanity. He 
decided that, though one might differ from him, dissent from his premises 
or his conclusions, he was still a man to be taken seriously. His fluency 
was as remarkable as ever, and at first as spleenful; by-and-by his 
outrageous mood gave way, and, in response to some of Rainham's adroit 
thrusts, he condescended to stand on his defence. He could give a 
reasonable account of himself; was prepared clearly, and succinctly, and 
seriously with his justification. Rainham was impressed anew by his 
singleness, the purity of his artistic passion. His life might be 
disgraceful, indescribable: his art lay apart from it; and when he took up 
a brush an enthusiasm, a devotion to art, almost religious, steadied his 
hand.
"You may think me a charlatan," he said, with the same savage earnestness, 
"but I can tell you I am not. I may fail or I may succeed, as the world 
counts those things. It is all the same: I believe in myself. It is 
sufficient to me if I approve myself, and the world may go to damnation! 
What I care for is my idea!Ö yes, my idea, that's it! They can howl at me," 
he went on; "but they can never say of any stroke of my brush that I put it 
there for them. I could have painted pictures like Lightmark if I had 
cared, you know, but I did not care!"
"And yet he has great facility," said Rainham tentatively.
"He has more," said Oswyn bitterly, "or, at least, he had, genius. And he 
has deliberately chosen to go the wrong way, to be conventional. He can't 
plead 'invincible ignorance' like the others; he ought to know better. 
Well, he has his reward; but I can't forgive him."
Rainham shrugged his shoulders, with something between a sigh and a laugh.
"Poor boy! he is young, you know. Perhaps he will live to see the errors of 
his ways."
"When he's an Academician, I suppose?" suggested the other ironically. "Do 
they ever see the errors of their ways? If they do, they don't show it. No; 
he will marry a rich wife, and make speeches at banquets, and paint 
portraits of celebrities, for the rest of his days. And in fifty years' 
time people will say, 'Lightmark, R.A.? Who the devil was he?'"
By this time the young moon had risen, and its cold light shimmered on the 
misty river. Rainham refilled his pipe, and opened the window still more 
widely.
"By Jove, what a night!" he said. "What a night for a painter! I am sure 
you are longing to be out in it. I'm afraid there's nothing to show you in 
the dock at present; you must come down again when there's a ship coming in 
at night. I feel quite reconciled to the dock on those occasions. Shall we 
go for a stroll in the moonlight - and seek impressions?"
Oswyn's restless humour welcomed the suggestion, and he was already 
waiting, his soft felt hat in one ungloved hand, and a heavy, quaintly 
carved stick in the other.
They stood for some minutes on the little, square, pulpit-like landing, at 
the top of the creaking wooden staircase which led down the side of the 
building from office to yard, listening to the faint drip of the water 
through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child outside the walls, and the 
pacing step of the woman who hushed it; the distant intermittent roar of 
the song which reached them through the often opened doors of a public - 
house. Presently the night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the 
gates, his dim lantern sounding pools of mysterious darkness, which were 
untouched by the solitary gas-lamp in the street outside, and which the 
faint moonlight only seemed to intensify.
Oswyn drew in a long breath of the cool, caressing air, momentarily 
straightening his bent figure. Then he gave a short laugh, which startled 
Rainham from the familiar state of half-smiling reverie to which he was 
always so ready to recur.
"The last time I saw the river like this," he said - "the last time I was 
down here at night, that is - was when I went with a Malay model of mine to 
his favourite opium den."
"You have not repeated the experiment?" asked Rainham absently.
"No, not yet, at any rate. It made my hand shake so damnably for a week 
afterwards that I couldn't paint. Besides, I doubt if I could find the 
place again. I couldn't get the Malay to come away at all; he is probably 
there still."
"Beg your pardon, sir," said the night-watchman hoarsely, when they reached 
the bottom of the difficult staircase, "there's been a young woman here 
asking for a gentleman of the name of Crichton. I told her there weren't no 
one of that name here, and Mr. Bullen, sir, he saw her, and sent her away. 
I thought I had better mention it to you, sir."
"Crichton? Crichton?" repeated Rainham indifferently. "I don't know anyone 
of that name. Some mistake, I suppose, or - well, sailors will be sailors! 
Thank you, Andrewes, that will do. Good-night - or, rather, we shall be 
back in half an hour or so." He turned to Oswyn, who had been hanging back 
to avoid any appearance of interest in the conversation, for corroboration. 
"You will come back, of course?"
"Rather late, isn't it? I think I had better catch some train before 
midnight, if there is one."
"Oh, there are plenty of trains," said Rainham vaguely. "We can settle that 
matter later. I can give you a bed here, you know, or a berth, at any 
rate."
As they stepped through the narrow opening in the gate, a dark form sprang 
forward out of the shadow, and then stopped timidly.
"Oh, Cyril!" cried a woman's plaintive voice. "Cyril! I knew you were here, 
and they wouldn't let me - Ah, my God! it isn't Cyril after allÖ!"
The voice - and it struck Rainham that it was not the voice of a woman of 
the sort one would expect to encounter in the streets at that hour - died 
away in a broken sob, and the girl fell back a step, almost dropping the 
child she carried in her arms.
Her evident despair appealed to Rainham's somewhat inconveniently assertive 
sensibility.
He hesitated for a moment, glancing from the girl to Oswyn, and noting that 
the face, too, had a certain beauty which was not of the order affected by 
the women of Blackpool.
"Don't go," he said to Oswyn, who had withdrawn a few paces. "I won't keep 
you a moment!"
The baby in the woman's arms set up a feeble wail, and it was borne in upon 
Rainham's mind that the unhappy creature with the white face and pleading 
dark eyes had been waiting long.
"Didn't my foreman tell you that the - that the gentleman you asked for is 
not here?" he inquired gently. "No one here has ever heard of Mr. Crichton. 
I'm afraid you have made a mistake.Ö Hadn't you better go home? I'm sure it 
would be best for your child."
"Home?" echoed the girl bitterly. Then, changing her tone, "But I saw him 
here with my own eyes!" she pleaded. "I saw him at the window there not a 
week ago quite plain, and then they told me he wasn't here! I'm sure he 
would see me if he only knew - if he only knew!"
"He may have been here," suggested Rainham doubtfully. "There are a great 
many people here from day to day, and we don't always know their names. But 
I assure you he isn't here now."
The girl - for in spite of her pale misery she did not look more - drew her 
dark shawl more closely round herself and the child with a little 
despairing shudder, glancing over her shoulder. Rainham let his eyes rest 
on the frail figure pityingly, and a thought of the river behind her struck 
him with a sudden chill.
He put his hand, almost surreptitiously, into his pocket.
"Where do you live?" he asked. "Near here?" The girl mentioned a street 
which he sometimes passed through when economy of time induced him to make 
an otherwise undesirable short-cut to the railway-station. "Well," he said 
presently, "I can't keep my friend here waiting, you know. Come and see me 
tomorrow morning about midday, and I will see if I can help you. Only you 
must promise me to go straight home now! And" - here he dropped a coin 
quickly into her hand - "buy something for your child; you both look as if 
you wanted it."
The girl looked at him dumbly for a moment.
"I will come, sir, and - and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in her 
voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening gesture, 
she turned away.
Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner.
"I'm sorry to have treated you to this scene," he said apologetically, as 
he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow bridge. "I felt bound to do 
something for the girl, after she had been wasting all that time outside my 
gates. Did you notice what a pretty, refined face she had? I wonder who the 
man can be - Crichton, Cecil Crichton, wasn't it?Ö I never heard the name 
before. It doesn't sound like a sailor's name."
"Cecil Crichton?" echoed the other. "NoÖ and yet it sounds familiar. 
Perhaps I am thinking of the Admirable, though he wasn't Cecil, as far as I 
remember. The old story, I suppose. Cecil Crichton - ah, Cyril Crichton?" 
he repeated. Then, dismissing the subject somewhat brutally, "Ah, well, 
it's no business of mine! Will you give me a light? Thanks!"


Chapter 7

At three o'clock Lightmark dismissed his model - an Italian, with a 
wonderfully fine torso and admirable capabilities for picturesque pose, 
whom he had easily persuaded to abandon his ice-cream barrow and to sit for 
him two or three times a week, acting the part of studio servant in the 
intervals.
"That will do, Cesare," he said, "aspetto persone; besides, you're 
shivering: I shall have you catching cold next, and I can't paint while 
you're sneezing. Yes, you're quite right, e un freddo terribile, 
considering that it's July. Off with you now, and come again at the same 
time on Friday. Si conservi - that's to say, don't get drunk in the 
interval; it makes you look such a brute that I can't paint you."
While the model transformed himself from a scantily-attired Roman gladiator 
into an Italian of the ordinary Saffron Hill description, Lightmark hastily 
washed his brushes, turned down his shirt-sleeves, and donned the becoming 
velvet painting-jacket which Mrs. Dollond had so much admired.
"I hope they won't notice Cesare's pipe," he said anxiously. "Even though 
he doesn't smoke here, it always seems to hang about. Perhaps I had better 
open the window and burn a pastille. And now, are we prepared to receive 
Philistia? Yes, I don't think the place looks bad, and - but perhaps Mrs. 
Sylvester mightn't like the gladiator. He certainly is deucedly anatomical 
at present. I'll go and leave him in Copal's studio, and then can borrow 
his tea-things at the same time."
The studio was a lofty room on the ground-floor, with an elaborately 
devised skylight, and a large window facing north, through which a distant 
glimpse of Holland Park could be obtained. Lightmark had covered the floor 
with pale Indian matting, with a bit of strong colour here and there, in 
the shape of a modern Turkish rug. For furniture, he had picked up some old 
chairs and a large straight-backed settee with grotesquely - carved legs, 
which, with the aid of a judicious arrangement of drapery, looked eminently 
attractive, and conveyed an impression of comfort which closer acquaintance 
did not altogether belie. Then there was the platform, covered with dark 
cloth, on which his models posed; the rickety table with many drawers, in 
which he kept brushes and colours; a lay figure, disguised as a Venetian 
flower-girl, which had collapsed tipsily into a corner; two or three 
easels; and a tall, stamped leather screen, which was useful for 
backgrounds. A few sketches, mostly unframed, stood in a row on the narrow 
shelf which ran along the pale-green distempered walls; and more were 
stacked in the corners - some in portfolios, and some with their dusty 
backs exposed to view. The palette which he had been using lay, like a 
great fantastic leaf, upon the table, amid a chaos of broken crayons, dingy 
stumps, photographs of sitters, pellets of bread, disreputable colour-
tubes, and small bottles of linseed-oil, varnish, and turpentine. A sketch 
for Mrs. Sylvester's portrait, in crayons, was propped against the foot of 
an easel (Lightmark hoped that her son might buy it for his chambers); the 
canvas which he had prepared against the much delayed sitting due from Miss 
Sylvester exposed its blank surface on another. A tall Japanese jar full of 
purple and yellow irises, a tribute to his expected guests, stood on the 
dusty black stove.
He had barely had time to arrange the borrowed tea-things, and to set a 
kettle on a little spirit-lamp behind the screen, when Mrs. Dollond and her 
husband were announced. He threw his black sombrero somewhat theatrically 
into a corner, and advanced with effusion to meet them. Mrs. Dollond had 
taken a decided interest in the young painter ever since the delightfully 
uncandid reflection of her by no means youthful beauty which he had 
exhibited at the Grosvenor had provoked so much comment among her friends.
She was a plump little fair-haired woman, with blue eyes, a very pink and 
white complexion, small hands, and a passion for dress with which people 
who had known her before her marriage, as a slim maiden devoted to sage-
green draperies and square-toed shoes, declined to credit her, until they 
were told that she had, to put it plainly, grown fat - a development which 
compelled her to give up aestheticism and employ a modiste.
Her husband, who followed her into the room, carrying her impedimenta, wore 
the bored expression of the R.A. who is expected to admire the work of an 
outsider. He was the abject slave of his good-natured wife - she was good-
natured, in spite of her love of scandal - and his only fault from her 
point of view, and his greatest one in the eyes of people in general, lay 
in an unfortunate habit of thinking aloud, a dangerous characteristic, 
which persons who are apt to find themselves in the position of critic 
should at any cost eradicate. Luckily, his benevolence was such that these 
outspoken comments were never really virulent, and not often offensive.
Mrs. Dollond seated herself smilingly on the least rickety chair, disposed 
of her veil with one neatly-gloved hand, and prepared a tortoise-shell 
eyeglass for action with the other.
"What a charming portrait!" she said, pointing with her plump index-finger 
to, the sketch of Mrs. Sylvester. "Do I know the lady, I wonder? Oh! I do 
believe it's that Mrs. Sylvester."
"Yes," said Lightmark. "If you remember, you introduced me to her at the 
Academy soiree last year. I expect her here this afternoon, with her 
daughter. I am going to paint Miss Sylvester's portrait."
"Ah," said Mrs. Dollond mischievously, "and that accounts for the pastille. 
You never made such preparations when I sat to you. I suppose you thought 
that a painter's wife could not possibly object to tobacco."
"And she certainly doesn't, judging by her consumption of cigarettes!" 
interposed her husband.
"Hugh, I'm ashamed of you! You know I'm a martyr to asthma - and cigarettes 
aren't tobacco. But how old is Miss Sylvester? Is she pretty?"
"Don't ask me to describe her, Mrs. Dollond. Wait till you see her - she's 
coming, you know. What do you think of that riverscape, most reverend 
signor? It's one of the little things I've been doing down at Rainham's 
Dock - down at Blackpool."
The Academician tried to appear interested as be assumed the conventional 
bird-like pose of the picture-gazer and surveyed the sketch.
"Very pretty - very pretty! I should hardly have thought it was the Thames, 
though. It isn't muddy enough. In fact the whole scheme of colour is much 
too clean for London. Quite absurd! Not a bit like it! Eh, my dear, what 
was I saying? Oh yes, I like the effect of the sunlight on that brown sail 
immensely. It's really very clever, very clever."
Mrs. Dollond, who never knew what her husband would say next, welcomed the 
influx of a small throng of visitors with a sigh of relief.
The Sylvesters and Philip Rainham, arriving at the same time, found the 
little studio almost crowded. Besides the Dollonds there were two or three 
of the Turk Street fraternity; a young sculptor, newly arrived from Rome, 
with his wife; Dionysus F. Quain, an American interested in petroleum, who 
had patronised Lightmark also at Rome; and Copal, whose studio was in the 
same building, and who was manifestly anxious about his Chelsea teacups.
Mrs. Sylvester greeted her protege with a flattering degree of warmth which 
was entirely absent from the stare and conventional smile with which she 
honoured Mrs. Dollond, and the somewhat impertinent air of patronage which 
she wore when one or two of the young artists were introduced to her. If 
they did not mind, Mrs. Dollond was inclined to be resentful, for the 
moment, at least; and, as a preliminary attack, she maliciously encouraged 
Eve, who, ensconced in a corner, blissfully unconscious of the maternal 
anxiety which the other matron had detected, was eagerly turning over the 
contents of a portfolio which she had unearthed from its lurking-place 
behind her chair.
Rainham was looking over her shoulder, admiring the charming poise of the 
girl's head, and the contours of her wrists and hands, as she submitted the 
drawings to his inspection. Charles Sylvester stationed himself close by, 
and devoted himself to button-holing the American senator, to the obvious 
discomfort of his victim, whose knowledge of Pennsylvanian oil-wells was 
infinitely greater than his acquaintance with the rudiments of summary 
jurisdiction, as practised in his native State, and who, after hazarding a 
remark to the effect that Judge Lynch had long since retired from the 
Bench, had, as he would have put it, 'pretty considerably petered out.'
"I hope my daughter isn't indiscreet?" Mrs. Sylvester had hazarded, after 
catching Lightmark's eye on its return journey from a glance in the 
direction of the little group in the corner; and the young man had 
reassured her hastily, before misgivings had time to assail him, and when 
they did, he hoped for the best. For a painter's portfolio is, after all, 
hardly less confidential than a diary, and may be on occasion almost as 
compromising, in spite of the fact that the records it contains are written 
in cipher.
The sunlight, mellowed to a dull straw colour by its passage through London 
air, slanted in at the window, falling first on Charles Sylvester's 
handsome face, with its eminently professional, severely-cut features, and 
the careful limitation of whisker, which seemed so completely in harmony 
with his shaven upper lip and the unsympathetic scrutiny of his double 
eyeglass; then, losing some of its brightness among the little ripples of 
brown hair which a gracious Providence had forbidden her hat to conceal, 
fell like a halo upon the pale green wall behind Eve's head.
The young artists - the 'boys,' as they would have called themselves - were 
circulating busily with teacups and petits fours, and the chatter of voices 
bore testimony to the preponderance of the Bohemian element. It is only the 
dwellers on the confines who lose their voices in the Temple of Art - a 
goddess who, to judge by her votaries, is not wont to take pleasure in 
silence.
"Oh," said Eve, in reply to one of Rainham's remarks, "is that Bordighera? 
What lovely blue water! and what perfectly delicious little fishing-boats! 
I should like to go there. Charles is going to take us to Lucerne in a week 
or two, you know, when the Long Vacation begins. But I suppose we shall 
hardly get to Italy."
"Yes, that's Bordighera" - with a sigh - "my happy hunting-ground. And the 
water is much bluer really - only don't tell Dick I said so. Yes, you ought 
to go there. If you stayed late enough you would have me dropping in on you 
one fine day, as soon as the fogs begin here. Happy thought! Why shouldn't 
we all winter out there?"
"That would be nice," said Eve, rather doubtfully; "but, you know, there's 
Charles - he would have to come back for the Law-Courts in the autumn, and 
he would be so lonely all by himself. And - and there's my portrait. Mr. 
Lightmark wants to get that ready for next year's Academy; and I can't sit 
to him very often, as it is, because of chaperons, you know."
Meanwhile Lightmark was telling Mrs. Dollond, in a confidential undertone, 
some story of a fair American sitter, who, on his expressing himself 
dissatisfied with his efforts worthily to transfer her complexion to 
canvas, had at once offered to send her maid round to his studio with an 
assortment of her favourite poudre de rose. Dollond listened with an amused 
smile to a recital of the sculptor's impressions of the Salon, which he had 
taken on his way from Rome. Copal was making desperate efforts to count his 
precious teacups, a task which their scattered positions rendered 
distressingly difficult. Charles Sylvester was somewhat listlessly cross-
examining a P.R.A. in embryo as to the exact meaning of 'breadth' in a 
painting; and Mr. Quain had been making his way as unostentatiously as the 
creakiness of his boots would permit towards the door. Eve had despatched 
one of 'the boys' in search of a portfolio to replace the one which she had 
exhausted, and another had been entrusted with the safe bestowal of her 
empty teacup. The new portfolio, when it arrived, proved to be filled, not 
as the others, with landscapes and waterscapes, but with studies from life 
- Capri fisher-girls, groups of market people, Venetian boatmen, and hasty 
sketches for portraits.
Eve paused rather longer than usual over one of these, the picture of a 
pretty fair-haired girl, dressed as Pierrette, the general lack of detail 
and absence of background only making the vigorously outlined face more 
distinct.
"What a pretty girl, Philip!" said the young critic presently; "and how 
curiously she's dressed! What is she intended to represent? Is it a fancy 
dress?Ö Mr. Rainham, if you don't attend, I won't show you any more 
pictures."
"Tyrant," said Rainham absently, as he carried his eyes from the 
contemplative stare with which they had been regarding the vagaries of a 
butterfly on the skylight. "What have you found now? - Kitty, by Jove!"
He had no sooner uttered these last three words, in a very different tone 
to that of his previous idle remarks, than he cursed his indiscretion. It 
was a piece of gaucherie which he would find it hard to forgive in himself, 
and Lightmark might well resent it.
"Kitty?" asked Eve, with some surprise, "who is Kitty? Mr. Lightmark, 
please tell us who this charming young lady, whom Mr. Rainham calls Kitty, 
is, since he won't."
"Kitty?" repeated Lightmark, with only a momentary hesitation, which the 
suddenness of the query might well account for; "I'm afraid I don't quite 
remember. There are so many Kitties, you know. All models are either Kitty 
or Polly. But if Rainham says it's Kitty, depend upon it he's right. He's 
got a wonderful memory for faces, especially pretty ones. Yes," he added 
mischievously, "you ask Rainham."
Mrs. Sylvester looked uneasy, and, to her subsequent disgust, began to 
press 'dear Mrs. Dollond' to come and see her.
Charles, who had looked up sharply at the first mention of the name which 
had so disturbed the usually imperturbable Rainham, fixed his interrogative 
glasses first on the latter and then on Lightmark, and finally let them 
rest, with an expression of inquiring censure, on Rainham, whose confusion 
savoured to his mind so unmistakably of guilt that 'Gentlemen of the jury' 
rose almost automatically to his lips. Nor did Rainham's attempt to smooth 
matters assist him.
"I must have seen the girl at the studio," he said, "when Lightmark was 
painting her. It's certainly a striking likeness, and that's what 
astonished me, you know. Almost like seeing a ghost. Ah, that little fellow 
used to sit for Lightmark in Rome - little sunburnt ruffian. We picked him 
up on the Ghetto, almost starving, and he got quite an artistic connection 
before we left. He was positively growing too fat; prosperity spoiled him 
as a model."
"Really?" said Eve listlessly. "I don't think I want to look at any more 
drawings; one can have too much of a good thing, and it must be time for us 
to go. We're dining out, and Charles doesn't like dressing in a hurry. Yes, 
mamma is buttoning her gloves. Good-bye, Mr. Rainham. Shall we see you 
again before we go to Switzerland? Ah, well, let's hope so. Au revoir, 
Mr.Lightmark. If you really think it's worth while for me to give you a 
solitary sitting next week - "
"If you would be so good. You see, I should have some ideas to go on with. 
Don't I deserve some reward, too, for allowing Rainham to monopolise you 
all the afternoon? And if you don't give me a sitting now, I'm afraid you 
will forget all about it when you come back to town; whereas, if we make a 
beginning, you will have to see it through - you will be compromised."
"What a stupid expression!" thought Mrs. Sylvester as the carriage rolled 
along the Kensington highroad.
Charles was unusually silent during the drive. The subject which occupied 
his thoughts was not one which he would have dreamed of ventilating even 
with his mother, and Eve's presence seemed to render the faintest allusion 
to it impracticable.
He had no great affection or even regard for Philip Rainham, whom he 
contemplated with that undefined disdain which a younger man so often feels 
for one who is too old to be on his own level, and too young to inspire 
reverence. The half-pitying regard which Mrs. Sylvester bestowed on the man 
who had been to her husband as a very dear younger brother had never 
furthered Rainham's advancement in her son's favour; and the manner in 
which Eve had centred her childish affections in Philip, who had made her 
his especial favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that 
quarter. Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester's vague dislike had been so 
undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it as 
such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was, however 
unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for ground to support 
it; and yet from the first moment when the man's startled voice drew the 
questioning eyes upon his embarrassment, the judicial mind had been able to 
plume itself upon the penetration which had enabled it to detect something 
of doubtful odour about him from the first. 'Kitty!' That word might 
explain so much - Rainham's long sojourns away from his business, for 
example.
Charles looked at Eve and frowned. Decidedly, thought the young moralist, 
the old intimacy must be discouraged. Nor did the fact that Rainham had 
been the source of his first brief, as well as of subsequent others, though 
it was not forgotten, suggest the advisability of a compromise; he even 
began to rake a certain pride in the determination with which he was 
bringing himself to contemplate the sacrifice of so useful a friendship.
When they reached home there was barely time to dress for dinner, and 
Charles had no opportunity for a tete-a-tete discussion of the situation 
with his mother that evening. And as he breakfasted early next day and 
dined at the club, he had ample time in which to determine that, for the 
present, he would avoid anything in the shape of a family conference, and 
would content himself with keeping his eye on the mauvais sujet.


Chapter 8

As soon as Lightmark and Rainham were left alone in the twilight of the 
studio, the former flung himself into a chair with a sigh of relief, and 
devoted himself to rolling and lighting a cigarette. Rainham picked up his 
hat, consulted his watch, with a preoccupation of mind which prevented him 
from noticing what the time was, and, refusing the proffered tobacco pouch 
and the suggested whisky-and-soda, seemed about to go. Then he stopped, 
with his back turned towards his host and a pretence of examining a sketch.
"I'm sorry I made such an ass of myself about that study - that girl, you 
know," he said presently. "The fact is, I saw her the other day, and the 
coincidence was rather startling."
Lightmark blew a light cloud of smoke from his lips before he spoke.
"Oh, it doesn't matter in the least, old man. You didn't implicate me, as 
it happened, though I'm afraid you got yourself into rather hot water. A 
poor devil of a painter must have models, and it's recognised, but men of 
business - ! It's quite another thing. There's no possible connection 
between girls and dry-docks." Then he added lightly, "Where are you going 
to dine tonight? Let's go to one of our Leicester Square haunts, or shall 
we get into a hansom and drive to Richmond? I've sold old Quain a picture, 
and I feel extravagantly inclined. What do you say? Under which chef? 
Speak, or lets toss up."
Rainham appeared to consider for a moment: then he sat down again.
"About that girl," he said; "I suppose you do remember something about her? 
She must have been very pretty when you painted her, though she's nothing 
wonderful now, poor thing! I don't want to pump you, Dick, but she seems to 
have been pretty badly treated, and I want to see if I can't help her."
"Help her!" with a shrug. "For goodness' sake tell me: is it Don Quixote or 
Don Lothario that you are playing?"
"I should have thought you need hardly have asked," answered the other a 
little sadly. "I found the wretched creature waiting, with an equally 
wretched baby, both apparently not far from starvation, outside the dock 
the other night; and - well, I thought she might be waiting for you."
Lightmark threw the stump of his cigarette into a corner viciously, with a 
dangerous glance at the other.
"Why the devil should she have been waiting for me? Did she say she was 
waiting for me? How should a model know that I had been painting there? But 
I don't want to quarrel with you, and, after all you've done for me, I 
suppose you've a certain right to put yourself in loco parentis, and all 
that sort of thing. Tell me all you have found out about the girl - all she 
has told you, that is to say, and then I'll see what I can do."
This masterly suggestion seemed to Rainham both plausible and practical, 
and he proceeded to unfold the whole story of his first meeting with Kitty. 
When he reached the part of his narrative which brought out the girl's 
explanation that she was seeking to speak with a Mr. Crichton, Lightmark 
looked at him again covertly, with the same threatening light in his 
glance. Then, apparently reassured, he resigned himself again to listen, 
with a cigarette unlighted between his fingers.
"You say Oswyn heard the whole story?" he asked, when Rainham had finished. 
"Did the girl seem to know him? Or did he seem to have heard of - of this 
Crichton before?"
"No," said Rainham reflectively; "the girl didn't know Oswyn, though, on 
the other hand, he seemed certain that he had seen her face somewhere - 
probably in that study of yours, by the way; and he appeared to think that 
I ought to have heard of Crichton - Cyril Crichton. He told me that the man 
wrote clever, scurrilous articles on art and the drama for the Outcry. But 
I don't read English papers much. You see, our difficulty is that Cyril 
Crichton is obviously a nom de plume, and no one not even the people at the 
Outcry office know, or will say, who the man is; Kitty has tried. I suppose 
the editor knows all right, but he is discreet."
"Ah!" cried Lightmark. "Now I remember something about her. Have you got 
your hat? Let's get into a hansom, and go and dine - I'm positively 
starving. I'll stand you a dinner at the Cavour - standing you a dinner 
will be such a new sensation; and new sensations are the only things worth 
living for. I will tell you about Kitty in the cab. What a beneficent old 
beggar you are!"
As they drove rapidly eastward along the High Street of Old Kensington, 
where the pale orange of the lamplight was just beginning to tell in the 
dusk, Lightmark explained how, some two years ago or more, he had been 
talking to a stranger in a railway carriage, and lamenting the difficulty 
of finding really pretty girls who would act as models; how the stranger 
had told him that he knew of such an one - a dressmaker's apprentice, or 
something of that sort, who found the work and hours too hard; and how, 
finally, Kitty had called at his studio - the old one in Bloomsbury - and 
had sat to him, perhaps half a dozen times, before vanishing from his 
knowledge. This account had been freely interspersed with exclamations on 
the beauty of the evening light in the Park and the subtle charm of the 
hour after sunset, more exquisite in the clear atmosphere of Paris, but 
still sufficiently lovely even in London, and acknowledged by both of them 
to be one of the few compensations accorded to the dwellers in the much 
abused Metropolis.
"I'm sorry," said Rainham penitently; "I had a stupid sort of idea that you 
were mixed up in the business somehow, thought so even before I saw the 
sketch, because I couldn't understand whom else she could have been looking 
for at the dock. It's very mysterious!"
"I shouldn't bother about the girl if I were you," replied the other light-
heartedly. "Even if I had been mixed up with her, as you gracefully express 
it, you wouldn't have anything to do with it. I believe you think I've been 
playing the devil with her now, you old moralist! Hear me swear, by yon 
pale - Dash it! there isn't a moon - well, by the cresset on the top of the 
Empire, that the young person in question has been my model for a brief 
space, and nothing more. Only my model, in the strictest sense of the word. 
No, I'll pay the cab, for once in a way."
When they had dined, sitting at their favourite table, which, from its 
position at the end, commanded a view of the bright exotic room, with its 
cosmopolitan contents, their wants cared for by the headwaiter, who adored 
Lightmark for his knowledge of his mother-tongue, recognising and being 
recognised by the forgotten of their acquaintance who were also dining 
there. Lightmark proposed an adjournment to the little theatre in Dean 
Street hard by, where 'Niniche' was being played for the last time by a 
clever company from across the Channel.
"We must go to the theatre," he said, "unless you prefer a hall; I confess 
I'm sick of them. I haven't satisfied my ideas of extravagance nearly yet. 
We will go and sit in the stalls at the Royalty and see Jane May and the 
others; it will remind us of old days."
"But, my dear fellow," expostulated the other, "it's so late, and we're in 
morning dress. Let's go tomorrow night instead."
"Ah no! tomorrow I shan't be in the right mood. Never put off till 
tomorrow, you know. Our not being in evening dress won't matter a bit, 
they'll only think we're critics; and 'Niniche' doesn't begin till nine."
On their speedy arrival at the modest portals of the little theatre, 
Lightmark instructed his companion, with an air of mystery, to wait, and 
presently emerged, smiling, from a triumphant encounter with the gentleman 
presiding at the box-office.
"They had no stalls left," he whispered; "but they're going to put us in 
two chairs at the side."
The house, with the exception of the more popular places, was crowded: and 
the boisterous absurdity of the farce was at its height. Rainham at first 
felt quite disconcerted by the proximity of the ludicrous figure in bathing 
dress who was leaning over the footlights, and declaiming his woes with a 
directness of appeal to the audience which alone would have marked the 
nationality of the robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the 
extremely hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine 
(Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of the 
rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first was 
disconcerted, and then he began to feel bored. He fell into a semi-comatose 
state of contemplation, from which he was only aroused by the cadence on 
his ear of one of the most charming voices he had ever heard. So he 
characterised it, to Lightmark's amusement, when they were discussing their 
cigarettes and the jeune premiere in the interval between the acts.
"Oh for an epithet to describe her!" said Lightmark, catching his friend's 
enthusiasm. "She isn't exactly pretty - yes, she is pretty, but she isn't 
beautiful! She's got any amount of what dramatic critics call chic. Don't 
shudder - I hate the word quite as much as you do, but it was inevitable. 
The only thing I feel sure about is that she's espiegle, and altogether 
delightful. And how funny that man is, or would be, if the authors had only 
given him a better chance! The fun of the piece is like those trousers - it 
only comes down to his knees."
"What I admire most is her voice," said the other inconsequently. "How is 
it that French actresses have such beautiful voices? Freedom from fogs 
can't be the only cause. And it's got all that delicious plaintiveness - "
"Yes," interposed Lightmark, "it's the voice of a true Parisian femme de 
siecle, fin de siecle. There's the bell; let's go and hear some more of 
it."
After the second act Lightmark, in whom the influence of the evening was 
beginning to manifest itself in the shape of a geniality which was absent 
in a great degree from his more serious hours, and which had undoubtedly 
won him more friends than the other slightly pugnacious phase of his 
temperament, decided that Niniche was really very like Miss Sylvester, only 
less beautiful, and asserted that he was confident that she was younger 
than the newspapers made out.
Later, before the two friends parted on the steps of the modest club which 
included both in its list of town members, Lightmark assumed ah air of 
mystery, sighed once or twice, and looked at his friend with an expression 
in which forgiveness, reproach, and the lateness of the hour were strangely 
commingled.
"Old boy," he said, bending his eyebrows with an effort towards gravity, 
"I'm really rather cut up about that business - you thinking that I was 
playing the gay deceiver, and all that sort of thing, you know. It was 
unworthy of you, Philip - it was, really. Dash it! I've been in love 
forever so long. All the summer, seriously; I'm going to get married - 
settle down, range myself. Cut all you rips of bachelorsÖ But perhaps she 
won't see it. Oh, Lord!Ö Damn it all! Why don't you congratulate me, eh?"
Rainham was growing more and more serious, and it was with a real heartache 
and a curious apprehension of a moral blow that he answered, as gaily as he 
could:
"You're going a little too fast, Dick. If you haven't asked the girl, it's 
rather too early for congratulations, however irresistible your attractions 
may be. Who - who is it, Dick?"
"Oh, come, you know well enough. Eve - I wonder if she'll let me call her 
Eve? Eve! Isn't it a pretty name?"
"I wish you hadn't told me this, Dick," said the other, with more of the 
familiar weariness in his voice. "Are you sure you mean it? I don't believe 
you've thought it out. Why, what do you suppose Mrs. Sylvester will say, 
and Charles Sylvester?"
"You think they won't have anything to do with a poor devil of an artist, I 
suppose? Right you are, sir; but when the poor devil has a rich and gouty 
uncle, who is disposed to be friendlyÖ See? I think that alters the 
complexion of the case. You know, the Sylvesters are awfully well 
connected, and so on, but they haven't got much money. Mrs. Sylvester has a 
life annuity, and Charles whom I always want to call 'Chawles,' because 
he's so pompous - has got his professional income. And Eve has got a 
little, enough to dress her, I should think. 'Payable quarterly on her 
attaining the age of twenty-one years, or marrying under that age, 
whichever shall first happen.' I've looked it all up at Somerset House. 
Last will and testament of Sylvester Charles Sylvester, Esq. I know they're 
rather ambitious, and wouldn't look at me if it wasn't for the Colonel. But 
the Colonel is a solid fact, and I've no doubt they think he's richer than 
he is. And I am making money, though you mightn't think it."
"I don't believe Mrs. Sylvester has thought about it at all," said Rainham 
doubtfully. "Eve is so young, and young artists are newer looked on as 
marrying men. Take my advice and think about it."
"You call her Eve, do you? Ah, well, I won't be jealous of you, old boy. 
You shall come to the wedding and be best man; or no, the Colonel ill be 
best man, I suppose? I can imagine him returning thanks for the bridesmaids 
in the most dazzling white waistcoat that was ever starched. Good-night; 
see you again soon."
"I don't know how it is," thought Rainham, as he walked up Old Compton 
Street on his way to the attic near the British Museum which he rented when 
he was in England for use on occasions of this kind. "It's very stupid of 
me, but I can't bear the idea of Eve marrying. A species of jealousy, I 
suppose; not ordinary jealousy, of course. And yet why not? I have never 
thought of her as anything but a childÖ why shouldn't Lightmark marry her? 
He's young, and good-looking, and sure to get on; and I'm a selfish old 
wreck. Yes, he shall marry her, and I will buy his pictures." Still, he 
shook his head even as he formulated this generous solution of the 
question, and could not induce himself to regard the position with 
equanimity, though he sat up till broad daylight wrestling with it. "I 
wonder if I am in love," he said, with a bitter laugh, as he shook the 
ashes out of his last pipe.


Chapter 9

The upper end of the Park is never so fashionably frequented as its 
southern regions, and Rainham, whose want of purpose had led him past gay 
carpet-beds and under branching trees nearly to the Marble Arch, was hardly 
surprised to recognise among the heterogeneous array of promenaders, 
tramps, and nursemaids, whom the heat of the slanting sun had prompted to 
occupy the benches dotted at intervals along the Row, a face whose weary 
pallor caused him a pang of self reproach, Kitty!
For the last few days, since his encounter with her portrait at Lightmark's 
studio, he had scarcely given her troubles a thought. When the girl saw 
him, after a startled look and movement, she seemed to shrink still further 
into the folds of her rusty black cloak, and, to avoid meeting Rainham's 
eyes, bent her head over the child who was seated at her side. He found 
something irresistibly charming and pathetically generous in the girl's 
spontaneous denial of any claim to his notice, although, except that he had 
promised to let her know anything he might learn of the whereabouts of the 
father of her child, he would have found it hard to establish in the mind 
of an outside critic that any such claim in fact existed.
"Well, my poor child," he said softly, as he dropped into one of the vacant 
seats on the same bench, "how goes it with you and the little one?"
"Oh, sir, you shouldn't speak to me - not here. Anyone might see you, Pray 
go. I know I shall get you into trouble, and you so kind!"
These words were spoken in a rapid, frightened whisper, and with an 
apprehensive glance at the intermittent stream of carriages passing within 
a few yards of them. Rainham shrugged his shoulders pitifully, but found it 
rather difficult to say anything. Certainly, his reputation was running a 
risk, and he felt that his indifference was somewhat exceptional.
"I'm sorry to say I've got no news for you," he said presently, after a 
silent pause, during which he had observed that the wide-eyed child was 
really far prettier than many who (as he had been assured by the complacent 
matrons who exhibited them) were 'little cherubs,' and that it was as 
scrupulously cared for as the little cherubs, even in their exhibition 
array, "I haven't been able to discover anything; but you mustn't despair - 
we shall find him sooner or later."
The girl glanced at him irresolutely, and then dropped her eyes again, 
leaning over the child.
"It's no good, sir," she said. "I'm only sorry to have given you so much 
trouble already. He won't come back - he's tired of me. He could find me if 
he wanted to, and watching and hunting for him like this would only set him 
more and more against me."
Rainham, as he listened to her, rather puzzled by her sudden change of 
attitude since their last interview, was forced to admit mentally that her 
reasoning, if it lacked spontaneity, was, at all events, indisputably 
sound; and while he found himself doubting whether the victim was not 
better versed in worldliness than he had at first suspected, he still felt 
a curious reluctance which, though he was half ashamed of his delicacy, 
prevented him from suggesting that, sentimental reasons apart, the betrayer 
still ought to be discovered, if only in order to force him to provide for 
the maintenance of his child. It hardly, perhaps, occurred to him that he, 
after all, would be the person who would suffer most, and he certainly did 
not for an instant credit the girl with any ulterior designs upon his 
purse.
"Oh, I don't know," he said feebly. "Perhaps he does not know where you 
are, And I dare say, if he saw the child - "
"The child?" echoed the woman bitterly. "That's just the worst of it!"
Rainham sighed, forced again to acknowledge his lower standing in the 
wisdom of the world. He would have given a great deal to be able to get up 
and go.
"Then you don't want me to employ a detective, or to advertise, or - or to 
make an appeal to the editor of the Outcry?"
Mrs. Crichton seemed to welcome the opportunity afforded by this direct 
questioning.
"No," she said, "I think it would be better not. I don't want to seem 
ungrateful, sir - and I'm sure I thank you very, very much for all you have 
done for me - but I think you had better take no more trouble about it. If 
I can get work I shall do all right."
In spite of the girl's evident attempt to pull herself together, her voice 
was less brave than her words, and they conveyed but little assurance to 
the listener. He shrugged his shoulders somewhat impatiently: the interview 
was beginning to tell upon his nerves.
"Of course, it's for you to decide, and I suppose you have thought it well 
out, and have good reason for this alteration of purpose. But when you talk 
about work - ?"
He finished his sentence with a note of inquiry and a half-apologetic 
glance at her slight form and frail white fingers.
"I haven't always been a model," she explained with some dignity. "Would to 
God I never had! I can sew better than most, and I can work a type-machine. 
That's what I used to do before he came. But type-writing work isn't so 
easy to get as it was, and I am out of practice."
It occurred to him for a moment to ask the girl whether she could remember 
sitting for Mr. Lightmark, but he felt that Dick might resent the 
introduction of his name; and, remembering that she had told him that, for 
a time, before her health gave way, her artist patrons had been numerous, 
he dismissed the idea as not likely to be profitable.
As they spoke, she with her mournful eyes turned on Rainham's sympathetic 
face, he absently following the movements of the child as it laboriously 
raised a small edifice of gravel-stones on the seat between them, neither 
of them noticed the severely correct figure in the frock-coat and 
immaculate hat who passed close behind, with observant eyeglass fixed upon 
the little group, and with an air which, after the first flush of open-
mouthed surprise, was eloquently expressive of regretful indignation and 
the highest motives.
Charles Sylvester continued his walk for a distance of about fifty paces, 
and then seated himself in a position to command a view of the persons in 
whom he was interested.
"I don't like watching Rainham like this," he said to himself; "but it's a 
duty which I owe to society."
That the man was Rainham was as obvious as that the woman he was talking to 
was of a far lower rank in life than his own. And then there was the child!
"By Jove!" said Sylvester sententiously, "it's worse than I thought. People 
really ought to be warned. I suppose it's that girl he was talking about at 
the studio the other day; and he tried to shift her on to Lightmark. What a 
hypocrite the man must be!"
He was not, however, for long called upon to maintain, in the interests of 
society, his position of espionage; for Rainham, warned of the lapse of 
time by the clock which adorns the Park lodge, presently became aware that, 
if he was to fulfil his intention of calling on Mrs. Sylvester, he had no 
time to spare; and when he rose from his seat Charles Sylvester thought it 
advisable to resume the walk which his zeal had induced him to interrupt.


Chapter 10

After all, he need not have hurried, Mrs. Sylvester was out, he was told by 
the butler, who proceeded to suggest, with the freedom of an old friend, 
that he should make his way upstairs and find Miss Eve.
"Yes, I think I will, Phelps," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "if 
she is disengaged."
"Miss Eve is in the music-room playing, I think, sir. Will you go up?"
They found the room empty, however, though an open violin-case on the table 
and a music-stand, on which leaflets of Schubert fluttered fitfully in the 
light breeze that entered through the open window, testified to its recent 
occupation.
While the butler left Rainham, with apologies, to make further search, the 
latter stood, hat in hand, making a survey of the little wainscoted room, 
which he remembered as the schoolroom. Indeed, though the name, in 
deference doubtless to Eve's mature age, had been altered, it still 
retained much of its former aspect. From the little feminine trifles lying 
about, scraps of unfinished crewel-work and embroidery, and the fresh 
flowers in the vases, he gathered that it was still an apartment which Eve 
frequented. He recognised her cage of lovebirds hanging in the window; the 
cottage piano with its frontal of faded silk, on which he could remember 
her first painful struggles with Czerny and scales; the pictures on the 
walls, many of them coloured reproductions from the Christmas numbers of 
the illustrated papers; the ink-stained tablecloth on the round table in 
the centre. He examined the photographs on the mantelpiece with a smile - 
Charles in his wig and gown, and Mrs. Sylvester with her pretty, faded 
face, gazed at each other, with a curious likeness in their disparity, from 
a double frame in the centre; the spectacled profile of the eminently 
respectable woman who had superintended Miss Eve's studies held another 
place of honour; and, opposite, Rainham recognised a faded photograph of 
himself, taken six years before in Rome. He turned from these to the 
bookshelves, which seemed to be filled with relegations from the rest of 
the house - children's story-books in tarnished bright covers and 
dilapidated schoolbooks. He took down one of these latter and examined it 
absently, with a half-sigh. He had it still in his hand when the young girl 
fluttered in, looking very cool and fresh in her plain white dress, with a 
broad sash of apple-green ribbon.
"I thought you were never coming to see us again, Philip," she said 
reproachfully, as she held out her little hand to him. "What possessed them 
to bring you here? It's awfully untidy."
"Phelps had an idea you were making music," he explained; "and, for the 
untidiness, I suppose he remembered that I was used to it of old."
"Yes, it's just the same. It is an untidiness of years, and it is hopeless 
to cope with it. What have you got there?"
He turned the book round to acquaint himself.
"Ollendorf's 'Elementary German Grammar'," he said with a smile; "it's an 
interesting work."
She made a little moue expressive of disapproval.
"Ah, how nice it is to have done with all that, Philip! You can't believe 
how glad I am to be 'finished'; yes, I am finished now, I don't even have 
masters, and Miss Murison has gone away to Brighton and opened a school for 
young gentlemen. Poor little wretches! how sorry I am for them! Do you 
remember Miss Murison, Philip?"
She had sunk down into an arm-chair, and Rainham stood, his stooping 
shoulders propped against the mantelpiece, smiling down at her.
"Yes, I remember Miss Murison; and so you are glad her reign has come to an 
end, Eve? Well, I suppose it is natural."
She nodded her pretty head.
"Just a little, Philip. But how tired you look! Will you have some tea? I 
suppose you have just come from Blackpool?"
His face darkened suddenly, and the smile for a moment died away.
"No," he said shortly, "I have been in the Park."
"Well," she remarked after a moment, "you must have some tea, anyhow. Of 
course you will wait and see mamma; she has gone to the Dollonds' 'at 
home,' you know. I am all alone. If you like, we will have it in here, as 
we did in the old days - a regular schoolroom tea."
"It will be charming," said Rainham, seating himself; "it will only want 
the Murison to complete the illusion."
"Oh, it will do just as well without her," said Eve, laughing; "ring the 
bell, please."
Rainham sat back watching her with far-away eyes, as she moved lightly 
about, giving her orders with a childish imperiousness, and setting out the 
little tea-table between them.
"It is delightful," he said again, when they were once more alone and he 
had accepted a well-creamed cup and a wafer-like tartine; "and I feel as if 
I had turned back several years. But how is it, by-the-bye, that you have 
not gone to the Dollonds'?"
She laughed up at him merrily.
"Because I have had much more important things to do. I have been with my 
dressmaker. I am going to a dance tonight, and I have had a great deal of 
bother over my new frock. But it is all right now, and I shall wear it 
tonight; and it is perfectly sweet. Oh, you have never seen me at a party 
yet, Philip!"
"Never? My dear child, I have danced with you at scores."
"Oh yes, at children's parties; but never since I have grown up - 'come 
out,' I mean. Oh, Philip, is there anything in life so delightful as one's 
first ball? I wish you would come out with us sometimes. I should like to 
dance with you again now."
"Ah," he said, "my dancing days are over. I am a wallflower, Eve, now; and 
my only use at balls is to fetch and carry for the chaperons."
"Philip!" she cried reproachfully, "what a dreadful thing to say! Besides, 
you used to dance so splendidly."
"Did I?" he asked; "I expect you would be less lenient now. Yes, I will 
have another cup, please."
She filled it, and he took it from her in silence, wondering how he could 
least obtrusively gain the knowledge of her mind he sought. He had said to 
himself that if he could find her alone, it would be so easy; just a word, 
an accent, would tell him how far she really cared. But now that she was 
actually with him, it had become strangely difficult. Very sadly he 
reflected that she had grown out of his knowledge; away from her, she 
rested in his memory as a child whom he could help. The actual presence of 
this young girl with the deep eyes, in the first flush of her womanhood, 
corrected him; an intolerable weight sealed his tongue, forbidding him to 
utter Lightmark's name, greatly as he desired. He racked himself for 
delicate circumlocutions, and it was only at last, by a gigantic effort, 
when he realised that the afternoon waned, while he wasted a unique 
occasion in humorous commonplace, that he broke almost brutally into Eve's 
disquisitions on her various festivities to ask, blushing like a girl, if 
Lightmark's picture progressed.
"I have had only a few sittings," she admitted, "and I expect they will be 
the last here. Perhaps they will be continued abroad. You know, Mr. 
Lightmark is going to meet us in Switzerland, perhaps."
"You will like that?" suggested Rainham gravely.
She looked into her cup, beating a tattoo on the carpet with her little 
foot nervously.
"Yes," she said, after a minute, "I think so."
There was nothing in her words, her tone, to colour this bare statement of 
a simple fact. Only a second later, as if in a sudden need of confidence, a 
resumption of her old childish habit towards him, she raised her eyes to 
his, and in their clear, gray depths, before they drooped again beneath the 
long lashes, he read her secret. No words could have told him more plainly 
that she loved Lightmark - that Dick had merely to speak. Their silence 
only lasted a moment; but it seemed to Rainham, who had not shifted his 
position or moved a muscle, that it stretched over an interminable space of 
time. It was curiously intangible, and yet even then he realised that it 
would remain with its least accessories in his mind one of those trivial, 
indelible photographs which last a lifetime. The smell of mignonette that 
spread in from the window-box through the turquoise-blue Venetian blinds; 
the chattering of the lovebirds; the strains of a waltz of Waldteufel's 
floating up from a German band in the street below - they ran into a single 
sensation that was like the stab of cold steel. He sat staring blankly at 
the tattered bookshelves, playing mechanically with his teaspoon; and 
presently he became aware that the young girl was talking, was telling him 
the route they should take next week, and the name of the hotel they were 
going to at Basel.
"Yes," he hazarded, and "Yes," and "Yes," his smiling lips belying the 
lassitude of his eyes. Actually, he looked out and beyond her, at another 
Eve, to whom he now paid his adieux. It was the dainty little figure of her 
childish self which he saw, with its bright long hair, and its confiding 
eyes, and its caressing little ways, in the deepening shadows between the 
bookshelves - and for the last time. It vanished like a shadow, smiling 
mockingly, and he knew it would never return. In its place abode henceforth 
the image of this stately maiden, comely and desirable, with the profound 
eyes which lighted up - for Dick. An unaccountable sense of failure stole 
over Rainham - unaccountable because he could lay his finger upon no 
tangible cause of his discomfiture.


Chapter 11

The little town was brilliant with September sunshine; the blue smoke 
spired almost unbroken into the bluer vault above, and the cream-coloured 
facades of the houses, with their faded blue shutters and verandas, the gay 
striped awnings of the little fleet of rowing boats, the gray of the stone 
parapet, and the dull green of the mountainous opposite shore, were 
mirrored steeply in the bight of narrowing sunlit lake. The wide dusty 
esplanade was almost empty, except at the corners, where voluble market-
women gossiped over their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, 
little mountain-born strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and 
stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as a new 
toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the Rigi, shed a 
small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then bustled back, shearing 
the silken flood and strangely distorting its reflections.
"The worst of Lucerne," said Mrs. Sylvester - "the worst of Lucerne is that 
one can't escape from Mount Pilatus and the Lion. The inhabitants all think 
that Pilatus regulates the weather, and they would certainly give their 
Lion the preference over the Venus of Milo."
They were all sitting on the terrace in front of the Schweitzerhof; Lady 
Garnett and Mary, Mrs. Sylvester and Eve. Lady Garnett and her companion 
were but newly arrived, and, as birds of passage, preferred the hotel to a 
pension. The Sylvesters had been staying in the quaint, rambling town for 
nearly a fortnight. It was their usual summer resort, and although the 
spring of each year found them deciding to go elsewhere for a change, in 
the end they nearly always proved faithful to the familiar lake. Their 
pension - they regarded it almost as a country house - was such an 
inducement! The Pension Bungay was maintained by an old servant of the 
family, who, when he began to find the duties of butler too exacting for 
his declining years, gave a warning, which applied also to one of his 
fellow-servants, the cook, to wit, a lady of Continental origin, who had 
consented to become Madame Bungay; and the pair, having souls above public-
houses, and relying on their not inconsiderable connection among the 
servants of Mayfair, had boldly and successfully launched into an 
independent career as sole proprietors and managers of the Pension Bungay, 
Lucerne.
"Yes," said Lady Garnett sympathetically; "I suppose Pilatus is rather 
monotonous, It's rather too near, I think. It ought to be far away, and 
covered with snow, more like the Jungfrau, which we have been worshipping 
at Interlaken - where, by the way, there are positively more Americans than 
natives."
"Oh," Mrs. Sylvester chimed in, "isn't it dreadful the way they overrun 
Europe Nowadays! There are two American families staying at our pension, 
and you see them everywhere."
"I think I rather like them. They amuse me, you know, and somehow, though 
it may be disloyal for me, as a naturalised Englishwoman, to say so, as a 
rule they comport themselves much better than the ordinary British tourist. 
Of course, the country is not so accessible for the Americans; it's out of 
the reach of their cheap excursionists. But how opportune that curious 
tower is, and the bridge! of course, it's correct to admire them?"
Mary Masters and Eve, who had been quietly discussing chiffons, got up from 
their chairs with a preconcerted air.
"We are so tired of sitting still," said the former, balancing herself with 
an air of indecision, and giving Mrs. Sylvester time to note the admirable 
taste of her simple maize-coloured travelling dress, which did not suffer 
from contrast with the younger girl's brighter and more elaborately 
charming toilette. "Miss Sylvester wants to show me the uncatchable trout 
in the lake, and I want to go and see if the salon is empty, so that I can 
try the piano; and we can't decide which to do. I suppose, Mrs. Sylvester, 
that the hotel is more within the bounds of propriety?"
"Oh, well," said Eve, laughing, "I don't care; anyhow, let's go and find 
the piano. Only, there is sure to be someone there already."
"By the way," said Lady Garnett, when the girls had vanished into the 
building, "of course you know that Philip Rainham's friend - the young man 
who paints and has a moustache, I mean - is here, or will be very shortly? 
He was staying at our hotel at Berne."
"Mr. Lightmark, I suppose?" answered the other, without showing her 
surprise except in her eyes, "We told him that we were coming to Lucerne, 
and it was more or less arranged."
"Ah, yes," interposed Lady Garnett; "am I indiscreet in suggesting an 
exceptional attraction?"
Mrs. Sylvester merely looked mysterious, and Lady Garnett was encouraged to 
continue:
"Your daughter is very beautiful. This Mr. Lightmark has been painting her 
portrait, n'est ce pas? I should think it ought to be a success. Am I to 
congratulate him?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Sylvester hurriedly, "dear Lady Garnett, it hasn't gone so 
far as that."
"The portrait?" murmured the other innocently. "Ah, I'm afraid you 
misunderstood me."
Mrs. Sylvester cast a meaning glance in the direction of Eve, who, 
sauntering along the terrace with Mary, was now behind their seat, and the 
conversation, which promised to become interesting, dropped, while Mary 
explained that they had found the music-stool occupied by a lady, who was 
superfluously protesting her inability to sing 'the old songs' - the person 
who always did monopolise hotel pianos, as Mary laughingly asserted.
Two days later Lightmark presented himself at the Pension Bungay. He had 
come to Lucerne with the fixed purpose of definitely proposing marriage to 
Eve. He was far too worldly-wise to fail to perceive that, so far at least, 
Mrs. Sylvester had certainly taken no trouble to discourage his 
pretensions. His attentions, he argued, had been by no means obscure; his 
studio had been singularly honoured by the presence of Miss Sylvester and 
her mother, for the purposes of the portrait; he had even been granted a 
sitting at the house in Park Street, when a less rigid supervision had been 
exercised, and when, in the absence of the mother, he had been able to 
assure himself that the girl was far from despising his adoration. Before 
leaving town he had dined with his uncle, the Colonel, at his club, and the 
veteran had spontaneously and strenuously urged the step, and even thrown 
out promising hints as to settlements. He broke in upon the little circle 
at the hour of afternoon tea, and Eve found his gray travelling suit and 
the bronze of his complexion exceedingly becoming. He announced that he had 
come to stay for a week or two; he was going to make some sketches, and he 
couldn't tear himself away from that delightful bridge and his lodgings!
"My dear fellow," he said to Charles Sylvester, with an air of familiarity 
which gave one an insight as to the advance the artist had made in his 
relations with the family, "you must come and see my diggings. The most 
delightful old hostelry in Europe. Built straight up out of the lake, like 
the Castle of Chillon. It's called the Gasthof zum Pfistern. I could fish 
out of my bedroom window. I assure you, it's charming. You must come and 
dine with me there. I hope you ladies will so far honour me?"
This project, however, fell through, and by way of compensation Lightmark 
and Charles enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the party, including Lady 
Garnett and Miss Masters, at Borghoni's; after which the younger people 
chartered a boat, and floated idly about the star-reflecting lake, while 
the dowagers maintained a discreet surveillance from their seat on the 
esplanade.
Of this last incident it may be said that Lightmark and Eve found it 
altogether delightful, the latter especially being struck by the romance of 
the situation; while Charles was inclined to be ponderously sentimental, 
and Miss Masters afterwards confessed to having felt bored.
In the course of the next day Lightmark had the privilege of a confidential 
interview with the mother of his adored. Mrs. Sylvester had fully armed 
herself for the occasion, and presented an edifying example of matronly 
affection and prudence.
"Of course, I was not altogether unprepared for this, Mr. Lightmark. In 
fact, I may as well own that I have talked it over with my son, and we 
agreed that the whole question resolved itself into - ah - into 
settlements. You must not think me mercenary." This was said with a 
dignified calm, which made the idea preposterous. "If you can" - here she 
seemed to refer to some mental note-book - "ah - satisfy Charles on that 
point, I am sure that it will give me great pleasure to regard you as a 
prospective son-in-law. Of course, you know, I can't answer for Eve, or 
Charles."
"Ah, my dear lady," said the other, gracefully overwhelmed, "if I may count 
on your good offices I am very fortunate."
That evening, as the two men sat discussing their cigars and coffee, 
Lightmark listened with wonderful patience to a disquisition on the subject 
of - he couldn't afterwards remember whether it was Strikes or the Sugar 
Bounty. He was rather afraid of the necessary interview with Charles. It 
would require some tact, and he was prepared to find him unpleasantly 
exacting as arbiter of his pecuniary status.
"You ought to be in the House, by Jove! that's your line, Sylvester, with a 
clever wife, you know, to do the canvassing for you" - "and write your 
speeches," he mentally added.
The other owned that he had thought of it.
"But the wife," he added, with an attempt at levity, "that's the 
difficulty!"
And the connection of a subsequent remark with this topic, though some 
conversation intervened, did not escape his astute companion, and he was 
careful to sing Miss Masters' praises with an absence of allusiveness which 
showed the actor. Then he threw away the stump of his cigar and mentally 
braced himself.
"You have seen a good deal of me lately," he said. "I want to ask you if 
you have any objection to me as a possible brother-in-law; in fact, I want 
to marry your sister."
"Yes?" said the other encouragingly.
"I have, as you may know, spoken to Mrs. Sylvester about it, and I believe 
she will - that is to say, I think she has no personal objection to me."
"Oh, of course, my dear fellow, my mother and I are flattered, quite 
flattered; but you will understand our anxiety that Eve should run no risk 
of sacrificing any of the advantages she has enjoyed hitherto. May I ask, 
er - "
"What is my income from all sources?" suggested Lightmark rather 
flippantly.
"Well, I have to confess that my profession, in which I am said to be 
rising, brings me in about four hundred and fifty a year, in addition to 
which I have a three hundred; total, seven hundred and fifty." Then, seeing 
that Charles looked grave, he played his trump card: "And I ought to add 
that my uncle, the Colonel, you know, has been good enough to talk about 
making me an allowance, on my marrying with his approval. In fact he is, I 
believe, prepared to make a settlement on my marriage with your sister."
Charles Sylvester pronounced himself provisionally satisfied, and it was 
arranged that he should communicate with Colonel Lightmark, and that 
meanwhile the engagement should not be made public.
Eve was standing on the little balcony appertaining to the sitting-room 
which had been dedicated to the ladies as a special mark of favour by the 
proprietor of the pension, and Lightmark hastened to join her there; and 
while Charles and his mother played a long game of chess, the two looked 
out at the line of moonlit Alps, and were sentimentally and absurdly happy.
"Mrs. Sylvester," said Lightmark, when that lady thought it advisable to 
warn her daughter that there was a cold wind blowing off the lake, "we have 
arranged that a certain portrait shall figure in the Academy catalogue next 
spring as 'Portrait of the Artist's Wife'."
After which Mrs. Sylvester began to call him Richard, and Charles became 
oppressively genial; a development which led the embarrassed recipient of 
these honours to console himself by reflecting that, after all, he was not 
going to marry the entire family.
"Ma cherie," said Lady Garnett, as the Paris train steamed out of Lucerne 
on the afternoon of the next day but one, "do you know that I feel a 
sensation of positive relief at getting away from those people? Eve is very 
gentille, but lovers are so uninteresting, when they are properly engaged: 
and the excellent Charles! My child, I am afraid you have been very cruel."
"Cruel, aunt?" said Mary, with a demure look of astonishment. "I like Eve 
very much, and I suppose Mr. Lightmark must be nice, because he's such a 
friend of Philip's. But I don't quite like the way he talks about Philip, 
andÖ he's very clever."
"Yes," said the old lady drowsily; "he's cleverer than Philip."
"He may be cleverer, but - " Mary began with some warmth, and paused.
Her companion opened her eyes widely, and darted a keen glance at the girl. 
Then, settling herself into her corner:
"My dear child, to whom do you say it?"
It was eminently characteristic of Lady Garnett that, even when she was 
sleepy, she understood what people were going to say long before the words 
were spoken, and, especially with her familiars, she had a habit of taking 
her anticipations as realised.
Mary found something embarrassing in the humour of the old lady's 
expression, and devoted herself to gazing out of the window at the mountain-
bound landscape, in which houses, trees, and cattle all seemed to be in 
miniature, until the sound of regular breathing assured her that the 
inquisitive eyes were closed.


Chapter 12

During the long, hot August, which variously dispersed the rest of their 
acquaintances, the intimacy of that ill-assorted couple, the bird of 
passage Rainham, and Oswyn the artist, was able to ripen. They met 
occasionally at Brodonowski's, of which dingy restaurant they had now 
almost a monopoly; for its artistic session had been prorogued, and the 
'boys' were scattered, departing one by one, as their purses and 
inclinations prompted, to resume acquaintance with their favourite 'bits' 
in Cornwall, or among the orchards and moors of Brittany; to study 
mountains in sad Merioneth, or to paint ocean rollers and Irish peasants in 
ultimate Galway. On the occasion of their second meeting, Rainham having (a 
trifle diffidently, for the painter was not a questionable man) evinced a 
curiosity as to his summer movements, Oswyn had scornfully repudiated such 
a notion.
"Thank God!" he cried, "I have outworn that mania of searching for 
prettiness. London is big enough for me. My work is here, and the studies I 
want are here, and here I stay till the end of all things. I hate the tame 
country faces, the aggressive stillness and the silent noise, the sentiment 
and the sheep of it. Give me the streets and the yellow gas, the roar of 
the City, smoke, haggard faces, flaming omnibuses, parched London, and the 
river rolling oilily by the embankment like Styx at night when the lamps 
shine."
He drew in a breath thirstily, as though the picture were growing on canvas 
before him.
"Well, if you want river subjects you must come and find them at 
Blackpool," said Rainham; and Oswyn had replied abruptly that he would.
And he kept his word, not once but many times, dropping down on Rainham 
suddenly, unexplainedly, after his fashion, as it were from the clouds, in 
the late afternoon, when the clerks had left. He would chat there for an 
hour or two in his spasmodic, half-sullen way, in which, however, an 
increasing cordiality mingled, making, before he retired once more into 
space, some colour notes of the yard or the river, or at times a rough 
sketch, which was never without its terse originality.
Rainham began to look forward to these visits with a recurring pleasure. 
Oswyn's beautiful genius and Oswyn's savage humours fascinated him, and no 
less his pleasing personal ambiguity. He seemed to be a person without 
antecedents, as he was certainly without present ties. Except that he 
painted, and so must have a place to paint in, he might have lodged 
precariously in a doss-house, or on door-steps, or under the Adelphi arches 
with those outcasts of civilisation to whom, in personal appearance, one 
might not deny he bore a certain resemblance. To no one did he reveal his 
abiding-place, and it was the merest tradition of little authority that a 
man from Brodonowski's had once been taken to his studio. By no means a 
perspicuous man, and to be approached perhaps charily; yet Rainham, as his 
acquaintance progressed, found himself from time to time brought up with a 
certain surprise, as he discovered, under all his savage cynicism, his 
overweening devotion to a depressing theory, a very real vein of 
refinement, of delicate mundane sensibility, revealed perhaps in a chance 
phrase or diffidence, or more often in some curiously fine touch to canvas 
of his rare, audacious brush. The incongruities of the man, his malice, his 
coarseness, his reckless generosity, gave Rainham much food for thought. 
And, indeed, that parched empty August seemed full of problematical import 
than the enigmatic mind of a new friend, to be content at last to be tossed 
to and fro on the winds of vain conjecture.
Lightmark and the Sylvesters occupied him much; but beyond a brief note 
from Mrs. Sylvester in Lucerne, which told him nothing that he would know, 
there came to him no news from Switzerland. In the matter of the girl whom 
he had befriended - recklessly he told himself at times - difficulties 
multiplied. A sort of dumb devil seemed to have entered into her, and, with 
the best will in the world, it was a merely pecuniary assistance which he 
could give her, half angry with himself the while that his indolent good 
nature (it appeared to him little else) forbad him to cast back at her what 
seemed a curious ingratitude almost passing the proverbial feminine 
perversity, and let her go her own way as she would have it. On two 
occasions, since that chance meeting in the Park, he had called at the 
lodging in which he had helped her to install herself; and from the last he 
had come away with a distinct sense of failure. Something had come between 
them, an alien influence was in the air, and the mystery which surrounded 
the girl, he saw with disappointment, she would not of her own accord 
assist to dissipate. And yet there was nothing offensive in her attitude, 
only it had changed, lacked frankness.
One afternoon, finding that he could leave the dock early, he made another 
effort. He stopped before one in a dingy row of small houses, uniformly 
depressing, in a street that ran into the Commercial Road, and rang the 
bell, which tinkled aggressively. A slatternly woman, with a bandage round 
her head and an air of drunken servility, responded to his inquiry for 
'Mrs. Crichton' by ushering him into a small back parlour, in which a pale 
girl in black sat with her head bent over a typewriter. She rose, as he 
came in, a little nervously, and stood, her thin hands clasped in front of 
her, looking up at him with expectant, terrified eyes.
"I am sorry to alarm you," he said stiffly. "I came to see if I could do 
nothing for you, and to tell you once more that I can do nothing for you 
unless you are open with me, unless you help me."
The woman looked away to where the child sat, in a corner of the small 
room, playing with some disused cotton reels.
"You are very kind, sir," she said in a low, uneasy voice; "but I want 
nothing; we want very little, the child and I; and with what your kindness 
in getting me the machine helps us to, we have enough."
"You don't want to be reinstated, to get back your lover, to have your 
child acknowledged?"
The girl flushed; her hands, which were still locked together, trembled a 
little.
"I don't want for nothing, sir, except to be left alone."
Then she added, looking him straight in the face now, with a certain rude 
dignity:
"I wouldn't seem ungrateful, sir, for your great kindness. I think you are 
the best man I ever met. Oh, believe me, I am not ungrateful, sir! But it 
is no good, not a scrap, though once I thought it. We must get along as we 
can now, the child and I - shame and all."
She sighed, gazed intently for a silent minute at the keys of the elaborate 
machine before her, and then continued, speaking very slowly, as if she 
were afraid of drawing too largely on her newly-found candour:
"Why should I keep it from you? It makes me feel a liar every time I see 
you. I will be quite plain with you, sir; perhaps the truth's best, though 
it's hard enough. I've seen him; that's why I couldn't tell you any more. 
And it's all over and done, and God help us! We must make the best of it. 
You see, sir, he is married," said the girl, with a sharp intonation in her 
voice like a sob.
Rainham had sunk into a chair wearily; he looked up at her now, drawing a 
long breath, which, for some reason he could not analyse, was replete with 
relief.
"Married?" he ejaculated; "are you sure?"
"Sure enough" said Kitty Crichton. "He told me so."
"Do you care for this fellow?" he asked curiously after awhile.
The flush on her face had faded into two hectic spots on either cheek; 
there was a lack of all animation in her voice, whether of hope or 
indignation; she had the air of a person who gave up, who was terribly 
tired of things.
"Care?" she echoed. "I don't rightly know, sir; I think it's all dead 
together - love and anger, and my good looks and all. I care for the child, 
and I don't want to harry or hunt him down for the sake of what has been - 
that's all."
He regarded her with the same disinterested pity which had seized him when 
he saw her first. There were only ruins of a beauty that must have once 
been striking. As he watched her a doubt assailed him, whether, after all, 
he had not been deceived by a bare resemblance; whether, in effect, she had 
ever been actually identical with that brilliant Pierrette whose likeness 
had so amazed him in Lightmark's rooms.
"By the way," he asked suddenly, "you told me you have been a model: did - 
was this man a painter? Has he ever painted you?"
The girl fell back a step or two irresolutely.
"Ah! why do you trouble so? What does it matter?" Then she added faintly, 
but hurriedly stumbling over her words: "He wasn't a painter - only for 
amusement; he didn't exhibit. He was a newspaper writer. But he couldn't 
get work, and got a place in a foreign-going steamer, to keep accounts, I 
think. That was afterwards, and that's why I looked for him at your dock. 
They told me the ship had been there, but it wasn't true. Ah! let me be, 
sir, let me be!"
She broke off hastily, clasping her hands across her breast.
The story, though incoherent, was possible; Rainham could see no motive for 
her deceiving him, and yet he believed she was lying. He merely shrugged 
his shoulders, with a rising lassitude. He seemed to have been infected by 
her own dreariness, to labour under a disability of doing or saying any 
more; he, too, gave it up. He wanted to get away out of the dingy room; its 
rickety table and chairs, its two vulgar vases on the stained mantel, its 
gross upholstery, seemed too trenchantly sordid in the strong August sun. 
The child's golden head - she was growing intelligent now, and strong on 
her legs - was the one bright spot in the room. He stopped to pat it with a 
great pity, a sense of too much pathos in things flooding him, before he 
passed out again into the mean street.


Chapter 13

September set in cold, with rain and east winds, and Rainham, a naturally 
chilly mortal, as he handed his coat to Lady Garnett's butler, and followed 
him into the little library, where dinner was laid for three, congratulated 
himself that a seasonable fire crackled on the large hearth.
"I hardly expected you back yet," he remarked, after the first greetings, 
stretching out his hands to the blaze; "and your note was a welcome 
surprise. I almost think we are the only people in town."
Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of rich tolerance, as 
one who acknowledged the respectability of all tastes, whilst preferring 
her own.
"London has its charm, to me," she remarked. "We are glad to be back. I am 
getting too old to travel - that terrible crossing, and the terrible people 
one meets!"
Rainham smiled with absent sympathy, looking into the red coals.
"You must remember, I don't know where you have been. Tell me your 
adventures and your news."
"I leave that to Mary, my dear," said the old lady.
And at that moment the girl came in, looking stately and older than her age 
in one of the dark, high-cut dresses which she affected. She shook hands 
with Rainham, smiling; and as they went to table he repeated his question.
"It is difficult," she said: "we seem to have been everywhere, Oh, we have 
been very restless this year, Philip. I think we were generally in the 
train. We tried Trouville - "
"Detestable!" put in Lady Garnett with genial petulance; "it was too small. 
Half the world was crowded into it; and it was precisely the half-world - "
"I can imagine it," interrupted Rainham, with his grave smile; "and then?"
"Then we thought of Switzerland," continued the young girl. "We went to 
Geneva. We were almost dead when we arrived, because we had to go a very 
roundabout way to avoid Paris; we could not go to Paris, because we were 
afraid of seeing the Republic. It was very hot in Geneva. No place ever was 
so hot before. We lay on the sofa for three days, and then we were strong 
enough to run away."
"It was purgatorial!" said the elder lady; "it was full of English 
governesses and Swiss pastors."
"Then we went to look for cool places, and we had a charming week at 
Interlaken, and looked longingly at the Jungfrau, and contemplated the 
ascent."
Lady Garnett laughed her quaint little laugh.
"Interlaken might have sufficed, my dear; but, unfortunately - it was one 
of Mary's ridiculous economies - we went to a pension; and we fell into the 
hands of an extraordinary woman with a fringe and a Bible, a native of 
North America, who endeavoured to persuade me that I was a Jewess."
"No, no!" laughed Mary, "not quite so bad as that. It was one of the other 
tribes she would have us belong to - one of the lost tribes. It was not 
personal."
"Ah, Dieu merci! if they are lost," ejaculated her aunt; "but you are 
wrong; it was most personal, Mary."
"I will do her the justice to add that she only suggested it once," 
continued the girl, with a smile of elision - "However, we had to flee from 
her; and so we came to Lucerne."
"That was worst of all," said Lady Garnett, arching her delicate eyebrows; 
"it was full of lovers."
The solemn butler had placed a pair of obdurate birds before Rainham, which 
engrossed him: presently he looked up, remarking quietly:
"Did you see the Sylvesters?"
"Ah yes! we saw the Sylvesters; we walked with the Sylvesters; we drank tea 
with the Sylvesters; we made music with the Sylvesters; we went on the lake 
with the Sylvesters. That handsome artist - Mr. Lightmark, is it not, Mary? 
- was there, making the running with Miss Eve. The marriage seems to be 
arranged."
She shrugged her shoulders; the precise shade of meaning in the gesture 
escaped Rainham: he looked over to Mary inquiringly.
"They seem very much attached to each other," she remarked.
"Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my dear, 
and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad to come away 
from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my Constant's vol-au-vent, 
which you don't seem to have tried; but lovers are the worst of all. Though 
I like that young man, Lightmark; he is a type that interests me; he seems 
- "
She looked round the room vaguely, as if the appropriate word might be 
lurking in some angle of the apartment; finally, the epithet proving 
difficult, she abandoned the search.
"Il ira loin!" she said tersely; "he flatters me discreetly, as they did 
when I was young, before the Republic."
The silent, well-trained man handed round caviare and olives; Mary trifled 
with some grapes, her brow knitted a little, thoughtfully. Lady Garnett 
poured herself a glass of maraschino. When they were left alone, the girl 
remarked abruptly:
"I am not sure whether I quite like Mr. Lightmark; he does not seem to me 
sincere."
Lady Garnett lifted up her hands.
"Why should he be, my dear? sincerity is very trying. A decent hypocrisy is 
the secret of good society. Your good, frank people are very rude. If I am 
a wicked old woman, it is nobody's business to tell me so but my 
director's."
Mary had risen, and had come over to the old lady's side.
"But, then, you are not a wicked old woman, my aunt," she observed gently.
"Ah!" she threw back, "how do you judge? Do me the justice to believe, 
cherie, that, if I tell you a good deal, there is a good deal, happily, 
which I don't tell you."
She pushed a box of cigarettes, which the man had placed on the table, 
towards Rainham. He took one and lit it silently, absently, without his 
accustomed protests; the girl looked up smiling.
"That means that you want your tete-a-tete, Aunt Marcelle? I know the 
signal. Well, I will leave you; I want to try over that new march of 
Liszt's; and I expect, by the time I have grappled with it, you will be 
coming up for your coffee."
"You are a good girl," answered the elder lady, stroking her hand. "Yes, 
run away and make music! When Philip and I have had enough scandal and 
frivolity, we will come and find you; and you shall play us a little of 
that strange person Wagner, who fascinates me, though you may not believe 
it."
It was a habit of the house, on occasion of these triangular dinner-
parties, that Lady Garnett should remain with Rainham in the interval which 
custom would have made him spend solitary over his wine. It was a habit 
which Mary sacredly respected, although it often amused her; and she knew 
it was one which her aunt valued. And, indeed, though the two made no 
movement, and for awhile said nothing, there was an air of increased 
intimacy, if it were only in their silence, when the door had closed on the 
girl and left them together. Presently Lady Garnett began, holding up her 
little glass of crystal maraschino that vied in the light of the candelabra 
with the diamonds on her fingers:
"I had a conversation with that wearisome young man Charles Sylvester at 
Lucerne, Philip; he tried to sound me as to Mary's prospects and the state 
of her affections."
Rainham looked up with quiet surprise.
"Do you mean to say - ?" he queried.
"It is very obvious," she answered quickly; "I saw it long ago. But don't 
imagine that he got much out of me. I was as deep as a well. But what do 
you think of it?"
"I hope they will be happy," he answered absently. She arched her 
expressive brows, and he coloured, recollecting himself. "I beg your 
pardon," he said hastily; "I confess I was thinking of something else. You 
were talking of Mary; why should it not do? Does she care about him?"
His companion laughed, and her laugh had more than its wonted suggestion of 
irony.
"My dear Philip, for a clever man you can be singularly dense! Care for 
him! of course she does not."
"She might do worse," he said; "Sylvester is not very bright, but he works 
hard, and will succeed after a fashion. His limitations dovetail 
conveniently with his capacities. What do you intend to do?"
"Do I ever interfere in these things? My dear, you are remarkably dull 
tonight. I never make marriages, nor prevent them. With all my faults, 
match-making is not one of them. I think too ill of life to try and arrange 
it. You must admit," she added, "that, long as I have known you, I have 
never tried to marry you!"
"Ah, that would have been too fatuous!" he remarked lightly.
They were both silent for awhile, regarding each other disinterestedly; 
they appeared to be following a train of thought which led nowhither; 
presently Lady Garnett asked:
"Are you going abroad this year?"
"Yes," he said, "as soon as I can - about the middle of October; to Mentone 
or Bordighera, I suppose."
"Do you find them interesting? Do they do you much good?"
He smiled rather listlessly, ignoring her second question.
"I confess," he said, "it becomes rather a bore. But, I suppose, at my time 
of life one finds nothing very interesting. The mere act of living becomes 
rather a bore after a time."
"I wonder what you are thinking about, Philip?" she asked meditatively; 
"something has annoyed you tonight; I wonder if you are going to tell me."
He laughed.
"Do we ever tell each other our annoyances? I think we sit and look at each 
other, and discover them. That is much more appropriate."
"You take things too seriously," she went on; "my dear, they are really not 
worth it. That is my settled conviction."
She sat and sipped her liqueur appreciatively, smiling good-humouredly, and 
Philip could not help regarding her with a certain admiration. Her small, 
sharp, subtle face, beneath its mask of smiling indifference, looked 
positively youthful in the judicious candle-light; only the little, 
birdlike, withered hands bore the stigmata of age. And he could not 
conceive her changing; to the last, those tell-tale hands apart, she would 
be comely and cynical, and would die as she had lived, secure 'in the high 
places of laughter' - a laughter that, for all its geniality, struck him at 
times as richly sardonic - in the decent drapery of her fictitious youth; 
in a decorous piety, yet a little complicated, in the very reception of the 
last rites, by the amiable arching of her expressive eyebrows.
"You are wonderful," he exclaimed, after an interval, "wonderful; that was 
what I was thinking."
She smiled disinterestedly.
"Because you don't understand me? My dear, nothing is so easy as 
mystification; that is why I don't return the compliment. Yourself, you 
know - you are not very intelligible tonight."
He looked away frowning, but without embarrassment; presently, throwing up 
his hands with a little mock gesture of despair, he remarked:
"I should be delighted to explain myself, but I can't. I am unintelligible 
to myself also; we must give it up, and go and find Mary."
"Ah no! let us give it up, by all means; but we will not join Mary yet; 
smoke another cigarette."
He took one and lit it, absently, in the blue flame of the spirit-lamp, and 
she watched him closely with her bright, curious eyes.
"You know this Mr. Lightmark very well, don't you, Philip?"
"Intimately," he answered, nodding.
"You must be pleased," she said. "It is a great match for him, a struggling 
artist. Can he paint, by the way?"
"He has great talent." He held his cigarette away from him, considering the 
ash critically. "Yes, he can certainly paint. I suppose it is a good thing 
- and for Eve, too. Why should it not be?"
"He is a charming young man" - she spoke judicially - "charming! But in 
effect Mary was quite right; she generally is - he is not sincere."
"I think you are wrong," said Rainham after a moment. "I should be sorry to 
believe you were not, for the little girl's sake. And I have known him a 
long time; he is a good fellow at bottom."
"Ah!" cried Lady Garnett with a little quick gesture of her right hand, 
"that is precisely what he is not. He exaggerates; he must be very secret; 
no one ever was so frank as he seems to be."
"Why are you saying all this to me?" the other asked after a moment. "You 
know I should be very sorry; but what can I do? it's arranged."
"I think you might have prevented it, if you had cared; but, as you say, it 
is too late now."
"There was no way possible in which I could have prevented it," he said 
slowly, after an interval which seemed to strike them both as ponderous.
"That was an admission I wanted," she flashed back. "You would have 
prevented it - you would have given worlds to have prevented it."
His retort came as quickly, accented by a smile:
"Not a halfpenny. I make no admissions; and I have not the faintest idea of 
what you are driving at. I am a pure spectator. To quote yourself, I don't 
make marriages, nor mar them; I think too ill of life."
"Ah no!" she said; "it is that you are too indolent; you disappoint me."
"It is you, dear lady, who are inconsistent," he cried, laughing.
"No, you disappoint me," she resumed; "seriously, my dear, I am 
dissatisfied with you. You will not assert yourself; you do nothing; you 
have done nothing. There never was a man who made less of his life."
He protested laughingly:
"I have had no time; I have been looking after my lungs."
"Ah, you are incorrigible!" she exclaimed, rising; "let us go and find 
Mary. I give you up; or, rather, I give myself up, as an adviser. For, 
after all, you are right - there is nothing worth doing in this bad world 
except looking after one's lung, or whatever it may be."
"Perhaps not even that," said Philip, as he followed her from the room; 
"even that, after a time, becomes monotonous."


Chapter 14

It occurred to Lightmark one evening, as he groped through the gloom of his 
studio, on his way to bed, after assisting at a very charming social 
gathering at the Sylvesters', that as soon as he was married he would have 
to cut Brodonowski's. The reasons he gave himself were plausible enough, 
and, indeed, he would have found himself the only Benedict among this horde 
of wild bachelors. The informal circle was of such recent association that, 
so far, no precedent for matrimony had occurred, and it was more than 
doubtful how the experiment might be received. In any case, he told 
himself, he could not be expected to introduce people like Oswyn and 
McAllister to his wife - or, rather, to Mrs. Sylvester's daughter. Oswyn 
was plainly impossible, and McAllister's devotion to tobacco so inordinate 
that it had come to be a matter of common belief that he smoked short pipes 
in his sleep.
Then he had dismissed the subject; the long, pleasant holiday in 
Switzerland intervened, and it was only on his return, late in the autumn, 
that the question again presented itself, as he turned from the threshold 
of the house in Park Street, where he had been dining, and half 
unconsciously took the familiar short cut towards Turk Street. He paused 
for a deliberate instant when he had hailed the first passing hansom, and 
then told the man to drive to Piccadilly Circus.
"I must go there a few times more, if only to break it off gently," he 
reflected, "and I want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not to have 
written to him - yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? mustn't give him up, 
at any rate. We'll - we'll ask him to dinner, and all that sort of thing. 
And what the deuce am I going to send to the Academy? Thank goodness, I 
have enough Swiss sketches to work up for the other galleries to last me 
for years. But the Academy - "
Then he lost himself in contemplative enjoyment of the familiar vista of 
Regent Street, the curved dotted lines of crocus-coloured lamps, fading in 
the evening fog, the flitting ruby-eyed cabs, and the calm white arc-
lights, set irregularly about the circus, dulling the grosser gas. He owned 
to himself that he had secretly yearned for London; that his satisfaction 
on leaving the vast city was never so great as his joy on again setting 
foot upon her pavements.
The atmosphere of the long low room, with its anomalous dark ceiling and 
grotesquely-decorated walls, was heavily laden with the incense of tobacco 
and a more subtle odour, which numbered among its factors whisky and 
absinthe. The slippered, close-cropped waiter, who, by popular report, 
could speak five languages, and usually employed a mixture of two or three, 
was still clearing away the debris of protracted dinners; and a few men sat 
about, in informal groups, playing dominoes, chatting, or engrossed in 
their Extra Specials. The fire shone cheerfully beneath the high mantel, 
and the pleasant lamplight lent a mellow glow, which was vaguely suggestive 
of Dutch interiors, as it flickered on the dark wooden floor, and glanced 
from the array of china on the dresser in the corner.
When Lightmark entered, closing the door briskly on the foggy, chill 
October night, he was greeted warmly and demonstratively. The fraternity 
which made Brodonowski's its head-quarters generously admired his genius, 
and, for the most part, frankly envied his good-fortune. The younger men 
respected him as a man who had seen life; and the narratives with which he 
occasionally favoured them produced in such of his hearers feelings very 
different to those which older men, like Oswyn, expressed by a turn of the 
eyebrow or a shrug. They were always ready enough to welcome him, to gather 
round him, and to drink with him; and this, perhaps, expresses the limits 
of their relation.
"Lightmark, by Jove!" cried one of them, waving his pipe in the air, as the 
new-comer halted in the low doorway, smiling in a rather bewildered manner 
as he unbuttoned his overcoat. "Welcome to the guerilla camp! And a dress 
suit! These walls haven't enclosed such a thing since you went away. This 
is indeed an occasion!"
Lightmark passed from group to group, deftly parrying and returning the 
chorus of friendly thrusts, and shaking hands with the affability which was 
so characteristic a feature of his attitude toward them. The man he looked 
for, the friend whom he intended to honour with a somewhat tardy confidence 
of his happiness, was not there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told 
that 'the dry-docker,' as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated 
the silent man, whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner 
stroll, or perchance to the theatre, with Oswyn.
"With Oswyn?" queried Lightmark, with the shadow of a frown.
"Oh, Oswyn and he are getting very thick!" said Copal. "They are almost as 
inseparable as you two used to be. I'm afraid you will find yourself cut 
out. Three is an awkward number, you know. But when did you come back? When 
are you going to show us your sketches? And how long did you stay in 
Paris?Ö You didn't stop in Paris? This won't do, you know. I say, Dupuis, 
here's a man who didn't stop in Paris! Ask him if he wants to insult you."
"Ah, mon cher!" expostulated the Frenchman, looking up from his game of 
dominoes, "I would not stop in London if I could help it."
"Oh, shut up, Copal!" said Lightmark good-humouredly. "I was with ladies - 
Dupuis will sympathise with me there, eh, mon vieux? - and they wanted to 
stay at Lucerne until the last minute. So we came straight through."
"Then you haven't seen Sarah in 'Cleopatra,' and we were relying on you for 
an unvarnished account. Ladies, too! See here, my boy, you won't get any 
good out of touring about the Continent with ladies. Hang it all! I believe 
it'll come true, after all!"
"Very likely - what?"
"Oh, well, they said - I didn't believe it, but they said that you were 
going to desert the camp, and prance about with corpulent R.A.'s in Hanover 
Square."
"And so would we all, if we got the chance," said McAllister cynically.
And after the general outcry which followed this suggestion, the 
conversation drifted back to the old discussion of the autumn shows, the 
pastels at the Grosvenor, and the most recent additions to the National 
Gallery.
When at last Rainham came into the room, following, with his habitual half-
timid air, the shambling figure of the painter Oswyn, it struck Lightmark 
that he had grown older, and that he had, as it were, assimilated some of 
the intimate disreputability of the place: it would no longer have been 
possible to single him out as a foreign unit in the circle, or to detect in 
his mental attitude any of the curiosity of the casual seeker after new 
impressions, the Philistine in Bohemia. There was nothing but pleasure in 
the slight manifestation of surprise which preceded his frank greeting of 
Lightmark, a greeting thoroughly English in its matter-of-fact want of 
demonstrativeness, and the avoidance of anything likely to attract the 
attention of others.
Oswyn seemed less at his ease: there was an extra dash of nervous 
brusqueness in the sarcastic welcome which he offered to the new-comer; and 
although there was a vacant seat in the little circle of which Copal and 
Lightmark formed the nucleus, and to which Rainham had joined himself, he 
shuffled off to his favourite corner, and buried himself in 'Gil Blas' and 
an abnormally thick cloud of tobacco-smoke. Rainham gazed after him for a 
moment or two with a puzzled expression.
"Amiable as ever!" said Lightmark, with a laugh. "Poor old beggar! Have a 
cigarette? You ought to give up pipes. Haven't you been told that 
cigarettes are - what is it? - 'the perfect type' - ?"
"Oh, chestnuts!" interposed Copal, "that's at least six months old. And 
it's rot, too! Do you know what McAllister calls them? Spittle and tissue. 
Brutal, but expressive. But I say, old man, won't Mrs. Thingumy drop on you 
for smoking in your dress-coat? Or - or - No, break it to me gently. You 
don't mean to say that you possess two? I really feel proud of having my 
studio next door to you."
"Copal is becoming quite a humorist," Lightmark suggested in an impartial 
manner. "What a wag it is! Keep it up, my boy. By the way, Mrs. Grumbit has 
been talking about your 'goings on,' as she calls them: she's apparently 
very much exercised in her mind as to the state of your morals. She told me 
she had to take you in with the matutinal milk three times last week. She 
wants me to talk to you like a father. It won't do, you know."
"I should like to hear you, Dick," said Rainham lazily. "Fire away! But who 
is Mrs. Grumbit?"
"Oh, she's our housekeeper - the lady who dusts the studio, you know, and 
gives the models tea and good advice. She's very particular as to the 
models: she won't let us paint from any who don't come up to her standard 
of propriety. And the worst of it is that the properest girls are always 
the ugliest. I don't know - "
"Before you proceed with this highly original disquisition," interrupted 
Copal, "I think you ought to be warned that we have recently formed a 
Society for the Protection of Reputations, models and actresses' in 
particular. It was McAllister's idea. You now have the honour of being in 
the headquarters - the committee-room - of the society, and anything like 
slander, or even truth, will be made an example of."
"Don't you find it rather difficult to spread your sheltering wings over 
what doesn't exist?" hazarded Lightmark amusedly.
"Ah, I knew you would say that! You see, that's just where we come in. We 
talk about their morals and reputations until they begin to imagine they 
have some, and they unconsciously get induced to live up to them. See? It's 
rather mixed, but it works beautifully. Ask the vice-president! Rainham 
holds that proud office. I may remark that I am treasurer, and the 
subscription is half a guinea, which goes towards the expenses of providing 
light refreshments for the - the beneficiaries."
"This is really very interesting! Rainham vice-president, too! I thought he 
looked rather - rather worn by the cares of the office. You must make me a 
member at once. But who's president?"
"President? Who is president, McAllister? I really forget. You see, 
whenever the president is caught speaking too candidly of any of our 
clients' characters, we pass a vote of censure, and depose him, and he has 
to stand drinks. The competition isn't so keen as it used to be. If you 
would like to stand - for the office, I mean - I dare say there will be an 
opening soon.Ö Well, I must be off: I'm afraid of Mrs. Grumbit, and - yes, 
by Jove! - I've forgotten my latchkey again! Of course you're not coming 
yet, Dick? Come and breakfast with me tomorrow. Good-night, you fellows!"
"Copal has been in great form tonight," said Lightmark, after the door had 
closed on him, getting up and stretching himself. "What does it mean? Joy 
at my return? Fatted calf?"
"No doubt, my boy, no doubt," growled McAllister humorously, on his way to 
the door. "But you must bear in mind, too, the circumstance that the 
laddie's just sold a picture."
"Good business!" ejaculated Lightmark, as he reflected to himself that 
perhaps that despaired-of fiver would be repaid after all.
About midnight most of the men left. Rainham remained, and Lightmark, who 
professed himself too lazy to move. Rainham lapsed into his familiar state 
of half-abstraction, while his friend cross-examined a young sculptor fresh 
from Rome.
At the next table Oswyn was holding forth, with eager gesticulations and 
the excitement of the hour in his eyes, on the subject of a picture which 
he contemplated painting in oils for exhibition at the Salon next year. 
Rainham had heard it all before; still, he listened with a keen 
appreciation of the wonderful touch with which the little dishevelled 
artist enlarged on the capabilities of his choice, the possibilities of 
colour and treatment. The picture was to be painted at the dock, and the 
painter had already achieved a daringly suggestive impression in pastels of 
the familiar night-scene which he mow described: the streaming, vivid 
torches, their rays struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering 
faintly in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side; 
the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the middle 
the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms, growing, as it were, 
out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy background, in which the river-
lights gleamed like opals set in dull ebony.
When the tide of inspiration failed the speaker, as it soon did, Lightmark 
continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent consideration 
turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence, broken only by the 
occasional striking of a match and the knocking of a pipe against a boot-
heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that he had missed his last train, 
and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled himself back in his chair, as one who 
has no regard for time, and rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he 
had spoken now only perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. 
Rainham and Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the 
revellers, drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of 
an envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure.
The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white wreath of 
clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The narrow, squalid little 
street was deserted, and the sound of wheels in the busier thoroughfare at 
the end was very intermittent.
Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath of the 
night air before he broke the silence.
"It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington lay in 
the same direction - from here, you know; we should save a fortune in cab-
fares.Ö But - but that wasn't what I wanted to say. Philip, my dear fellow, 
congratulate me."
He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with something of a 
melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing 
at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one of the opposite windows.
"I know," he said simply. "I do congratulate you - from the bottom of my 
heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and looked 
Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you do love her, Dick?"
"I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I have 
been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you hear of it. 
Has it - has it been in the papers?"
Rainham laughed in spite of himself.
"Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't think it 
has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."
"Oh," said Dick blankly. "I - I'm much obliged to her. I thought perhaps it 
was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought he was a discreet 
old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?"
"She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a suggestion of 
apology in his tone; "and, of course, she knows that I am - "
"My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And I 
ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil about it.Ö 
Well, it can't be helped! Will you have this cab, or shall I?"
Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation as the driver reined the 
horse back upon its haunches with a clatter.
"I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know. Good-night, 
Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."
When the cab drove off, Rainham stood still for a minute and watched it out 
of sight. Then he started and seemed to pull himself together.
"I wish I knew!" he said aloud to himself, as he stepped rapidly towards 
the East. "Well, we'll be off to Bordighera now, mon vieux. We've lost 
Dick, I think, and we've lost - "
The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.


Chapter 15

A day or two later, when Rainham called in the afternoon at the Kensington 
studio to announce his approaching flight from England, he found Mrs. 
Sylvester and Eve in occupation, and a sitting in progress. His greeting of 
Eve was somewhat constrained. He seemed to stumble over the 
congratulations, the utterance of which usage and old acquaintance 
demanded; and he was more at his ease when the ice was fairly broken.
"I expected to find you here," he said, addressing Mrs. Sylvester. "I have 
been to your house, and they told me you would probably be at the studio - 
the studio - so I came on."
"Good boy, good boy!" said Lightmark, with as much approbation in his voice 
as the presence of the stick of a paint-brush between his teeth would 
allow. "You'll excuse our going on a little longer, won't you? It'll be too 
dark in a few minutes."
"You don't look well, Philip," remarked Mrs. Sylvester presently, with a 
well-assumed air of solicitude. "You ought to have come to Lucerne with us, 
instead of spending all the summer in town."
"Yes; why didn't you, Philip?" cried Eve reproachfully. "It would have been 
so nice - oh, I'm so sorry, Dick, I didn't mean to move - you really ought 
to have come."
"Well, there was the dock, you see, and business and all that sort of 
thing. I can't always neglect business, you know."
Lightmark asserted emphatically that he didn't know, while, on the other 
hand, Mrs. Sylvester was understood to remark, with a certain air of 
mystery, that she could quite understand what kept Philip in town.
"Don't you think I might have been rather - rather a fifth wheel?" 
suggested Rainham feebly, entirely ignoring Mrs. Sylvester's remark, to 
which, indeed, he attached no special meaning.
"Spare our blushes, old man," expostulated Dick. "It would have been 
awfully jolly. You would have been such a companion for Charles, you know," 
he added, with a malicious glance over his shoulder. "Oh dear! fog again. I 
think I must release you now, Eve. Tell me what you think of the portrait, 
now that I've worked in the background, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, now don't 
you think I was right about the flowers?"
There was, in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and freshness of 
air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple white dress, with only - 
the painter had so far prevailed over the milliner - only a suggestion of 
bright ribands at throat and waist; the quaint Chippendale chair, the 
sombre Spanish leather screen, which formed the background, and the pot of 
copper-coloured chrysanthemums, counter-parts of the little cluster which 
Eve wore in the bosom of her gown, on a many cornered Turkish table at the 
side: it had all the gay realism of modern Paris without losing the poetry 
of the old school, or attaining the hardness of the new.
Rainham looked at it attentively, closely, for a long time. Then he said 
simply:
"It's the best thing you have done, Dick. It will be one of the best 
portraits in the Academy, and you ought to get a good place on the line."
"I'm so glad!" cried Eve rapturously, clasping her hands. "On the line! 
But," and her voice fell, "it isn't to go to the Academy. Mamma has 
promised Sir -- Dick is going to send it to the Grosvenor. But it's pretty 
much the same, isn't it? Oh, now show Philip the sketch you have made for 
your Academy picture," she added, pointing to a board which stood on 
another easel, with a protecting veil over the paper which was stretched 
upon it. "You know he can tell us if it's like the real thing."
"If it's the Riviera, or - or dry-docks," added Rainham modestly.
But Lightmark stepped forward hastily, after a moment's hesitation, and put 
his hand on the drawing just as Eve was preparing with due ceremony to 
unveil it.
"Excuse me, I don't want to show it to Rainham yet. I - I want to astonish 
him, you know."
He laughed rather uneasily, and Eve gave way, with some surprise in her 
eyes. and a puzzled cloud on her pretty brow, and went and seated herself 
on the settee at her mother's side.
"He's afraid of my critical eye, Mrs. Sylvester," said Rainham gravely. 
"That's what it is. Well, if you don't show it me now, you won't have 
another opportunity yet awhile."
"That's it, Eve," explained Lightmark hastily. "I'm afraid of his critical 
what's-his-name. You know he can be awfully severe sometimes, the old 
beggar, and I don't want him to curl me up and annihilate me while you're 
here."
"I don't believe he would, if it were ever so bad," said Eve, only half 
satisfied. "And it isn't; it's awfully good. But it's too dark to see 
anything now."
"By Jove, so it is! Mrs. Sylvester, I'm awfully sorry; I always like the 
twilight myself. Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell? Thanks. Oh, 
don't apologise; the handle always comes off. I never use it myself, except 
when I have visitors. I go and shout in the passage; but Mrs. Grumbit 
objects to being shouted for when there are visitors on the premises. Great 
hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit is."
The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new and 
imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she deposited, 
with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs. Sylvester's side.
"Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit. And now will you come to a poor bachelor's 
assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry, but I 
haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but the beggar's 
gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to imagine you're at 
Oxford."
Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the Satsuma 
teapot.
"Don't you know, mamma, it isn't - form, don't you say? to have sugar-tongs 
at Oxford? It was one of the things Charles always objected to. I believe 
he tried to introduce them, but people always threw them out of the window. 
I think they're an absurd invention."
Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles 
daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-
white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly 
agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to think her argument, that 
sugar-tongs could be so pretty - 'Queen Anne, you know' - entirely 
unanswerable.
It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to 
announce that the ladies' carriage was at the door that Rainham remembered 
the real object of his expedition.
Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of the 
firelight still in her face, held out a small gloved hand with a smiling 
"Au revoir, Philip," he shook his head rather sadly.
"I'm afraid it must be good-bye - for some time, at least. I came to tell 
you that I am on the wing again. Doctor's orders, you know. I shall be in 
Bordighera on Friday, I expect."
"And today's Tuesday," complained Eve.
"And I was just going to ask you to dine with us, one day soon," 
expostulated her mother.
"You must come over at Christmas, old man," said Dick cheerfully. "For the 
wedding, you know. You've got to give me away, and be brides maid, and all 
that sort of thing."
Rainham shook his head again.
"I'm afraid not. You don't know my doctor. He wouldn't hear of it. No, you 
won't see me in town again before May, unless there's a radical reform in 
the climate."
"Couldn't - couldn't we put it off till May?" suggested Eve naively.
But the suggestion was not received with anything approaching enthusiasm.
"Good-bye, Philip," said Eve again, when her lover was handing Mrs. 
Sylvester into the little brougham. "Mind you take great care of yourself."
Rainham returned the frank pressure of her hand.
"Good-bye," he said.


Chapter 16

After all, Philip Rainham loitered on his way South. He spent a week in 
Paris, and passing on by way of Mont Cenis, lingered in Turin, a city with 
a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular streets, which he detested, out 
of sheer idleness, for three days. On the fourth, waking to find winter 
upon him suddenly, and the ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he 
was seized with panic - an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places 
returning to him with fresh force, as he felt already the chill of the 
bleak plains of Piedmont in his bones. It sent him hurrying to his 
destination, Bordighera, by the first train; and it was not too soon: the 
misused lung asserted itself in a haemorrhage, and by the time he reached 
the fair little town running out so coquettishly, amid its olive-yards and 
palm-trees, into the blue Mediterranean, he was in no proper temper to 
soliloquise on its charms.
The doctor had a willing slave in him for three weeks; then he revolted, 
and found himself sufficiently cured to sit when the sun shone - and 
sometimes when it did not - covered in a gray shawl, smoking innumerable 
cigarettes, on a green blistered seat in the garden of his hotel. He 
replied to the remonstrating that he had been ill before this bout, and 
would surely be ill again, but that temporarily he was a well man. It was 
only when he was alone that he could afford to admit how savage a reminder 
of his disabilities he had received. And, indeed, his days of captivity had 
left their mark on him - the increased gauntness of his figure apart - in a 
certain irritation and nerve distress, which inclined him for once to 
regret the multitude of acquaintance that his long habit of sojourning 
there had obtained. The clatter of English tongues at table d'hote began to 
weary him; the heated controversy which waged over the gambling-tables of 
the little principality across the bay left him arid and tired; and the 
gossip of the place struck him as even more tedious and unprofitable than 
of old. He could no longer feign a decent interest in the flirtations of 
the three Miss Smiths, as they were recounted to him nightly by Mrs. Engel, 
the sympathetic widow who sat next to him, and whose sympathy he began, in 
the enlightenment of his indisposition, to distrust.
The relief with which he hailed the arrival of the post and a budget of 
letters from England surprised himself. It struck him that there was 
something feverish and strange in this waiting for news. Even to himself he 
did not dare to define his interest, confessing how greatly he cared. 
Lightmark's epistles just then were frequent and brief. The marriage was 
definitely fixed; the Colonel, his uncle, had been liberal beyond his 
hopes: a house in Grove Road of some splendour had been taken for the young 
couple, who were to install themselves there when the honeymoon, involving 
a sojourn in Paris and a descent into Italy, was done. Hints of a visit to 
Rainham followed, which at first he ignored; repeated in subsequent 
epistles with a greater directness, the prospect filled him with a pleasure 
so strangely mixed with pain that his pride took alarm. He thought it 
necessary to disparage the scheme in a letter to Lightmark, of a coldness 
which disgusted himself. Remorse seized him when it had been despatched, 
and he cherished a hope that it might fail of its aim. This, however, 
seemed improbable, when a fortnight had elapsed and it had elicited no 
reply. From Lady Garnett, at the tail of one of those long, witty, railing 
letters in which the old lady excelled, he heard that the marriage was an 
accomplished fact, and the birds had flown. Mrs. Lightmark! the phrase 
tripped easily from his tongue when he mentioned it at dinner to his 
neighbour, Mrs. Engel, to whom the persons were known. Later, in his own 
room, face to face with the facts which it signified, he had an intolerable 
hour. He had extinguished his candle, and sat, partially undressed, in a 
mood of singular blankness by the fire of gnarled olive logs, which had 
smouldered down into one dull, red mass; and Eve's face was imaged there to 
his sick fancy as he had seen it last in Dick's studio in the vague light 
of an October evening, and yet with a certain new shadow, half sad and half 
reproachful, in the beautiful eyes. After all, had he done his best for the 
child? Now that this thing was irrevocable and complete, a host of old 
misgivings and doubts, which he had believed long ago banished, broke in 
upon him. He had only asked that she should be happy - at least, he said, 
it had never been a question of himself. He certainly knew nothing to 
Lightmark's discredit, nothing which could have justified him in 
interfering, even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen 
in love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the marriage 
had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's ill-defined 
uneasiness still questioned and explored. A hundred little episodes in his 
friendship with the brilliant young painter, dismissed as of no import at 
the time, returned to him - instances, as it seemed now to his morbid 
imagination, in which that character, so frank and so enigmatic, rang 
scarcely true. And suddenly the tragical story of Kitty Crichton intruded 
itself before him, with all its shameful possibilities. Could Lightmark 
have lied to him? Had not his sudden acquiescence in the painter's 
rendering of the thing implied a lack of courage - been one of those undue 
indolences, to which he was so prone, rather than any real testimony of his 
esteem? Would not a more rigorous inquiry, a little patient investigation 
into so curious a coincidence, have been the more seemly part, as much for 
his friend's sake as for Eve's, so that this haunting, intolerable doubt 
might have been for ever put away - as surely it would have been? The 
contrary issue was too horrible for supposition. And he ended by mocking at 
himself with a half-sigh for carrying fastidiousness so far, recognising 
the mundane fitness of the match, and that heroic lovers, such as his 
tenderness for the damsel would have had, are, after all, rare, perhaps 
hardly existing out of visions in a somewhat gross world, where the finest 
ore is not without its considerable alloy.
Two days later, as he sat upon his wonted seat, in lazy enjoyment of the 
midday sun, a vetturino, heralded far down the road by the jingle of his 
horse's bells, deposited a couple at the door whose faces were familiar. At 
table d'hote, though he was separated from the new-comers by half a dozen 
covers, he had leisure to identify them as the Dollonds; and by-and-by the 
roving, impartial gaze of the Academician's wife encountering him, he could 
assure himself that the recognition was mutual. They came together at the 
end of dejeuner, and presently, at Mrs. Dollond's instigation, started for 
a stroll through the olives towards the old town.
"Are you wintering here?" he asked after a moment, feeling that an 
affirmative answer would hardly be to his taste.
But Mrs. Dollond, with an upward inclination of her vivacious shoulders, 
repudiated the notion. A whim of her own, she explained to Rainham 
confidentially, as they came abreast in the narrowing path, while Mr. 
Dollond strolled a little behind, cutting down vagrant weeds absently with 
his heavy oak stick.
"Hugh wanted a month's holiday; and I wanted" - she dropped her voice, 
glancing over her shoulder with an air of mock mystery - "yes, Mr. Rainham, 
you must not be shocked, but I wanted a fortnight at Monte Carlo; and so I 
may as well tell you that our destination is there. We came from San Remo 
this morning, meaning to drive over right away; but this place was so 
pretty that Hugh insisted on staying."
Rainham helped her up a difficult terrace, and remarked urbanely that he 
was in fortune's way.
She threw him a brilliant smile.
"Ah, Mr. Rainham, if we had only known that you were here! then we might 
have arranged differently; we could have stayed here pastorally, and driven 
up to that delightful little place on the hill - Tell me, how is it 
called?"
She pointed with her scarlet parasol - they had emerged now on to the main 
road - at a little turreted town perched far above them on the brow of an 
olive-crested hill.
"It is Sasso," said Rainham. "I should have been delighted to come with 
you, but I am afraid it is out of the reach of carriages, and of invalids. 
You might go there on a mule."
"Oh no!" she laughed; "I think on the whole we shall be more comfortable at 
the H"tel de Paris. Can't we induce you to come with us now?"
Rainham lifted his eyebrows, smiling a little and groping vaguely for an 
excuse, while Mrs. Dollond turned to her husband with a look which demanded 
corroboration of her speech.
"Yes, Mr. Rainham, do come, if you possibly can," supplemented Mr. Dollond, 
coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each other horribly - 
I can answer for myself - and it would be an act of real charity."
"Well, Hugh, I am ashamed of you! You really ought not to say such things. 
If you can't behave better than that, you may go on maltreating those 
thistles. I declare we have left a regular trail of heads in our wake, like 
the Revolution or Judge Jeffreys."
"Bloody Jeffreys!" suggested Mr. Dollond mildly.
His wife turned to Rainham with the little despairing gesture which she 
reckoned one of her most effective mannerisms.
"Is not he dreadful? But you will come, Mr. Rainham? I am sure you know all 
about systems, and - and things. You know I insist on winning; so I must 
have a system, mustn't I?"
"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said her companion humorously, "you remind me that the 
only system I have is a very bad one. I am afraid my doctor would not trust 
me with it at Monaco."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Dollond reflectively, "but you need not gamble you know! 
You can help me, and see that I don't get cheated. Hugh and I will see your 
doctor, and promise to take care of you. Hugh shall carry your shawl - he 
likes carrying shawls."
"He is getting used to it," interposed her husband dryly.
"Ah, well, that is settled," continued the lady gaily, leaving her victim 
no time to formulate more than the lamest of protests.
By this time they had reached the middle of the cape, and they stood for a 
moment by the lazy fountain looking down at the Marina straggling below the 
palms; and beyond, at the outline of the French coast, with white Mentone 
set in it, precisely, like a jewel.
"The dear little place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose Monaco 
is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not look a bit 
wicked from here. I declare, I should like to live there!"
"I've no doubt you would, my dear!" said her husband; "but you shan't, so 
long as I have any voice in the matter. I don't get so much for my pictures 
that I can afford to contribute to M. Blanc's support."
Rainham followed the direction of her eyes absently. "I have half a mind to 
go with you after all," he said.
"Of course," said Mrs. Dollond; "it will do you worlds of good; we will 
drive you over with us tomorrow. And now, Mr. Rainham, if you don't mind, I 
think we will sit down. I can see that Hugh is getting out his sketch-
book."
She sank down as she spoke upon one of the rough stone seats which are 
scattered about the cape. Mr. Dollond had ensconced himself behind them, 
and was phlegmatically starting on a rough study of the old town, which 
rose in a ragged, compact mass a hundred yards away, with its background of 
sad olives and sapphire sky.
Rainham followed the lady's example, tired himself by their scramble under 
the hot sun, and contented himself for awhile by turning a deaf ear and 
polite little mechanical gestures to her perennial flow of inconsequent 
chatter, which seemed quite impervious to fatigue, while he rested his eyes 
on the charming prospect at their feet: the ragged descent of red rocks, 
broken here and there by patches of burnt grass and pink mallows, the 
little sea-girt chapel of St. Ampelio, and the waste of violet sea. His 
inattentive ear was caught at last by the name of Lightmark occurring, 
recurring, in the light eddy of his companion's speech, and he turned to 
her with an air of apologetic inquiry.
"Yes," Mrs. Dollond was observing, "it was quite a grand wedding; rather 
pretentious, you know, we thought it, for the Sylvesters - but, oh, a great 
affair! We stayed in London for it, although Hugh wanted to take a holiday. 
I could tell you all about the bridesmaids' dresses, and Mrs. Lightmark's, 
but I suppose you would not care. She looked very charming!"
"Yes?" said Rainham, with a curious light in his averted eyes. Then he 
added, somewhat abruptly, "Brides always do, I suppose?"
"Of course, if they have a good dressmaker. And the presents - there was 
quite a show. Your pearl necklace - how I envied her that! But, after all, 
weddings are so much alike."
"I have never been to one," said the other absently.
"Ah, then you ought, if only to get a little experience before your own 
time comes, you know. Yes, you really ought to have been there. It was 
quite a foregone conclusion that you would be best man. It was so funny to 
see Colonel Lightmark in that role, with that young Mr. Sylvester giving 
away the bride. It would have been so much better if they could have 
changed parts."
"I am sorry to interrupt you," said Mr. Dollond, getting up and putting 
away his sketch-book; "I can't sketch; the place is full of locusts, and 
they are getting into my boots."
Mrs. Dollond started up, shaking her skirts apprehensively, with an 
affectation of horror.
"How I do hate jumping things! And, anyhow, I suppose we ought to be 
getting back to our hotel, or we shall be late for dinner. You don't know 
what Hugh can be like when one is late for dinner. He is capable of 
beginning without me."
Rainham had risen with a ready response to her words, bordering almost on 
the ludicrous; and half an hour later he was congratulating himself that at 
least six seats intervened between his place and that of Mrs. Dollond at 
the dinner-table.
And yet on the morrow he found himself, and not without a certain relief, 
sitting beside the mundane little lady, and turning to her incessant ripple 
of speech something of the philosophic indifference to which her husband 
had attained, while a sturdy pair of gaily-caparisoned horses, whose bells 
made a constant accompaniment, not unpleasing in its preciseness, to the 
vagueness of Rainham's thought, hurried them over the dusty surface of the 
Cornice.
Certainly the excursion into which he had been inveigled, rather from 
indolence than from any freak of his inclination, afforded him, now that it 
was undertaken, a certain desultory pleasure to which he had long been a 
stranger. Into the little shrug, comic and valedictory, of Mrs. Dollond's 
shoulders, as they passed the Octroi, a gesture discreetly mocking of the 
conditions they had left, he could enter with some humour, the appreciation 
of a resident who still permitted himself at times the license of a casual 
visitor on his domain.
"Tell me," Mrs. Dollond had asked, as they rattled out of the further gate 
of Ventimiglia, "why did the excellent lady who tried to monopolise 
conversation in the salon last night appear so scandalised when I told her 
where we were going? Was I - surely now, Mr. Rainham, I was not 
indiscreet?"
"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said Rainham humorously, "you know it was a delicate 
subject. At our hotel we don't recognise Monte Carlo. We are divided upon 
the other topics in which we are interested: the intrigues of the lawn 
tennis club, and the orthodoxy of the English chaplain. But we are all 
orthodox about Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Engel is the pillar of our faith. We 
think it's -
"The devil?" interrupted Mr. Dollond, bending forward a little, with his 
bland smile.
"Precisely," said Rainham; "that is what Mrs. Engel would say. Oh no, Mrs. 
Dollond, we don't drive over to Monte Carlo from Bordighera. At Mentone it 
is more regular; you see, you can get there from Mentone pretty much by 
accident. But from Bordighera it has too much the appearance of being a 
preconcerted thing."
"It was particularly preconcerted here," put in the Academician with a 
yawn, and Mrs. Dollond remarked innocently that people who wintered in 
these places must have very singular ideas.
The prospect was increasing in beauty as they wound their way along the 
historical road, now rendered obscure by the thick groves of olives on 
either side, now varied by little glimpses of the sea, which again they 
skirted from time to time, and so nearly that, as Mrs. Dollond remarked, it 
was like driving along the sands. Rain ham identified spots for them as the 
prospect widened, naming sea-girt Mortola with its snug chateau, Mentone 
lying placidly with its two bays in the westering sun, and, now and again, 
notorious peaks of the Alpes Maritimes which bounded the horizon beyond. At 
the frontier bridge of St. Louis, where they alighted to meet the 
requirements of the Douane, even Mrs. Dollond's frivolity was changed into 
silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge. They stood for awhile 
leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning reluctantly from the great 
beetling rocks of the ravine above to gaze with strange qualms into the 
yawning precipice beneath. Rainham pointed out the little thread of white 
which was the one dangerous pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy 
with the fatal fascination with which it had filled so many - he mentioned 
the name of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst 
the number - at the ultimate cost of their lives.
"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage, which 
awaited them on the French side of the bridge. "I shall dream of it 
tonight."
"I have dreamt of it," said Rainham simply. "When I was a boy I used to 
dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over. Nowadays, I 
dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis: the sensation is much the same."
"A very disagreeable one, I should think," said Mrs. Dollond, settling 
herself in her wraps with a little shudder.
"No," said Rainham, with a smile. "I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was rather 
nice: it was the waking up which was disagreeable."
They made their breakfast - a very late one - at Mentone, and dawdled over 
it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been found, 
after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the 
inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.
When at last they drove into the principality, the evening was well 
advanced. Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed by the 
brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she had stretched 
herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was at an end; and Rainham 
with a clear conscience could betake himself immediately to bed. But, in 
spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long time awake; the music of the 
concert-room, the strains of M. Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in 
through the half-closed persiennes of his room, and later mingled with his 
dreams, tinging them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, 
a sort of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance-music, even 
the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.
A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he caught a 
last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he waved a polite 
farewell to them with a sensible relief. It was a week in which Mrs. 
Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her husband had made no secret 
of the willingness with which he had accepted Rainham's escort for the 
indefatigable lady amongst the miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving 
him free to study the picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he 
preferred. And a week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, 
was not good for any man to undergo.
Nor was Mrs. Dollond's verdict upon their acquaintance, who had become for 
the space of seven days an intimate, more complimentary.
"I suppose he was better than nobody," she remarked with philosophy as they 
made their way up the terrace. "He looked after my stakes, and did not play 
much himself, and was always at hand; but he was really very dull."
"Better than me, I suppose you mean, my dear?" suggested her husband 
humorously. "Was he so dull? You ought to know: I really have hardly spoken 
to him."
"Don't be absurd!" she remarked absently. Then she said a little abruptly: 
"It seems funny, now that one knows him, that there should be those 
stories."
"Stories? About Rainham?"
Her husband glanced at her with some surprise.
"Yes," she said. "Of course, you never know anything; but he is talked 
about."
"Ah, poor man!" said Mr. Dollond. What has he done?"
Mrs. Dollond's fair eyebrows were arched significantly, and Mrs. Dollond's 
gay shoulders shrugged with a gesture of elision, in which the essence of 
many scandals, generated and discussed in the discreet undertones of the 
ladies' hour, was nicely distributed.
"Don't be dense, Hugh! It is quite notorious!"
Mr. Dollond laughed his broad, tolerant laugh.
"Well," he said, "I should never have thought it."
Rainham, reaching his hotel the same afternoon, met Mrs. Engel in the hall; 
her formal bow, in which frosty disapproval of the sin, and a widow's 
tenderness for the middle-aged sinner, if repentant, were discreetly 
mingled, amused if it scarcely flattered him. He was still smiling at his 
recollection of the interview when the Swiss porter, accosting him in 
elaborately bad English, informed him that a lady and gentleman, who had 
left on the previous evening, had made particular inquiries after him. The 
name, he confessed, escaped him, but if Monsieur pleased - He produced the 
visitors' book, in which Rainham read, scarcely now with surprise, the 
brief inscription, 'Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark, from Cannes.'


Chapter 17

There was a ceaseless hum of voices in the labyrinth of brilliant rooms, 
with their atmosphere of transient spring sunshine and permeating faint 
odour of fresh paint. Few people came to see the pictures, which covered 
the walls with a crude patchwork of seas and goddesses, portraits and 
landscapes: those that by popular repute were worth seeing had been 
exhibited already to the people who were now invited to view them, at the 
studios on Show Sunday and on the Outsiders' Day. One entered the gloomy 
gates of Burlington House on the yearly occasion of the Private View 
because it was, socially, a great public function; in order to see the 
celebrities, who were sure to be there, from the latest actress to the 
newest bishop. In one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty 
impressions on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; 
in another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a 
patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The providers 
of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives and daughters; the 
artist often affects to despise the occasion, and contents himself with a 
general survey - frequently limited to his own pictures - on Varnishing 
Day.
The Hanging Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark's Academy picture. 
When it was passed in review before these veterans, after a long procession 
of inanely smiling portraits, laboured wooden landscapes, and 
preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of satiated boredom and 
damnation of draughts, which variously pervaded the little row of 
arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated. There was a movement of chairs, 
followed by an exchange of complimentary murmurs; and the picture was 
finally niched into a space which happened to fit it between two life-size 
portraits on the line in one of the smaller rooms.
On the fashionable afternoon Lightmark's work was never without the little 
admiring crowd which denotes a picture of more than usual interest. The 
canvas, which had loomed so large in the new studio in Grove Road, was 
smaller than many of its neighbours, but its sombre strength of colour, 
relieved by the pale, silvery gold of its wide frame, and the white dresses 
of the ladies portrayed in the pictures on either side, made it at once 
noticeable.
The critics next day referred to it as a nocturne in black and gold, and 
more than one of the daily journals contained an enthusiastic description 
of the subject - an ocean-steamer entering a Thames graving-dock at night-
time, with torchlight effects, and a mist on the river.
Eve fluttered delightedly from room to room with her mother, recurring 
always to the neighbourhood of her husband's picture, and receiving 
congratulations by the score. It had been a disappointment to her when her 
husband, at the eleventh hour, expressed his inability to be present; but 
even Mrs. Sylvester's remonstrances had failed to move him, and the two 
ladies had come under the Colonel's escort.
"I didn't know your husband was so nervous," said Mrs. Dollond sceptically. 
"Is this the effect of matrimony?Ö Oh, Mrs. Lightmark, do look at that 
creature in peacock blue! Did you ever see such a gown? Have you seen my 
husband's pictures? He's got one in every room, nearly. Between you and me, 
they're all of them pretty bad; but so long as people don't know any 
better, and buy them, what does it matter? Ah, Colonel Lightmark, how do 
you do? Of course I've seen your nephew's picture. I've been saying all 
sorts of nice things about it to Mrs. Lightmark."
"It's pretty good, I suppose," suggested the Colonel radiantly. "Have you 
seen the Outcry this week? There's no end of a good notice about it, and 
about your husband's pictures, too."
"Really? I wonder who wrote it. I must ask him to dinner, if he's 
respectable. We never read critiques nowadays. They're so dreadfully rude 
to Academicians, you know - always talking about 'pot-boilers,' and 
suggesting that they ought to retire on their laurels. As if laurels were 
any good! One can't keep a carriage on laurels."
"No, by Jove! it wouldn't be good for the horses. I say, though, Mrs. 
Dollond, is one supposed to go through all the rooms?"
"Oh yes," replied the lady composedly; "all except the water-colours, and 
sculpture, and architecture. One only goes there to flirt, as a rule. 
Personally, I always get up the pictures from 'Academy Notes,' when I 
haven't seen them at the studios, you know. Yes; I should like some tea, 
please, since Mrs. Lightmark has deserted you. Is that Lady Garnett with 
her? What lovely white hair! I wonder where she gets it."
Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders a little petulantly after she had made 
the ghost of a return to Mrs. Dollond's airy greeting.
"My dear," she said, turning to Eve confidentially, "may I confess to you 
that I am not altogether too fond of that woman? Is she a great friend of 
yours, or don't you know her well enough to abuse her? I like the husband; 
he amuses me, though he is rather a bear. Otherwise, I should not see very 
much of Mrs. Dollond, I promise you."
Eve smiled at the thought of Mr. Dollond's eccentricities, and then her 
face grew rather grave.
"Shall we go into the lecture-room?" she suggested. "It is cooler there 
among the statues, and perhaps we shall be able to sit down."
The old lady assented with alacrity.
"Yes," she said; "by all means let us leave these painty pictures, and we 
will have a chat; you shall tell me of your wanderings. Apropos, did you 
see anything of our friend Philip? His last letter - a long time ago; he is 
becoming a bad correspondent - struck me as rather triste, even for him. 
I'm afraid he is not well."
"Yes," said Eve slowly; "we went over to Bordighera one day while we were 
at Cannes, and we stayed a night at the hotel, but we didn't see Mr. 
Rainham. He had gone over to Monte Carlo."
"Ah, poor fellow, what an idea! I wonder what dragged him there."
Eve looked at the old lady questioningly for a minute.
"I think he went with the Dollonds," she answered gravely.
"Ah, my dear, no wonder his letter was dull! Then you didn't see him? Well, 
I suppose he will come back soon. You mustn't be jealous of him, you know. 
He is very much lie with your husband, isn't he?"
"I don't suppose he will see quite so much of him now."
There seemed to be a trace of weariness in the girl's voice as she 
answered, and Lady Garnett glanced at her sharply before she let her eyes 
continue their task of wandering in a kind of absent scrutiny of the 
sculptured exhibits in the room.
"But of course not.Ö How terrible all these great plaster figures are, and 
the busts, too! They are so dreary, they have the air of being made for a 
cemetery. Don't they make you think of tombstones and mausoleums?"
Eve looked at her a little wonderingly.
"Are they very bad? Do you know, I rather like them. Not so much as the 
pictures, of course; but, still, I think some of them are charming, though 
I am rather glad Dick isn't a sculptor. Don't you like that? What is it - 
Bacchus on a panther?"
"My dear, you are quite right," said the old lady decisively, dropping her 
tortoise-shell lorgnon into her lap, and suppressing a yawn. "Only, it is 
you who are charming! I must go to the Grosvenor as soon as it opens to see 
if your clever husband, who seems to be able to paint everything and 
everybody, has done you justice.Ö But you mustn't sit talking to an old 
grumbler like me any longer. Go back to your picture; Mr. Dollond will 
pilot you. And if you encounter Mary on the way, tell her that a certain 
discontented old lady of her acquaintance waits to be taken home. Au 
revoir."
About five minutes later Mary Masters found her aunt half asleep. The paint 
had made her stupid, she said. She could understand now why painters did 
not improve as they grew older: it was the smell of the paint.
"Ah," she said, as they passed out into the busy whirl of Piccadilly, "how 
glad I shall be to get back to my Masons and Corots. Though I like that 
pretty little Mrs. Lightmark.Ö Poor Philip! Now tell me whom you saw. 
Charles Sylvester, of course? But no, I am too sleepy now; you shall tell 
me all about it after dinner."
It was six o'clock before the Colonel was able to deposit his bulky 
military person rather stiffly on a cushioned seat, and to remove his 
immaculate silk hat, with an expression of weary satisfaction. He had 
devoted all the sunny spring afternoon (when he might have been at 
Hurlingham, or playing whist at the 'Rag') to making his way, laboriously 
and apologetically, from room to room in search of friends and 
acquaintances, whom, when found. he would convoy strategically into the 
immediate vicinity of No. 37 in the First Room.
"My nephew's picture," he explained; "nice thing! I don't know much about 
painting" (he called it paintin') "and art, and all that sort of thing, but 
I believe it's about as good as they make them."
He had accepted all the inconsistent, murmured criticism almost as a 
personal tribute; and for the greater part at least of the afternoon his 
beaming face had completely belied the discomfort occasioned by his severe 
frock-coat and tightly-fitting patent-leather boots; and his yearning for a 
comfortable chair, with a box of cigars and a whisky-and-seltzer at his 
elbow, had been suppressed, rigidly and heroically.
"I suppose it's devilish good," he thought, as he sat waiting for the rest 
of his party. "People seem to admire those splashes of yellow and black, 
and all those dirty colours. Personally, I think I prefer the girl in white 
next door. Hullo, there's Eve!"
"Don't get up, Colonel," said Mrs. Sylvester; "we want to sit here for a 
little and hear what people say about Richard's picture. They make such 
amusing remarks sometimes! Not always complimentary; but, then, they often 
don't know anything about art."
"Yes," said Eve, seating herself, with a delicate consideration for the new 
dress which the occasion had demanded, between the Colonel and her mother; 
"we heard someone say that the flesh in that big Roman picture with the 
temple, you know - I can't pronounce the name - was like cotton wool - pink 
cotton wool! Oh, and that the girl in black, with the yellow fan, whose 
portrait is in the big room, must be at least eight feet high!"
"Now, how the dickens could he tell that!" interposed the Colonel.
"Oh, he was talking very learnedly, about heads and things. How provoking 
of that old gentleman in the gold spectacles! Standing just in front of 
Dick's picture with his back to it. He looks just exactly like a 
millionaire, and he won't look, and he's preventing other people from 
looking! Do turn him round, uncle, or move him on, or something!"
"Do you see that man there?" whispered Mrs. Sylvester presently, "the tall 
man with the sandy hair and beard? I think he's a painter. He said just now 
that Richard's picture was amazingly good, and that he thought he knew 
where he got the idea from."
"Why, of course," said the Colonel carelessly, "Dick got the idea from that 
beggar what's-his-name's dock - and a thundering good idea too! I wonder 
what time they close? Perhaps - "
"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester, buttoning her gloves, "I suppose we had better 
go."
The room was nearly empty when McAllister passed before his friend's 
picture again, after a satisfactory interview with a gentleman from Bond 
Street on the subject of one of his own. McAllister, whose criticism Mrs. 
Sylvester had overheard and reported, had recently been elected Associate, 
owing the honour, according to some malicious people, more to his 
nationality than to his merit as a painter of cattle and landscapes. The 
Outcry, indeed, with reference to this promotion, and the continued neglect 
of older artists of greater public repute, had suggested, with its usual 
impertinence, that the motto of 'Lasciate ogni speranza,' which was 
reported in certain circles to be almost visibly inscribed over the door of 
the Academicians' Committee-room, should be supplemented by the legend 'No 
English need apply.'
"It's good," he said reflectively, as he stopped in front of the picture, 
with something like a chuckle on his lips, and a twinkle in his shrewd gray 
eyes. "More than good. You can see the clever French trick in every line of 
it, and they'll call it one of the pictures of the year. So it is, though 
there are dozens in the vaults downstairs worth two of it. But I thought 
this was Oswyn's subject? He was always talking about it. Well, I should 
like to see what he would have made of it!"


Chapter 18

As the clock struck five Rainham looked up with an air of relief, flipping 
negligently across the table the heap of papers which had occupied him 
since lunch-time.
"We must go into this some other time, Bullen," he remarked with a certain 
petulance. "I confess things look rather bad; but I suppose they can hold 
over till tomorrow?"
The foreman assented dubiously, gathering together the despised sheets, and 
preparing for departure.
"I've done my best. sir," he said a little sullenly; "but it is difficult 
for things to go smoothly when the master is always away; and you never 
will take no notice of business letters, you know, sir."
"Yes, yes," said Rainham wearily; "I am sure you have, Bullen. If I go into 
the Bankruptcy Court, as you so frequently prophesy. it will be entirely my 
own fault. In the meantime you might tell your wife to send me up some tea 
- for two, Bullen. please. Mr. Oswyn will be up presently."
The man retired, shutting the door with some ardour. Rainham rose, and, 
with the little expansive shrug with which he usually discarded his 
commercial worries, wandered towards the window. The dock was empty and 
desolate; the rain, which had prevailed with a persistent dreariness since 
the morning, built morasses at regular intervals along the dock-side, and 
splashed unceasingly into the stagnant green water which collected in slack 
seasons within the dock-gates. The dockman stood, one disconsolate figure 
in the general blankness, with his highboots and oilskins, smoking a short 
clay pipe by the door of the engine-room; and further out, under the 
dripping dome of an umbrella, sat Oswyn in a great pea-jacket, smoking, 
painting the mist, the rain, the white river with its few blurred barges 
and its background of dreary warehouses, in a supreme disregard of the dank 
discomfort of his surroundings.
Rainham had tapped three times against the streaming pane before he 
succeeded in attracting his attention, and then the painter only responded 
to the wonted signal by an impatient, deprecating flourish of the hand 
which held the palette. The tea was already simmering on the rickety table 
in the bow-window, when Oswyn, staggering under his impedimenta, climbed 
the staircase, and shouldered his way familiarly into the room.
"How fearfully wet you must be!" said his host lazily from the depths of an 
armchair. "Help yourself to a pair of slippers and a dry coat, and have 
some tea. It's strong enough even for you by this time."
The other had disembarrassed himself of his dripping jacket and overalls, 
and now kicked off his shoes, with a short laugh. He was never a great 
talker in the daytime, and the dreary charm of the river world outside was 
still upon him. He dropped the sketch upon which he had been working rather 
contemptuously against the wall, where Rainham could see it, and selected a 
pair of slippers from quite a small heap in the corner by the fireplace.
"I don't mind your seeing my work, because you don't talk about it," he 
said, glancing at Rainham quickly. "I hate people who try to say 
complimentary things; they don't often mean them, and when they do they 
talk absolute rot."
"Yes," said the other sympathetically. "Shall I put a slice of lemon in 
your tea? I suppose I must live up to my reputation and say nothing about 
the sketch. But I must have it when it's finished! It's always most 
embarrassing to have to pay personal compliments, though I suppose some 
people like them."
The painter grunted inarticulately between two sips of tea.
"Like them! Don't your society artists and authors simply wallow in them? 
Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a puddle. Ah, 
thanks.Ö That's a pretty face. Whose is it?"
The cigarette case which Rainham handed to his guest was a well-worn 
leather one, a somewhat ladylike article, with a photograph fitted into the 
dividing flap inside. Before answering the question he looked at the 
photograph absently for a moment, when the case had been returned to him.
"It's not a very good photograph. It's meant for - for Mrs. Lightmark, when 
she was a little girl. She gave me the case with the portrait years ago, in 
Florence."
Oswyn glanced at him curiously and shrewdly through a thin haze of blue 
smoke, watching him restore the faded little receptacle almost 
reverentially to the breast-pocket of his coat.
"Have you been to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked suddenly, after a 
silent pause, broken only by the ceaseless lashing of the window by the 
raindrops.
Rainham looked up with a start, half puzzled, seeking and finding an 
explanation in the faint conscious humour which loosened the lines about 
the speaker's mouth.
"The Chamber of - Do you mean the R.A.? You do, you most irreverent of 
mortals! No, I have not been yet. Will you go with me?"
"Heaven forbid! I have been once."
"You have? And they didn't scalp you?"
"I didn't stay long enough, I suppose. I only went to see one picture - 
Lightmark's.
"Ah, that's just what I want to see! And you know I still have a weakness 
for the show. I expect you would like the new Salon better."
"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many 
abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."
Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.
"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.
"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is triste as a well, and 
full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had a picture there 
this time, and I went to look at it."
"In the new Salon?"
"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by two, 
and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a scene-painter," 
he went on a little savagely; "I don't paint with a broom, and I have no 
ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall 
exhibit there again until the vogue alters. Oh, they are clever enough, 
those fellows! even the trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing 
they learn here, and one or two are men of genius. But I should dearly like 
to set them down, en plein air too, if they insist upon it, with the 
palette of Velasquez. I went out and wandered in the Morgue afterwards, and 
I confess its scheme of colour rested my eyes."
"Do I know your picture?" asked Rainham to change the subject, finding him 
a little grim. "Is it the thing you were doing here?"
Oswyn's head rested on one thin, colour-stained hand which shaded his eyes.
"No," he said with a suggestion of constraint, "it was an old sketch which 
I had worked up - not the thing you knew. I shall not finish that - "
"Not finish it!" cried Rainham. "But of course you must! why, it was 
superb; it promised a masterpiece!"
"To tell you the truth," said Oswyn, I can't finish it. I have painted it 
out."
Rainham glanced at him with an air of consternation, of reproach.
"My dear fellow," he said, "you are impossible! What in the world possessed 
you to do such a mad thing?"
The painter hesitated a moment, looking at him irresolutely beneath his 
heavy knitted brows.
"I meant to tell you," he said, after a while; "but on the whole I think I 
would rather not. It is rather an unpleasant subject, Rainham, and if you 
don't mind we will change it."
Oswyn had risen from his chair, with his wonted restlessness, and was 
gazing out upon the lazy evening life of the great river. The monotonous 
accompaniment to their conversation, which had been so long sustained by 
the drip and splash outside, had grown intermittent, and now all but 
ceased; while a faint tinge of yellowish white upon the ripples, and a 
feathery rift in the gray dome of sky, announced a final effort on the part 
of the setting sun.
The yard door swung noisily on its hinges, and a light step and voice 
became audible, and the sound of familiar conference with the dockman. 
Rainham lifted his head inquiringly, and Oswyn, shrugging his shoulders, 
left the window and regained his seat, picking up his sketch on the way.
"Yes," he said in answer to a more direct inquiry on the other's part, "I 
think it was Lightmark."
Almost as he spoke there was a step on the stair, followed by a boisterous 
knock at the door, and Dick entered effusively.
"Well, mon vieux, how goes it? Why, you're all in the dark! They didn't 
tell me you were engaged.Ö Oh, is that you, Oswyn? How do you do?"
"Quite an unexpected pleasure?" suggested Oswyn sardonically, nodding over 
his shoulder at the new-comer from his seat by the fire.
Rainham's greeting had been far more cordial, and he till held his friend's 
hand between his own, gazing inquiringly into his face, as if he wished to 
read something there.
"Yes, I am back, you see," he said presently, when Dick had found himself a 
chair. "I have been here two days, and I was just beginning to think of 
looking you up. I was very sorry to miss you at Bordighera. How is Eve? 
It's very good of you to come all this way to see me; you must be pretty 
busy."
"Oh, Eve is tremendously well! Thanks, no, I won't have any tea, but you 
might give me a whisky-and-soda. I had to come down into these wilds to 
look at a yacht which we think of taking for the summer. Quite a small 
one," he added half apologetically, as he detected the faint amused 
surprise in the other's expression; "and as I found myself here, with a few 
minutes to spare before my train goes, I thought I would look in, on the 
off chance of finding you. How is business just now? The dock didn't strike 
me as looking much like work as I came in. Pretty stagnant, eh?"
Rainham shook his head.
"Oh, it's much as usual - perhaps a little more so! Bullen continues to 
threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it. Threatened men 
live long, you know."
"Oh, you're all right!" answered Dick genially. "As long as Bullen looks 
after you, you won't come to grief."
While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old 
associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously, preparing 
for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his hat in one hand 
and the tools of his trade under his arm.
"May I leave some of these things here, or will they be in your way?"
"But you're not going?" said Rainham, rising from his seat with a 
constraining gesture; "why, don't you remember we were going to dine 
together? Dick will stay too, n'est ce pas? It will be like old times. Mrs. 
Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!"
Oswyn paused irresolutely.
"Don't let me drive you away," said Dick. "In any case I'm going myself in 
a few minutes. Yes," he added, turning to Rainham. "I'm very sorry, but 
I've got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall have to catch a train 
in, let me see, about ten minutes."
"Really? Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won't be 
left alone at any price. That's right. Now, Dick, tell me what you have 
been doing. and especially all about your Academy picture; I haven't seen 
even a critique of it. Of course it's a success? Have you sold it?"
"Oh, spare my modesty!" protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with a quick 
glance at Oswyn. "It's all right, but we mustn't talk shop."
"Yes, for God's sake spare his modesty!" supplemented the other painter 
almost brutally. "Look at his blushes. It isn't so bad as all that, 
Lightmark."
"I don't even know the subject," pursued Rainham. "You might at least tell 
me what it was. Was it the canvas which you wouldn't show me, just before I 
went away - at the studio? The one about which you made such a mystery - ?"
"Oh bosh, old man!" interrupted Dick hurriedly, "I never made any mystery. 
It - it wasn't that. It's quite an ordinary subject, one of the river 
scenes which I sketched here. You had better go and see it. And come and 
see us. You know the address. I must be off!"
"Wait a minute," interposed Oswyn, with a cadence in his voice which struck 
Rainham as the signal of something surpassing his wonted eccentricity. 
"Don't go yet. I said just now, Rainham, that I wouldn't tell you why I had 
painted out that picture, the picture which I had been fool enough to talk 
about so much, which I had intended to make a masterpiece. Well, I have 
changed my mind. I think you ought to know. Perhaps you would prefer to 
tell him?" he added, turning savagely to Lightmark, and speaking fast and 
loud, with the curious muscular tremor which betokens difficult restraint. 
"No? Of course you will have the impudence to pretend that the conception 
was yours. Yes, curse you! you are quite capable of swearing that it was 
all yours - subject and treatment too.Ö But you can't deny that you heard 
me talking of the thing night after night at the club, when I have no doubt 
you hadn't even begun on your bastard imitation. One of the pictures of the 
year as they call it, as you and your damned crew of flatterers and critics 
call it.Ö"
He stopped for breath, clutching at the table with one hand and letting the 
other, which had been upraised in denunciation, fall at his side. He had 
meant to be calm, to limit himself strictly to an explanation; but in the 
face of his wrong and the wrong-doer the man's passionate nature had broken 
loose. Now, when he already half repented of the violence with which he had 
profaned the house of his friend, his eyes fell upon Rainham, and he felt 
abashed before the expression of pain which he had called into the other's 
face.
"I don't know what all this means," said Rainham wearily, turning from 
Oswyn to Dick as he spoke; "but surely it is all wrong? Be quiet, Dick; you 
needn't say anything. If Oswyn is accusing you of plagiarism, of stealing 
his ideas, I can't believe it. I can't believe you meant to wrong him. The 
same thing must have occurred to both of you. Why, Oswyn, surely you see 
that? You have both been painting here, and you were both struck in the 
same way. Nothing could be simpler."
Now Lightmark seemed to assume a more confident attitude, to become more 
like himself; and he was about to break the chain of silence, which had 
held him almost voiceless throughout Oswyn's attack, when Rainham again 
interrupted him.
"I am sure you needn't say anything, Dick. We all know Oswyn; he - he 
wasn't serious. Go and catch your train, and forget all about it."
The first words which Rainham spoke recalled to Oswyn the powerful reason 
which had determined him to preserve his old neutrality, and to make an 
offering of silence upon the altar of his regard for the only man with whom 
he could feel that he had something in common. If his vengeance could have 
vented itself upon a single victim, it would have fallen, strong and sure; 
but it was clear to his calmer self that this could not be; the 
consequences would be too far-reaching, and might even recoil upon himself. 
After all, what did it matter? There was a certain luxury in submission to 
injustice, a pleasure in watching the bolt of Nemesis descend when his 
hands were guiltless of the launching. And as he struggled with himself, 
hunting in retrospect for some excuse for what his passion railed at as 
weakness, a last straw fell into the scale, for he thought of the faded 
portrait in the cigarette-case.


Chapter 19

"My dear!" said Lady Garnett, accepting a cup of tea from the hands of her 
niece, and regarding her at the same time, from her low cushioned chair, 
with a certain drollery. "do you know that it is exactly one week since Mr. 
Sylvester called?"
Mary Masters' head was bent a little over her long Suede gloves - they had 
just returned from their afternoon drive in the Park - and she paused to 
remove her hat and veil before she replied.
"And it is at least three weeks since Mr. Rainham was here."
"Ah, poor Philip!" remarked the old lady, "he is always irregular; he may 
come, or he may not. I must ask him to dinner, by the way, soon. But I was 
talking of Mr. Sylvester, who is a model of punctuality. (Give me a piece 
of baba for Mefistofele, please!) Mr. Sylvester was here last Saturday, and 
the Saturday before that. I think it is highly probable, Mary, that we 
shall be honoured with a visit from Mr. Sylvester today."
"I hope not!" said the girl with some energy. "I have a couple of songs 
that I must positively try over before tonight. Surely, it is a little late 
too, even for Mr. Sylvester?"
"It is barely half-past five," said Lady Garnett, lazily feeding her pug, 
"and he knows that we do not dine till eight. Resign yourself, cherie; he 
will certainly come."
She glanced across at the young girl, pointing, with her keen gaze, words 
which seemed trivial enough. And Mary, her calm forehead puckered with a 
certain vague annoyance which she disdained to analyse, understood 
perfectly all that the elder lady was too discreet to say. She sat for a 
little while, her hands resting idly in her lap, or smoothing the creases 
out of her long, soft gloves. Then she rose and moved quickly across to 
Lady Garnett's side, and knelt suddenly down by her chair.
"Ah, my aunt!" she cried impulsively, "tell me what is to be done?"
Lady Garnett glanced up from the novel into which she had subsided; she 
laid it on the little tea-table with a sigh of relief at this sudden mood 
of confidence, coming a little strangely amidst the young girl's habitual 
reticence.
"We will talk, my dear," she said, "now you are practical. I suppose, by 
the way, he has not proposed?"
Mary shook her head.
"That is it, Aunt Marcelle! That is exactly what I want to prevent. Is - is 
he going to?"
Lady Garnett smiled, and her smile had a very definite quality indeed.
"I would not cherish any false hopes, my dear. Charles Sylvester is a young 
man - not so very young though, by the way - whose conclusions are very 
slow, but when they arrive, mon Dieu! they are durable. I am sure he is 
terribly tenacious. It took him a long time to conclude that he was in love 
with you; at first, you know, he was a little troubled about your fortune, 
but at last he came to that conclusion - at Lucerne."
"Oh, at Lucerne!" protested the young girl with a nervous laugh. "Surely 
not there!"
"It was precisely at Lucerne," continued Lady Garnett, "that he decided you 
would make him an adorable wife, and, in effect, it was a considerable 
piece of wisdom. And since then his conclusions have been more rapid. The 
last has been that he will certainly marry you - with or without a dot - 
before the elections. You are serious, you know. my dear, though not so 
serious as he believes; you are a girl of intelligence, and he is going to 
stand for some place or other, and candidates with clever wives often 
obtain a majority over candidates who are clever but have no wives. Yes, my 
dear, he is certainly going to propose. You may postpone it by the use of 
great tact for a month or so; you will hardly do so for longer"
"I don't want to postpone it," said Mary ruefully; "if it be inevitable, I 
would sooner have it over."
"It will never be over," remarked Lady Garnett decisively. "Did I not say 
that he was tenacious - comme on ne l'est plus? You may refuse him once - 
twice; it will all be to go over again and again, until you end by 
accepting him."
"Oh, Aunt Marcelle!" protested the young girl, with a little flush of 
righteous wrath.
"After all," continued the elder lady, ignoring her interruption, "are you 
so very sure that - that it would not do? There are many worse men in the 
world than Sylvester. Both my husbands were profligates, in addition to 
being fools. At any rate, this dear Charles is very correct. And remember 
the poor man is really in love with you."
"I know," said Mary plaintively; "that is why I am so sorry. He is a good 
man, a conscientious man, and a gentleman; and really, sometimes lately he 
has been quite simple and nice. Only - "
Lady Garnett completed the sentence for her with an impartial shrug.
"Only he is perfectly ridiculous, and as a lover quite impossible? My dear, 
I grant it you with all my heart, and I think he has all the qualities 
which make an excellent husband."
As the young girl was still silent, unconvinced, she went on after a little 
while:
"You know, Mary, I have never tried to marry you. Frankly, my dear, I do 
not believe very much in pushing marriages. My own, and most others that I 
have known intimately, might have been very reasonably made - let us say - 
in purgatory. But a girl must marry some time or other, if she be rich. And 
you will have plenty of money, my poor child! You shall do exactly as you 
please, but I must admit that Charles is a most unobjectionable parti. 
After all, there is only one other man I would sooner give you to, Mary, 
and he is impossible."
"Aunt Marcelle! Aunt Marcelle!" pleaded the young girl faintly, her dark 
head bent very low now over the arm of the chair.
Lady Garnett had been talking so far in a somewhat desultory fashion, 
interspersing her words with brief caresses to the pug who was curled up in 
her lap. Now she put down the little dog with a brusqueness which hurt his 
dignity; he pawed fretfully at Mary's dress, and, attracting no attention, 
trotted off to his basket on the rug, where he settled himself with a short 
growl of discontent. And Lady Garnett, with a sudden change of tone and a 
new tenderness in her voice, just stooped a little and touched the young 
girl's forehead with her thin lips.
"My poor child!" she said, "my dear little Mary! Did you suppose I didn't 
know? Did you think I was blind, as well as very old, that I shouldn't see 
the change in you, and guess why?"
"Ah!" cried the girl with a break in her voice. "What are you saying? What 
do you make me say?"
"Nothing! nothing!" said the old lady: "you need not tell me anything. It 
is only I who tell you - like the old immortal in Daudet, J'ai vu ca moi! - 
and it will pass as everything passes. That is not the least sad part, 
though now you will hardly believe it. You see, I don't lie to you; I tell 
you quite plainly that it is no good. Some men are made so - vois tu, ma 
cherie! - to see only one woman, an inaccessible one, when they seem to see 
many, and he would be like that. Only it is a pity. And yet who would have 
foreseen it - that he should charm you, Mary? He so tired and old and use - 
for he is old for you, dear, though he might be my son - with his humorous, 
indolent, mocking talk and his great sad eyes. It's wicked of me, Mary, but 
I love you for it; so few girls would have cared, for he is a wretched 
match. And I blame myself, too."
"Because I am foolish and utterly ashamed?" cried the girl from her 
obscurity, in a hard. small voice which the other did not know.
"Foolish!" she exclaimed. "Well, we women are all that, and some men - the 
best of them. But ashamed? Because you have a wise mother, my darling, who 
guesses things? I have never had any children but you and him. And no one 
but I can ever know. No; I was sorry because I had to hurt you. But it was 
best, my dear, because you are so strong. Yes, you are strong, Mary!"
"Am I?" said the girl wearily "What is the good of it, I wonder? Except 
that it makes one suffer more and longer."
"No," said Lady Garnett. "It makes one show it less, and only that matters. 
Aren't we going to Lady Dulminster tonight? Ah, my dear, the play must go 
on; we mustn't spoil the fun with sour faces, masks, and dominos except now 
and then! Believe me, cherie, underneath it all we are much the same - very 
sad people. Only it wouldn't do to admit it. Life would be too terrible 
then. So we dance on and make believe we enjoy it, and by-and-by, if we 
play hard enough, we do believe it for a minute or two. From one point of 
view, you know, it is rather amusing."
Mary looked up at last; her eyes, shining out of the white face, seemed to 
have grown suddenly very large and bright.
"Does it go on always, Aunt Marcelle?" she asked with a child's directness.
"Always!" said Lady Garnett promptly. "Only there are interludes, and then 
sometimes one guest steals away with his bosom friend into a corner, and 
they look under each other's masks. But it isn't a nice sight, and it 
mustn't happen very often, else they wouldn't be back in their places when 
the music began. Ah, my child!" she broke off suddenly, "I am talking 
nonsense to amuse you, and making you sadder all the time. But, you know, I 
think nobody was ever consoled by consolations unless it were the 
consoler."
She drew the girl's blank face towards her, clasping the smooth brown head 
against her breast with two little hands on which the diamonds glittered.
"Cry, my dear!" she said at last; "that is the best of being young - that 
gift of tears. When one is old one laughs instead; but ah, mon Dieu! it is 
a queer kind of laughter."
They sat locked together in silence until the room was quite dark, lit only 
by the vague lamplight which shone in through the fine lace curtains from 
the street. Then Mary rose and played a little, very softly, in the 
darkness, morsels of Chopin, until the footman came in with a bright lamp, 
announcing that dinner was on the table. And Charles Sylvester had not 
arrived.
He atoned for this breach of his habit, however, on the morrow, by making 
an early call upon the two ladies, whom he found alone, immediately after 
luncheon. He was very clean shaven, very carefully dressed, and with his 
closely buttoned frock-coat and his irreproachable hat, which he held 
ponderously in his hand during his protracted visit, he had the air of 
having come immediately from church.
Lady Garnett taxed him with this occupation presently, suppressing her 
further thought that he looked still more like an aspirant to matrimony, 
and Charles admitted the impeachment; he had been in the morning with his 
sister, Mrs. Lightmark, to the Temple Church. His severe gaze was turned 
inquiringly upon Mary. Lady Garnett responded for her a little flippantly.
"Oh, Mary went nowhere this morning, Mr. Sylvester - not even to the church 
parade. We were very late last night, at Lady Dulminster's. London grows 
later and later; we shall be dining at midnight soon."
"I should like to go to the Temple Church sometimes," said Mary, "because 
of the singing, only it is so very far."
Charles Sylvester bent forward with bland satisfaction; he had it so 
obviously on the tip of his tongue that he would be charmed to be her 
escort, that the girl hastened to interrupt him.
"You were not at Lady Dulminster's, Mr. Sylvester? We quite expected to see 
you."
"If I had known that you were to be there!" he exclaimed. Then he added: "I 
had a card, and, indeed, I fully intended to look in. But one is always so 
pressed for time just before the long vacation, and yesterday I was quite 
exhausted. Did you see any of my people?"
"Yes," said Mary, "Eve was there; we expected her to play. It is a very 
musical house."
"Ah, yes! I have heard so from my sister, and from Colonel Lightmark. He 
says that Lady Dulminster is really a most accomplished woman."
"He looks as if he found her charming," put in Lady Garnett with a shrug. 
Then she added, suppressing a yawn, her thin fingers dallying regretfully 
with the leaves of her novel: "I suppose your exertions are nearly over, 
Mr. Sylvester. You will be going away soon?"
He shook his head gravely.
"I fear not for long. I may have a week's cruise with my brother-in-law - 
you know, he has a yacht for the summer - but my labours are only 
beginning. I have the elections in view. You agree with me, no doubt, Lady 
Garnett, that the Government is bound to go to the country in the autumn; 
you know, of course, that I am thinking of standing for --."
"I congratulate you in advance, Mr. Sylvester! I am sure you will get in, 
especially if you have your sister down to canvass."
"I am afraid Eve is not sufficiently interested in politics to be of much 
assistance," said the candidate. Then he went on, a little nervously, 
pulling at his collar: "You will wish me success, Miss Masters?"
"Oh yes!" said the girl hastily; "I am sure we both wish you that, Mr. 
Sylvester. We shall be most interested, shall we not, Aunt Marcelle?"
Lady Garnett came to her assistance with smiling promptitude.
"Of course, Mr. Sylvester; we will even wear your colours, if they are 
becoming, you know; and I am sure you would not fight under any others. 
And, mind, we will have no reforms - unless you like to try your hand on 
the climate. But nothing else! You are so fond of reforming, you English - 
even the most Conservative of you - that I live in constant fear of being 
reformed away. I hope, Mr. Sylvester, you are more Conservative than that."
Charles Sylvester flushed a little; he cleared his throat elaborately 
before he replied:
"I fear I have failed to make myself understood, Lady Garnett; in no sense 
do I call myself a Conservative, though I am prepared to vote with the 
party on the Irish Question. I am a Liberal Unionist, Lady Garnett. I may 
almost call myself a Radical Unionist. My views on the emancipation of 
labour, for instance, are quite advanced. I am prepared - "
Mary interrupted him, absently, demurely, with a little speech that 
appeared to be a quotation.
"Labour is a pretty beast in its cage to the philanthropic visitor with 
buns; its temper is better understood of the professional keeper."
Lady Garnett arched her eyebrows pensively; Charles looked surprised, 
displeased; Mary hastened to explain, blushing a little:
"I beg your pardon! the phrase is Mr. Rainham's. I believe it is the only 
political principle he has."
Charles' displeasure at the maxim cooled to lofty disdain of its author.
"Ah, yes! - pretty, but cynical, as I should say most of Mr. Rainham's 
principles were."
Lady Garnett was aroused out of her state of vacant boredom for the first 
time into a certain interest. Mary sat, her hands clasped in her lap, the 
flush just dying away out of her pale cheeks, while Mr. Sylvester embarked 
upon an elaborate disquisition of his principles and his programme - it 
might have been an expansion of his parliamentary address - which the elder 
lady, whom a chance phrase had started upon a new line of thought, scarcely 
considered.
"Does he know?" she asked herself. "Has this rather stupid young man grown 
suddenly acute enough to be jealous?" Certainly there had been a flash, a 
trace of curious rancour in his brief mention of Rainham's name, for which 
it was scarcely easy to account. That the two men, in spite of their long 
juxtaposition, had never been more than acquaintances, had never been in 
the least degree friends, she was perfectly well aware; it was not in the 
nature of either of them to be more intimately allied.
Rainham's indolent humour and fantastic melancholy, his genial disregard of 
popularity or success, could not but be displeasing to a man so precise and 
practical as the barrister. Only now she had scented, had dimly perceived 
beneath his speech, something more than the indefinable aversion of 
incompatible tempers, a very personal and present dislike. Had things 
passed between them, things of which she was ignorant? Was the sentiment, 
then, reciprocal? She hardly believed it: Rainham's placid temper gave to 
his largest hostilities the character merely of languid contempt; it was 
not worth the trouble to hate anyone, he had said to her so often - neither 
to hate nor to love. She could imagine him with infidelities on occasion to 
the last part of his rule; yes, she could imagine that - but for hatred, 
no! he had said rightly he was too indolent for that. It must be all on one 
side, then, as happens so frequently in life with love and hate, and the 
rest - all on one side. And the barrister had risen to take his leave 
before her reflections had brought her further than this.


Chapter 20

It must be admitted that when Lady Garnett insinuated, for the benefit of 
her half-incredulous inward counsellor, that Charles Sylvester, in spite of 
his almost aggressive panoply of self-assurance, had been smitten by the 
fever of jealousy, she fully sustained her reputation for perspicacity. Her 
conclusions were seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had 
professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of 
the wisdom of the serpent, was characterised far more by the somewhat 
stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, 
the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship 
undoubtedly was, to read him line upon line, like the most clearly printed 
of books. As in the case of a book, what one read was not always 
intelligible, and it might even on occasion be necessary to read between 
the obvious lines; but in this particular instance the page contained no 
cryptogram, and the astute old lady had read it without her spectacles.
Charles was jealous; he had not insulted himself by admitting it even for 
an instant, but he was jealous; and his jealousy was more than the roving 
fever of all lovers, in that it had a definite, tangible object.
It would have been contrary to his nature to allow either his love or the 
ensuing passion to interfere in any way with his professional duties or 
instincts; he was a lawyer, and an embryo Member of Parliament first, a man 
afterwards; and it was not until late in the afternoon of the day which 
followed his last recorded interview with Lady Garnett and her niece that 
he dismissed from his brain the complexities of 'Brown and another versus 
Johnson,' and drew from an orderly mental pigeon-hole the bundle of papers 
bearing the neat endorsement, 'Re Miss Masters.' When, to the ecstatic joy 
of his clerk, he had withdrawn himself from his chambers in Paper 
Buildings, and was walking briskly along the dusty Embankment in the 
direction of his club, he found himself, by a sequence which was natural, 
though he would have been the last to own it, already thinking of Rainham, 
and wondering, with a trace of dignified self-reproach, whether he had not 
been guilty of some remissness in the performance of his duty towards 
society, in the matter of that reprehensible individual and his aberrations 
from the paths of virtue. He did not stop to question himself too strictly 
as to the connection between his matrimonial aspirations and Rainham's 
peccadilloes; but he was able to assure himself that the assertion of his 
principles demanded a closer investigation, a more crucial analysis of 
certain ambiguous episodes.
"Supposing," he argued, "supposing Rainham had given signs of a desire to 
marry my sister, or my cousin, or any other girl in whom I was interested, 
or, in short, whom I knew, it would obviously have been my duty, before 
giving my consent or approval, to find out all about his relations with 
that girl, that person whom I saw with him in the park - ah, yes! Kitty, 
that was her name. And, in a way, don't I owe far more to society in 
general than I do to any of my immediate friends in particular? Well, then, 
I ought to know more about Kitty, so as to be prepared in case - that is, 
for emergencies.Ö Why, for all I know, I may have been suspecting Rainham 
all this time quite unjustly. I'm sure I hope so." Here he shook his head 
sorrowfully. "But I'm afraid there's not much chance of that. The question 
remains, how am I to find out anything? It's no good asking Rainham; that 
goes without saying. It would be equally useless to try Lightmark: they're 
as thick as thieves, and he's not the sort of man to be pumped very easily. 
And yet, if Rainham's friends are out of the question, what's to be done? 
He hasn't got any enemies - that sort of man never has, except himself. How 
can I get hold of the girl? I suppose some people would set a detective to 
watch Rainham, and so on; but that's not to be thought of, in this case." 
He stopped close to Cleopatra's Needle, and frowned abstractedly over the 
stone parapet, absently following the struggles of a boy who was 
laboriously working a great empty lighter across the wide, smoke-coloured 
river at a narrow angle with the shore. An idea suggested itself in 
flattering colours for a moment: he might pay a visit to the little 
restaurant or club in Turk Street, the shady place with a foreign name 
which he had forgotten. At the expense of a little tact, he might very 
probably succeed in inducing some of the careless, disreputable young 
artists who formed the frequentation of the place to talk about Rainham's 
amours. It even occurred to him that at a late hour Kitty herself might be 
seen there, dancing a can-can with Rainham, or singing songs with a riotous 
chorus. But in spite of this prospect, the notion was not sufficiently 
attractive. He had not enjoyed his introduction to the eccentric 
fraternity, on the occasion when he had been fired by Lightmark's early 
enthusiasm about the place to request to take him there to dine. He had 
felt, almost as much as the men to whom he was introduced, that he had no 
business there, that he was an outsider; he had even been snubbed. "And, 
after all," he said impatiently, resuming his homeward direction, "though 
I've got enough evidence to damn him twice over in the eyes of any man in 
the world, I suppose it wouldn't be enough to convince a woman, if she 
believed in him. I must get hold of Kitty - it's the only way to arrive at 
a certainty."
After much deliberation to the same effect, he determined, somewhat 
reluctantly, that there was nothing for it but to endeavour to enlist the 
sympathies of one of Rainham's more intimate friends. He had recurred by 
this time to the unstable hypothesis that he was acting primarily in 
Rainham's interest, that his real motive was to arrive at the truth on the 
chance that it might be favourable to his unadmitted rival. It only 
remained for him to select out of the limited material at his disposal the 
man whom he should invite to enter upon this alliance. And when he reached 
the gloomy library of the eminently respectable club where he was 
accustomed, before dining, to study the evening papers and to write his 
letters, the choice had been made; and after one or two abortive efforts, 
he composed to his satisfaction a diplomatic epistle, which he addressed to 
Oswyn (with whom he enjoyed a nodding acquaintance) at the restaurant in 
Turk Street.
Late in the afternoon of the next day Sylvester sat alone and expectant 
before a pile of temporarily neglected papers, telling himself that Rainham 
ought to be very grateful for these strenuous efforts in the interests of 
his injured reputation. He was beginning to wonder nervously whether Oswyn 
would fail him, when he heard a knock at the outer door, followed by an 
unfamiliar step, and the clerk announced that a gentleman wished to see him 
by appointment on private business. The barrister rose from his seat with a 
portentous display of polite, awkward cordiality, and motioned his guest 
into a chair.
"It's extremely good of you to take the trouble to come," he said 
tentatively.
"That depends upon what you want of me," answered Oswyn shrewdly. "You said 
in your note that it was on a matter of vital importance to a friend of 
mine. I haven't so many friends that I can afford to shirk a little trouble 
in a matter which vitally concerns one of them. May I ask, in the first 
place, who is the friend?"
Sylvester picked up the open brief which lay before him on the table and 
folded it scrupulously.
"Philip Rainham," he answered, and then shot a quick glance at Oswyn.
"Rainham?" echoed the other with an air suggestive at once of surprise and 
relief, as if, perhaps, he had been expecting to hear another name. "You 
are right, he is a friend," he added simply. "What can I do for him?"
"Well, the fact is, I'm afraid he's got into difficulties - a scrape, an 
imbroglio, with a woman!"
The painter lifted his expressive eyebrows incredulously.
"Since I last saw him - three days ago?"
"Oh dear no; the thing's been going on, I should say, for quite a long time 
- more than a year, to my knowledge."
Oswyn reflected for a moment, gazing at Sylvester with some suspicion.
"I don't think it troubles him much," he said brusquely. "Is it any 
business of mine - or of yours? Has he spoken to you about it?"
Sylvester uttered a hasty negative.
"Oh no! He is not the sort of man who would. But other people talk. You 
see, I'm afraid there's some sort of blackmail going on, and he oughtn't to 
submit to it. His friends oughtn't to allow it. If - if one could see the 
woman and frighten her a little - "
"Is that what you wanted me for?" asked Oswyn impatiently. "If so, allow me 
- "
The other hastened to reassure him.
"Oh no, not at all. But I thought you might be able to tell me where the 
person is to be found, her address, or something about her. I understand 
that she was a model; you probably know her.Ö"
The painter shrugged his shoulders.
"Who is she? What is her name?"
"Kitty - that's all I know."
"Kitty? Kitty Crichton, I suppose."
A light dawned on him; the name opened a door to many forgotten trivial 
incidents. He did not speak again for a minute, and when he broke the 
silence there was a harder tone in his voice, and he rose from his chair at 
the same time.
"I don't see how this can concern me, or you, either. You must pardon me if 
I say that I dislike meddling, and people who meddle."
Sylvester blushed hotly.
"You don't suppose I want to do him anything but good," he said 
diplomatically, trying to convince himself that he was not damaging the 
reputation for perfect candour which he hoped that he enjoyed. "It's not a 
pleasant task, but there are circumstances in which one has to sacrifice 
one's scruples - one's feelings."
Oswyn glanced at him again, with some contempt in the lines of his worn 
face.
"Excuse me if I refrain from sounding your motives."
Then he paused, fingering his soft felt hat. Suddenly his face was 
illumined by a remarkably grim smile, and it became evident to the man who 
was watching him so anxiously that there had occurred some change in his 
mental perspective.
"I don't quite understand why you brought me into this," he added, the 
smile still hovering very lightly on his lips. "However, under the 
circumstances, I think I can't do much harm by putting you in the way of 
finding Mrs. Crichton. Let me recommend you to inquire for her at the 
office of the Outcry, the newspaper - she used to work for it, I believe - 
in Took's Court. They will know her address there. Took's Court - it's only 
a few minutes' walk from here. Thanks, I can find my way out.Ö"
"I suppose that was rather a stupid thing to do," he said regretfully, as 
he stopped in the doorway below to light a cigarette, "though not such a 
betise as his, mon Dieu!Ö But I couldn't resist the temptation. Now, I 
wonder if he's clever enough to find out the truth?"


Chapter 21

The night was dark and still - so dark that above the tree-tops all was a 
soft, abysmal blank; so still that the Japanese lanterns scarcely swung on 
their strings among the apple-trees, and the leaves almost forgot to 
rustle. From the tent in the corner of the little garden (little, but large 
for a garden in London) the quaint, rapturous music of the Hungarian band 
floated in fitful extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously 
accompanying the murmur of many voices, the mingled pace of feet, and the 
lingering sweep of silken skirts upon the shadowed grass. The light 
streamed in broad, electric rays from the open windows of the low, wide 
house, and from the tall double doors of the studio, which had been added 
at the side, broken continually by the silhouettes of guests who entered 
the rooms or sought the cooler air outside, and dulling to the quiet glow 
of old stained glass the rich radiance of the fantastic coloured lanterns.
It was one of the series of summer evenings on which, according to the 
cards which had been so widely circulated, Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark were 'at 
home' to their friends, and to their friends' friends; and Rainham, who was 
a late arrival at the elaborate house in Grove Road, was able after a time 
to recognise many familiar faces, some of them almost forgotten, among 
those who had elected to be present. The rooms, in spite of the outlet 
afforded by the garden, were all surprisingly full; and after a hurried 
exchange of greetings, which Eve's duties as hostess had compelled her to 
curtail, he had passed through a jungle of brilliant toilettes and 
unfamiliar figures into the newly-built bright studio, where he had been 
told that he would find his friend. He had abundant leisure to corroborate 
the first impression of a splendour for which he was hardly prepared, which 
had seized him when he entered the hall and surrendered his coat to a 
courteous servant in livery, before Lightmark, radiant and flushed with 
success, singled him out in the corner to which he had retreated in 
loneliness.
"So glad to see you, old man! we were hoping you would turn up. Better late 
than never. Isn't it a crush? I assure you our evenings are becoming quite 
an institution. You will find scores of people you know here. Excuse my 
leaving you. Not much like the old studio days, eh? Afternoon tea with 
Copal's cups and saucers, and Mrs. Thingumy's tea-cakes. Your friend Lady 
Garnett is here somewhere - I'll be shot if I know where. Try the garden; 
you can get out this way. See you again later."
"All right, Dick," he answered with equanimity, smiling with a little 
inward amusement; "you look after your people. I will find my way about."
As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who 
strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the trees, or 
disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn, feeling himself vaguely 
exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of the posturing fiddlers, his 
eyes caressed by the soft glow of the Japanese lanterns, strung like 
antique jewelled necklets against the almost tangible blackness of the 
night, he found himself listening with a half-malicious amusement to the 
commonplace of the conversational formulae affected by the young world of 
society, the well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers. It 
was very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated 
himself from the dreary bondage of such functions. It was croquet then, 
lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different. Presently he 
encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like himself, and they found 
themselves seats before long in the darkest corner of the garden, where a 
few chairs had been placed, outside the radius of the lanterns, underneath 
a weeping willow.
"And they say painting doesn't pay, said the Scotchman, extending his long 
hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not saying that it 
does, mind you, when a man has notions like that queer, cantankerous devil 
Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in this world. But if a man's clever 
and canny, and has the sense to see on which side his bread's butteredÖ 
why, it's just easier than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't even 
an Associate."
"Yes. I suppose he's getting on pretty well," suggested Rainham, with a 
lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.
"Getting on! Doesn't it look like it? Isn't he entertaining his friends 
like - like a Rothschild? You know, of course, that he has sold his Academy 
picture, and next year's as well - and four figures for each of them?"
"Yes; and he's commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the Hereditary 
Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst - an undertaking, by the way, for 
which I don't envy him. Oh, Dick's all right! What have you got in the 
Academy this year, by the way? I'm ashamed to say I haven't been there 
yet."
"You haven't! But you have seen Lightmark's picture? No? Well, it's a fine 
thing, and just as clever as - But, mind you, I'm not prepared to say that 
Oswyn wouldn't have made something better out of it."
"Yes," said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving about his 
heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock, with the haunting 
shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed as an offence against 
his loyalty. "It seems to me that Oswyn has more real genius in his little 
finger than Dick has in his whole body; I am sure of it. It was a pity that 
they should both have chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, 
as to colour and treatment and so on, are so much the same. But, of course, 
Dick had a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew 
that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing."
McAllister assented hastily.
"No doubt, no doubt; though Oswyn was just wild about it - you know his 
uncivilised ways - and I must admit I was a bit astonished myself, at 
first, when I saw the picture at Burlington House with Lightmark's 
signature to it. But then I didn't know anything of the rights of the case. 
He's a queer, cantankerous devil, and he's always being wronged, according 
to his own accounts, and not only by the critics. No one pays much 
attention to what he says nowadays. It's just that absinthe and the 
cigarettes that are the ruin of him, day and night. Poor devil! why can't 
he stick to whisky and a pipe, like a decent Christian?"
"His queerness is all on the surface," said Rainham gravely. "You have to 
dig pretty deep to find out what he's really worth."
Just then Eve hurried towards them through the trees, looking about her 
with an air of hesitation, carrying the train of her pale-gray brocade 
dress over one bare girlish arm.
"Is that you, Mr. McAllister?" she asked, recognising first in the darkness 
the gaunt figure and tawny beard of the Scotchman. "Oh, and Mr. Rainham 
too! This is really very wrong of you, monopolising each other in this way. 
And don't you know," she added laughingly, "that this corner is especially 
dedicated to flirtations? You must really come and do your duty. Mr. 
McAllister, won't you take Miss Menzies in to have some supper? You know 
her, I think - a compatriot, isn't she? You will find her close to the 
tent. And you," she pursued, turning to Rainham, "you must take someone in, 
you know. Will you come this way, please, and I will introduce you to 
somebody. I am so sorry I was not at home when you called the other day," 
she said conventionally, as they edged their way by degrees towards the 
house.
"Yes; I seem to have an unfortunate capacity for missing you nowadays. At 
Bordighera, for instance. I have certainly had no luck at all lately. I 
haven't even had an opportunity of telling you how charming I find your 
house."
"Ah!" said Eve vaguely, her eyes wandering over the people who were grouped 
upon the gravel walk and under the veranda outside the windows of the 
supper-room, "we really seem to see nothing of you now. Oh, let me 
introduce you to Mrs. Gibson - Mrs. Everett P. Gibson. She's American; 
you'll find her very amusing."
Rainham followed her obediently, thinking, with a quickly repressed passion 
of regret, of the child who would have confided to him her latest 
impressions of sorrow, of joy; finding something, which hardly emanated 
from himself, which made it seem difficult for him to gather up the threads 
of the old charming intimacy with this new Eve - this woman with her 
pretty, dignified bearing and self-possessed, almost cold attitude. The 
introduction was duly effected, and for the next half-hour Rainham devoted 
himself heroically to the mental and physical entertainment (he was not 
obliged to do much talking) of the American lady, who hailed from the Far 
West, and lectured him volubly, with an exorbitant accent and a monotony of 
delivery which began to tell on his nerves to an alarming degree, on her 
impressions of Europe, and especially England; the immense superiority of 
gas as a cooking and heating agent; the phenomenal attainments of her 
children, and the antiquities of Minneapolis.
After supper he found himself listening to the band in the garden with a 
sentimental young lady, who made him fully conversant with her adoration of 
moonlit nights, waltzing, the latest tenor, and the scenery of Switzerland.
It was already growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it struck 
him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a certain 
complacent indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the briefest of 
greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only a glimpse had been 
vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the crowded supper-room. He 
wandered into the studio, where a little intimate party had assembled 
around an easel, and he was fortunate enough in a few minutes to find 
himself invited to take possession of a vacant seat precisely by Mary's 
side.
"Oh, you wicked person!" said Mary reproachfully. "Why do you never come to 
see us? and where have you been hiding yourself all the evening?"
Rainham laughed gently.
"I feel rather guilty, I own; but you know there is an execrable proverb 
which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have been living up to 
it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been longing to talk to 
somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music didn't fill me with a 
passionate desire to dance! And how good it is to be with a person who 
doesn't ask you whether you play much lawn-tennis, or whether you prefer 
London to the country on the whole. Ah, Mary! I consider myself a model of 
self-denial; but I am rewarded now."
"That's rather pretty for you," answered the girl approvingly; "and you are 
forgiven, though you have still to make your peace with Aunt Marcelle. Tell 
me what you have been doing, what you have been reading.Ö"
The conversation drifted on, now and again becoming general, and including 
the rest of the circle, but always recurring and narrowing into the deeper 
stream of their old intimacy.
"You are the only really satisfactory people I know," he said presently - 
"the only people who know how to enjoy life, so far as it is to be 
enjoyed."
"You mustn't give me any credit for it; it's all Aunt Marcelle's doing. But 
I don't think I know what you mean exactly. Perhaps we oughtn't to feel 
flattered?"
"I mean, you are the only people who understand that happiness doesn't 
depend on what one does or doesn't do - that it all depends on the point of 
view."
"The way of looking at life generally?" she hazarded.
"Precisely. True philosophy only admits one point of view - from outside. 
Aren't we always being told that life is only a play? Well, we clever 
people are the spectators, the audience. We look at the play from a 
comfortable seat in the stalls; and when the curtain drops at the end, we 
go home quietly and - sleep."
Mary looked at him for a moment silently.
"I'm not at all sure that we ought to feel flattered! You consider that you 
and I and her ladyship are spectators, then. Isn't it very selfish?"
"More or less. Of course, it's impossible to do the thing thoroughly 
without being absolutely selfish - a hermit, in fact. I sometimes think I 
was intended for a hermit."
Mary sighed covertly, though the smile still lingered in her brown eyes.
"I'm afraid I only take a kind of sideways view of things. I should like to 
- to - "
"To go up in a kind of moral balloon." suggested Rainham laughingly, "and 
get a bird's-eye view of life?"
"Exactly; and drift about. Only then one would never get really interested 
in anything or anybody. I should want someone else in the balloon."
"You must take me," said Rainham, still smiling.
Mary looked at him quickly, and then turned away, shivering a little.
"What nonsense we are talking!" she said suddenly. "And I'm afraid it isn't 
even original nonsense. We don't really want to be selfish, and we're not; 
you needn't pretend you are. And isn't it getting very, very late? Don't 
you think Mrs. Lightmark looks as if we ought to go? I don't mean that she 
looks inhospitable. But isn't she rather pale and tired? This sort of thing 
doesn't seem to suit her as well as her husband. Yes, I must really go.
When Miss Masters had deserted him, after extracting a promise that he 
would take an early opportunity of paying his overdue respects to her aunt, 
and had gone with Mrs. Lightmark in search of the old lady, Rainham made 
his adieux, leaving Lightmark still radiant, and protesting hospitably 
against such early hours; and as he walked homewards, with a cigar 
unlighted between his lips, he smiled rather bitterly, as he thought how 
little he was able to adhere to the tenets of his philosophy. Why else 
should he regret so much and so often the act which had been rung down 
whenÖ And how many more acts and scenes were there to be?
"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One isn't 
obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep their seats 
until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early disturbs the other 
spectators."
While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to her years 
and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a square, wainscoted 
little room, hung with pale grass matting, and decorated brightly with 
quaint Breton faience and old brass sconces.
"I was so glad to see Philip here tonight," Mary was saying, while Eve 
fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was 
becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for him!"
"Almost as bad as too much society."
"Yes; it's only another form of dissipation."
"I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other people's 
society than too much of one's own."
"I don't think I ever regarded him from a - a society point of view. You 
know what I mean - like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I was a child 
I always thought of him as a sort of fairy god-mother - a person who was 
always dropping from the clouds to take one for drives in the country, or 
with a box for the pantomime."
Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her curiously for a 
moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness or disdain in the 
clear voice and the pretty, childish face.
"Philip was always like that, the kindest - He has always been quite a hero 
for me - a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off rather suddenly, 
finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly. "Isn't it curious that we 
should both have known him so long without knowing each other?"
"I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't think 
Philip talks about his friends very much.Ö"
Lady Garnett interrupted the tete-a-tete conversation at this point, and 
when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late guests had 
left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few minutes in the deserted 
drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty chairs, meditating, with her chin 
resting on one hand, and her eyes absently contemplating the scattered 
petals of a copper-coloured rose, which had fallen from some dress or 
bouquet upon one of the Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet 
floor.
"Dick," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against the 
rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it ever 
strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?"
Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window wonderingly, 
almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh.
"Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely.
"I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display of 
mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?"
"Not much. I was only thinking.Ö What a pity Charles wasn't here tonight!"
"Oh, you little enigma! Is it that dear Charles who is to be pitied, or 
who? We, for instance?"
But Eve assumed a superior air, and Lightmark, who hated riddles, dismissed 
the subject and the end of his cigarette simultaneously.


Chapter 22

One afternoon, three months later, Rainham, finding himself in the 
neighbourhood of Parton Street, took the occasion of knocking at Lady 
Garnett's door, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that the two ladies 
were returned. Introduced into their presence - they were sitting in the 
library, in close proximity to a considerable fire - he learnt that their 
summer wanderings that year had been of no extensive nature, and that they 
had come into residence a week ago.
They had spent a month in a country house in Berkshire, the old lady told 
him presently, adding, with an explanatory grimace, that it was a house 
which belonged to a relation - the sort of place where one had to visit now 
and again; where a month went a very long way; where one had to draw 
largely on one's courtesy - on one's hypocrisy (if he preferred the word), 
not to throw up the cards at once, and retire after the first week.
Rainham gathered from her resigned animadversions that the relations must 
be by marriage only: there was no Gallic quality in the atmosphere she 
described.
It was a very nice house - Jacobean, she believed - or, rather, it would 
have been nice if they had had it to themselves. Unfortunately it was very 
full: there were a great many stupid men who shot all day, and as many 
stupid women who talked scandal and went to sleep after dinner; also there 
were several pairs - or did one say 'brace'? - of young people who flirted, 
but they lived in the conservatories. When one did not go to sleep after 
dinner, one played round games, or baccarat. She herself had refused to 
play, although they had wished to make her; personally, she preferred to go 
to sleep or to listen to Mary's music. Yes. Mary was more fortunate: they 
had a very good piano and an organ. Mary's music was a great success, 
although her admirers were apt to confuse Offenbach with Chopin; and some 
of the women appeared to think it was not quite lady like to play so well, 
with such a professional manner. Still, Mary's music was a success, and 
that was more than could be said of her own conversation. That had been a 
distinct failure! They seemed to think she wished to make fun of things - 
of sacred things, the game laws, and agriculture, and the Established 
Church. Of course, she had no such intention: it was only that she wished 
for information, for instruction in these difficult national institutions, 
which, long as she had made her home in England, she feared she would never 
thoroughly comprehend.
Mary had sat silently, with her hands clasped across her knees, while her 
aunt placidly poured forth these and similar comments (which were 
interspersed by questions and sympathetic monosyllables from Rainham), not 
so much acrimoniously, as in the tone of the humorous reporter, who is too 
indifferent to be actuated by a sense of injury.
The girl struck him as having grown tired and listless - more listless than 
a merely physical fatigue would warrant. He interrupted now to ask her with 
a touch of compassion if she too had been very much bored.
Her fine eyes were averted as she answered him, smiling a little:
"I am rather glad to be back. It was a pretty place, and the gardens were 
charming, when it did not rain."
Lady Garnett was overheard to murmur into the black ear of Mefistofele that 
it always rained.
"But on the whole - yes, I was rather bored," the girl continued abruptly.
"The rain and the round games and the people?" Rainham echoed. "You have my 
sympathy."
"I believe I rather liked the round games," said Mary, with a little laugh. 
"They were less tiresome than the rest; and the organ was a great solace; 
it was very perfect."
"Ah, yes, she liked the round games," put in Lady Garnett; "and if two of 
her admirers had played them more, and turned over her music less, the 
organ might have been a greater solace."
"They were very foolish," sighed the girl rather wearily.
"Mr. Sylvester was there for the last fortnight," continued Lady Garnett 
with some malice. "He succeeded Lord Overstock as Mary's musical acolyte. 
In revenge, Lord Overstock wished to teach her baccarat, and Mr. Sylvester 
remonstrated. It was sublime! It was the one moment of amusement vouchsafed 
me."
Mary flushed, locking her hands together nervously, with a trace of 
passion.
"It was ridiculous! intolerable! He had no right - !"
Lady Garnett bent forward, taking her hand. "Forgive me, cherie! I did not 
mean to annoy you.Ö You can imagine how glad we were to see you," she 
added, with a sudden turn to Rainham. "It was charming of you to call so 
soon; you could hardly have expected to find us."
"You must not give me too much credit. I happened to be quite near, in 
Harley Street. I could not pass without inquiring."
"Ah, well," she said, 'since you are here - "
She was looking absently away from him into an antique silver basket which 
lay on the little table by her side, in which were miscellaneous trifles, 
odd pieces of lace, thimbles which she never used, a broken fan, a box of 
chocolates.
"Mary, my dear," she said quickly, "I am so stupid! The old bonbonniere, 
with the brilliants? I must have left it on my dressing-table, or 
somewhere. That new housemaid - we really know nothing about her - it would 
be such a temptation. Would you mind - "
"Is this - " Rainham began, and stopped short.
Lady Garnett's brilliant eyes, and a little admonitory gesture of one hand, 
restrained him. When the girl had shut the door behind her, the elder lady 
turned to him with a quaint smile.
"Is that it? Of course it is, my friend. You are singularly obtuse: a woman 
would have seen through me at once."
"I beg your pardon," said Rainham, somewhat mystified. "You mean it was a 
pretext?"
"It was for you that I made it," she replied with dignity. "What was it you 
came to say?"
The other was silent for a moment, cogitating. When he looked up at last, 
meeting her eyes, it was with something like a shiver, in a tone of genuine 
dismay, that he remarked:
"Dear lady, there are times when you terrify me. You see too much. It is 
not - no, it is not human. I had meant to tell you nothing."
He stopped short, lowering his voice, and looking from the depths of his 
low chair into the red fire.
"It is not necessary, Philip," she continued presently, "that you should 
tell me; only, if you will be so secret, you should wear smoked glasses. 
Your eyes were so speaking that I was afraid - yes, afraid - when you came 
into the room. They looked haunted; they had the air of having seen a 
ghost!"
"It was a very respectable ghost," he said grimly, "with a frock-coat and a 
bald head. You know Sir Egbert, I suppose?"
"Only by name. I imagined that he was your spectre, when you spoke of 
Harley Street. Does he send you South again?"
"No," said Rainham shortly; "he thinks it would be inexpedient - that was 
his phrase, inexpedient - in a hotel, you know, and all that.Ö I was 
obliged to him, because in any case it would have been inconvenient to me 
to be abroad this year. I suppose, though, that if it would have done me 
any good I should have gone; but I have a great deal to arrange."
He went on composedly to tell her of the most important of these 
arrangements - the disposal of his business. He had systematically 
neglected it for years, he explained, and it had ended by going to the 
dogs. So long as his foreman was there, that had not mattered so much; but 
Bullen had decided to desert him, and very wisely. He had accepted an offer 
to manage the works of a firm of North-Country ship-builders; he was to 
shake the dust of Blackpool from off his feet in a very few months, and 
would probably make his fortune. And as he himself was not equal to bearing 
his incubus alone, he had put it in the market. A brand new company had 
bought it - that is to say, they had made him an offer - a ridiculously 
inadequate one, he was told, but which he was determined to accept; at any 
rate, it would leave him enough, when everything was paid, to live upon for 
the rest of his life. The legal preliminaries were now being settled: they 
appeared to be interminable; but as in the meantime the dock-gates were 
shut, and the clerks had departed, he could not, so far as he saw, be 
losing money; that was a consolation.
He had not come to the end of his disquisition before he discovered that he 
spoke to deaf ears. The old lady for once was inattentive: she had sat 
screening her face from the fire with a large palm fan while he unburdened 
himself, and she began now with a certain hesitation:
"My pretext, Philip! When I said that I made it for you it was only half 
true. In effect, my dear, I had something to tell you - something 
disagreeable."
"Concerning me?" he asked.
"Certainly," she said - 'something I have heard."
He looked vaguely across at her, finding her obscurity a little strained, 
waiting for her to speak. The silence that intervened was beginning to 
harass him, when she said suddenly:
"I will be quite plain. I think you ought to know. There is a scandal 
abroad about you - about you and some woman."
"Some woman!" he repeated blankly. "What woman?" He leant back in his 
chair, laughing his pleasant, low laugh. "I am sorry," he said, "I can't be 
as seriously annoyed as I ought; it is too foolish. My conscience really 
does not help me to discover her - this woman. Do you know any more?"
She shook her head.
"It is not a nice story," she said. "No, I have heard no name; only the 
story is current. I have heard it from three sources. I thought you had 
better know of it."
"Thank you," he answered, rising to go. "Yes, it is a thing one may as well 
know. It is very kind of them, these people, to take such trouble, to be 
sufficiently interested. Upon my honour, I do not know that I very much 
care. After all, what does it matter?"
"Nothing to me," said Lady Garnett, with a little shrug of disdain - 
"nothing, Dieu me pardonne! even if it were true."
"Well, good-bye," he said.
As he held her hand for a moment between his own he thought it trembled 
slightly.
"Ah, no!" she said quickly; "it is a phrase I decline. Come and see me 
soon. I am an old woman, my friend, and I have outlived my generation. I 
have said too many good-byes in my time. It is au revoir."
"With all my heart," he said, smiling. "Au revoir."
Her quaint intimation - that was the manner in which he characterised it - 
was already dismissed from his mind when he emerged into the street.
He had too many graver preoccupations to be greatly troubled by this 
grotesque slander. Going on his way, however - a temporary cessation of the 
soft, persistent rain which had been falling for most of the day suggested 
a walk - a chance recollection brought him to a sudden stop, changing his 
indifference for a moment into the shadow of pale indignation. How dull of 
him not to have guessed at once! it must be that unfortunate girl Kitty 
Crichton with whom busy-bodies were associating his name. He wondered how 
they had discovered her, and by whom the stupid story had been set afloat. 
The baselessness of the scandal, conjoined with his immense apathy just 
then as to anything more that the malice of men could do, inclined him to 
amusement, the more so as he reflected how many months it was since the 
girl and her wretched history had passed from his ken. He had found her 
gone on his return from Italy in the spring, leaving no address and but the 
briefest acknowledgment of his good-will in a note, which stated that she 
had no longer any excuse for imposing on his kindness - had found friends. 
The letter closed, as he imagined, a painful history, which, since his 
service had been, after all, so fruitless, he could see ended with relief. 
To his interpretation, the girl had recovered her scoundrel journalist, or 
at least compelled him to contribute to her support; and after all, as it 
seemed, he had not done with her yet, though the fashion of her return was 
ghostly and immaterial enough. The subject galled him; there were always 
dim possibilities lurking in the background of it which he refused to 
contemplate; he dismissed it. His meditation had carried him through the 
bustle of Oxford Street to the Marble Arch, and, the weather still 
encouraging him, he decided to turn into the Park. Many rainy days had made 
the air exceedingly soft, and in his enjoyment of this unusual quality, and 
of the strangely sweet odour of the wet earth and mildewing leaves, he 
forgot for awhile a certain momentous sentence of Sir Egbert Rome's which 
had jingled in his head all that afternoon. Presently it tripped him up 
again, like the gross melody of a music-hall song, and caused him to drop 
absently upon the first seat, quite unconscious that it was in an 
unwholesome condition of moisture. He had turned his back on the brilliant 
patches of yellow and copper-coloured chrysanthemums on the flower-plots 
facing Park Lane, and he looked westwards over a wider expanse of grass and 
trees: the grass bestrewed with bright autumnal leaves, the trees obscured 
and formless, in a rising white mist, through which a pale sun struggled 
and was vanquished. He had never been in a fitter mood to appreciate the 
decay of the year, and suddenly he was seized, in the midst of his 
depression, with an immense thrill, almost causing him to throw out his 
arms with an embracing gesture to the autumn, the very personal charm, the 
mysterious and pitiful fascination of the season whose visible beauty seems 
to include all spiritual things. It cast a spell over him of a long mental 
silence, as one might say, in which all definite thought expired, from 
which he aroused himself at last with a shrug of self-contempt, to find 
inexplicable tears in his eyes. And just then an interruption came, not 
altogether unwelcome, in the greeting of a familiar voice. It was 
Lightmark, who had discovered him in the course of a rapid walk down the 
Row, and had crossed over the small patch of intervening grass to make his 
salutations.
"I knew you by your back," he remarked, after they had shaken hands - "the 
ineffable languor of it; and, besides, who else but you would sit for 
choice on an October evening in such a wretched place?"
He looked down ruefully at his patent leather shoes, which the damp grass 
had dulled.
Rainham smiled vaguely: he needed an effort to pull himself together, to 
collect his energies sufficiently to meet the commonplace of conversation, 
after the curious detachment into which he had fallen; and he wondered 
aimlessly how long he had been there.
"I suppose, like everyone else, Dick," he remarked after awhile, "it is the 
weather which has brought you home at such an unfashionable date."
"Yes," answered Lightmark; "it was very poor fun yachting. I shall stay in 
town altogether next year, I think. And you - you are not looking 
particularly fit; what have you done with yourself?"
"Oh, I am fit enough," said Rainham lightly; "I have been in London, you 
see."
"Well, I can't let you go now you are here. Won't you dine with us? Or 
rather - no, I believe we dine out. Come back and have some tea: Eve will 
be enchanted. I really decline to sit in that puddle."
Rainham rose slowly.
"Perhaps I will," he said. "I would have called before, if I had thought 
there was the least chance of finding you. And how do things go?"
As they strolled along through the deserted Park, and Lightmark entertained 
his friend with an extravagant narration of their miseries on the Lucifer, 
the chronic sea-sickness of the ladies, the incapacity and intoxication of 
the steward, and the discontent of everybody on board - he spoke as if they 
had entertained a considerable party - Rainham's interested eyes had 
leisure to note a change in him, not altogether unexpected. He presented 
the same handsome, well-dressed, prosperous figure; and yet prosperity had 
in some degree coarsened him. The old charm of his boyish carelessness had 
been succeeded by a certain hard assurance, an air of mundane, if not 
almost commercial shrewdness, which gave him less the note of an artist 
than of a successful man of business. And where the old Lightmark, the 
Lightmark of the Cafe Greco days, broke out at times, it was less 
pleasantly than of old, in a curious recklessness, a tendency, which jarred 
on Rainham's susceptible nerves, to dilate with a vanity which would have 
been vulgar, had it not been almost childish, on his lavish living, the 
magnitude of his expenditure.
"You must find that sort of thing rather a tax?" he asked tentatively, 
after a description which struck him as unnecessarily exuberant of a 
hospitality in the summer.
"Oh, it pays in the long-run," remarked the other easily, "to keep open 
house and go everywhere. Thank heaven, the uncle is liberal! I admit we 
have been going at rather a pace lately. But, then, I can knock off a 
couple of pictures as soon as I have a little time, which will raise the 
wind again. I know what the public wants, bless it!"
Rainham shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.
"Poor public! If it wants art made in that spirit, it is worse than I 
believed."
Lightmark looked askance at him, frowning a little, pulling at his long 
moustache. He was absorbed for some time - they had turned into the Edgware 
Road, and the soft rain had begun again - in ineffectual pursuit of cabs. 
When at last he had caught a driver's eye and they had settled themselves 
on the cushions of a hansom, he turned abruptly to his companion to ask him 
if he had seen the Academy before it closed.
"You recognised your domain?" he asked lightly, when the other had 
responded in the affirmative - "in my picture, I mean?"
He spoke quickly, in his accustomed blithe habit: it might have been merely 
a morbid fancy of Rainham's which traced a note of anxiety, of concealed 
uneasiness, in his accent, that the bare question scarcely justified.
Rainham paused a moment: it was not only a passing thought of Oswyn's 
acrimony, and of the difficult minutes during which he had been thrown 
across Lightmark at the Dock, that constrained him; it was rather the 
recollection of his own careful scrutiny of the disputed canvas, when he 
had at last dragged himself with a disagreeable sense of moral 
responsibility into Burlington House, and had come away at last strangely 
dissatisfied. Acquitting Dick of any conscious plagiarism, of a breach of 
common honesty, he was disagreeably filled with a sense of the work's 
immeasurable inferiority to Oswyn's ruined masterpiece. It was clever, and 
audacious, and striking; it had had the fortune to be splendidly hung, and 
that was all, for all his goodwill, he could say. And since, after all, 
that was so little, would strike his friend as but a cold tribute after the 
panegyrics of the morning papers, he preferred to say nothing, deftly 
dropping the subject, and responding to the first half of his friend's 
question alone.
"My domain, Dick? Ah, I forgot; you can hardly have heard that it is my 
domain no longer - or ceases to be very shortly. That has come to an end; I 
have sold it."
Lightmark whistled softly.
"Well, you surprise me! Of course I am glad; Eve will be glad too. We shall 
see more of you now, I suppose? or will you live abroad?"
"Abroad?" echoed Rainham absently. "Oh yes, very probably. But tell me, how 
is - Eve?"
"As we seem to be arriving, I think I will let her tell you herself."
They descended, and Rainham waited silently while his friend discharged the 
cabman, and let him in with his latchkey into the bright, spacious hall. 
Then, after glancing into the empty drawing-room, Lightmark preceded him up 
the thick carpeted stairs, on which their footsteps scarcely sounded, and 
stopped at the door of Eve's boudoir, through which a woman's voice, 
speaking rather rapidly, and, as it struck him, in a key of agitation, fell 
upon Rainham's ear with a certain familiarity, though he was sure it was 
not Eve's, and could not remember when or where he might have heard it. 
After a moment they went in.


Chapter 23

There are occasions when thought is terribly and comprehensively sudden: 
the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and syllogism, so slow 
and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an occult vision, immediate 
and complete, into the obscure manner of life, and crowd an infinity of 
discovery into a very few seconds. It was so with Philip Rainham now. 
Lightmark had scarcely closed the door, against which he now stood in a 
black silence, with the air of a man turned to stone; Rainham's eyes had 
only fallen once upon the two figures on the sofa - Eve crushed in a 
corner, a sorrowful, dainty shape in the silk and lace of her pretty tea-
gown, with the white drawn face of a scared child; Kitty Crichton, in her 
cloak and hat, bending forward a little, the hectic flush of strong 
excitement colouring her cheeks, that were already branded by her malady - 
when he underwent a moral revolution. He had no more to learn. He glanced 
at Lightmark curiously, almost impartially, his loathing strangely tempered 
by a sort of self-contempt, that he should have been so deluded. The clumsy 
lies which this man had told him, and which he in his indolent charity had 
believed! All at once, and finally, in a flash of brutal illumination, he 
saw Lightmark, who had once been his friend, as he really was, naked and 
unclean. It stripped him of all his superficial qualities: the mask of 
genial good-nature, the air of good-fellowship, under which his gross 
egoism lay concealed that it might be more securely mischievous when it 
went loose. His amiability was an imposture, a dangerous harlequinade; the 
man was bad. It was a plausible scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a 
handsome face and a few cheap talents - had he not been reduced to stealing 
the picture of his friend? - whom these two women had loved, to whom one of 
them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good or bad, he was Eve's 
husband, and she was his wife, bound to him until the end. And then, for 
the first time, seeing her there, helpless and terrified, in her forlorn 
prettiness, he deceived himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for 
the woman, his angry pity for her misery that was coming, in no false 
terms. Such self-deception, honest as it had been, was no longer possible. 
He knew now that he loved her, and all that his love had been - the very 
salt and savour of life to him, the one delicious and adorable pain 
relieving the gray ennui of the rest of it, to remain with him always 
(even, as it seemed now, in the very article of death) as a reminder of the 
intolerable sweetness which life, under other conditions, might have 
contained. And inexplicably, in the midst of his desolation, his heart sang 
a sort of fierce paean: as a woman, delivered of a man-child, goes 
triumphing to meet the sordidness of death, so was there in Rainham's rapid 
acceptance of his fruitless and ineffectual love a distinct sense of 
victory, in which pain expired - victory over the meanness and triviality 
of modern life, which could never seem quite mean and trivial again, since 
he had proved it to be capable of such moments; had looked once - and could 
so sing his 'Nunc Dimittis' - upon the face of love. And it all happened in 
a second, and in a further second - for his thought, quickened by the 
emergency, still leapt forward with incredible swiftness - a great audacity 
seized Philip Rainham, to save the beloved woman pain. The devil would be 
at him later, would beset him, harass him, madden him with hint and 
opportunity of profiting by Lightmark's forfeiture. But the devil's turn 
was not yet: he was filled only with his great and reverent love, his 
sublime pity for the little tragical figure in front of him, whose house of 
painted cards was tumbling. Well! he might save it for her for a little 
longer - at least, there was one desperate chance which he would try.
He had lived too long, unconsciously, in the habit of seeking her 
happiness, that it should fail him now in her evil hour, in the first flush 
of his new consciousness (ah, yes, there was beauty in that, and victory!), 
for any base personal thought or animosity against the man. He would have 
given her so easily his life; should he grudge her his reputation? The 
reputation of a man with one foot in the grave - what did it matter? And it 
all came about in a few seconds.
Before any one of that strange company had found time to speak, Rainham had 
grasped the situation, knew himself at last and the others, and was 
prepared, scarcely counting the cost, with his splendid lie. He made a step 
forward, then stopped suddenly, as if he were bracing himself for a moral 
conflict. His face was very white and rigid, his mouth set firmly; and the 
other three watched him with a strange expectancy depicted on all their 
countenances, amidst the various emotions proper to each of them; for he 
alone had the air of being master of the situation. And his resolve had 
need to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have 
wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty, distressed 
face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly anguish, with some 
of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs instinctively in its 
extremity to the person whom it knows best; and she gave him her two little 
trembling hands, which he held for a moment silently.
"Philip," she said, in a low, constrained voice - "Philip, I have known you 
all my life - longer than anyone. You were always good to me. Tell me 
whether it's true or not what this woman has told me. Philip, I shall die 
if this be true!"
He bent his head for a moment. He had a wild longing to give up, simply to 
clasp her in his arms and console her with kisses and incoherent words of 
tenderness, as he had done years ago, when she was a very small child, and 
ran to him with her tear-stained cheeks, after a difficulty with her 
governess. But he only put her away from him very quietly and sadly.
"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your 
husband."
The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward 
irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's 
eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as 
though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote.
"I tell you it is not true. Lightmark," he added sternly, "there has been a 
mistake - you see that - for which I apologise. Wake up, for God's sake! 
Come and see after your wife; some slander has upset her. This woman is - 
mine; I will take her away."
The girl trembled violently; she appeared fascinated, terrified into a 
passive obedience by Rainham's imperious eyes, which burnt in his white 
face like the eyes of a dying man. She followed, half unconsciously, his 
beckoning hand. But Eve confronted her before she reached the door.
"Who am I to believe?" she cried scornfully. "Why did you say it? What was 
the good of it - a lie like that? It is a lie, I suppose?"
"Yes, yes!" said the girl hysterically, "it seems so. Oh, let me go, madam! 
I'm sorry I told you. I'll trouble nobody much longer. Call it a lie."
She threw out her hands helplessly; she would have fallen, but Rainham 
caught her wrist and drew her towards him, supporting her with an arm.
"Come," he said firmly, "this is no place for us."
Eve regarded them all strangely, vaguely, the terror gradually dying out of 
her eyes - Lightmark expressionless and silent, as he had been all through 
the interview; the woman trembling on Rainham's arm, who stood beside her 
with his downcast eyes, the picture of conscious guilt. A curious anguish 
too pale to be indignation plucked at her heart-strings - anguish in which, 
unaccountably, the false charge against her husband was scarcely 
considered; that had become altogether remote and unreal, something barely 
historical, fading already away in the dim shadows of the past. What hurt 
her, with a dull pain which she could not analyse, was the sudden 
tarnishing of a scarcely-admitted ideal by Rainham's deliberate confession, 
making life appear for the moment intolerably sordid and mean. Would she 
have owned to herself that, with an almost unconscious instinct, she had 
judged these two men all along by a different standard? Hardly. She loved 
her husband, and her marriage had not yet dissipated the memory of those 
golden days of illusion preceding it, in which her love had been of a finer 
kind. Only that time, in which it would have been impossible for her to 
judge him, in which he could only do right in her eyes, was gone. Occasions 
had arrived when they had inevitably to differ, on which the girl had 
gently acquiesced - if not without a touch of scorn - in his action, but 
had not felt obliged to accept his point of view. There had been times when 
her pride had suffered - for underneath her childish exterior, her air of 
being just a dainty little figure of Watteau, she had a very sensitive and 
delicate pride of her own - and then, if she had succeeded in forgiving 
Lightmark, it had not been without an effort which had made it difficult 
for her to pardon herself. Sometimes, though she would scarcely have 
confessed it, her husband's mere approbativeness had almost shocked her. It 
was good, no doubt, to be popular, harmless even to care for popularity - 
at least, one's traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so 
exorbitantly as Lightmark appeared to do, to sacrifice so much to one's 
enthusiasm for pleasing inferior people - people whom, behind their backs, 
one was quite ready to tear to pieces, allowing them neither intelligence 
nor virtue - in just that there seemed to her some flaw of taste that was 
almost like a confession of failure. Surely she loved him, and was ready to 
forgive him much: not for worlds would she have confessed to disillusion. 
And yet, now and again, when the rush and ostentation of their new life, 
with its monotony of dinners and dances - so little like that which she had 
anticipated as the future lot of a painter's wife - had left her rather 
weary, a trifle sad, she had thought suddenly of her old friend Philip 
Rainham, and the thought had solaced her. There is a sort of pleasure, even 
when one is married to the most amiable of husbands, and is getting quite 
old - very nearly twenty - in turning from time to time to a person who has 
known one in the very shortest of frocks, and whose intimate connection 
with chocolates and 'treats' is among one's earliest traditions. She made 
no contrasts; and yet when occasionally on one of those afternoons - there 
seemed to be so many of them - when she was 'at home,' when her bright, 
large drawing-room was fullest, and she was distracted to find herself 
confusing, amidst the clatter of teacups, dear Mrs. Henderson, who painted 
wild-flowers so cleverly, with dear Lady Lorimer, who was going on the 
stage, she looked up and saw Rainham hovering in the near distance, or 
sitting with his teacup balanced in one long white hand as he turned a 
politely tolerant ear to the small talk of a neighbour, she felt strangely 
rested. Trouble or confusion might come, she told herself, and how suddenly 
all these charming people, who were so surprisingly alike, and whose names 
were so exasperatingly different, would disappear. Dear Mrs. Henderson and 
dear Lady Lorimer, and that odious Mrs. Dollond - what was she saying to 
Dick now which had to be spoken with an air of such exaggerated intimacy, 
in so discreet an undertone? - how swiftly they would all be gone, like the 
snows of last year! Only Philip Rainham, she was sure, would be there 
still, a little older, perhaps, with the air of being a little more tired 
of things, but inwardly the same, unalterably loyal and certain. The 
prospect was curiously sustaining, the more in that she had no tangible 
cause of uneasiness, was an extremely happy woman - it was so that she 
would have most frequently described herself - only growing at times a 
little weary of the fashionable treadmill and the daily routine of not 
particularly noble interests which it involved. Catching his eyes 
sometimes, as he sat there, looking out idly, indifferently, upon it all - 
this success which was the breath of life to Dick - she found him somewhat 
admirable; disdainful, fastidious, reserved - beneath his surface good-
humour, his constant kindness, he could scarcely be a happy man. In flashes 
of sudden gratitude, she would have been glad often to have done something 
for him, had there been anything in the world to do. And then she laughed 
at herself for such a vain imagination. Had it not been his proper charm 
all along that he was a man for whom one could do nothing? precisely 
because he wanted nothing, was so genuinely indifferent to anything that 
life could offer? And now all that was at an end; by his own confession he 
had finished it, admitting himself, with a frankness almost brutal, a man 
like other men, only with passions more sordid, and a temper more 
unscrupulous, in that he had ruined this wretched woman, whose coming there 
had left a trail of vileness over her own life.
"Ah, yes, go!" she said, after awhile, answering Rainham's exclamation. 
"For pity's sake, go!"
Rainham bowed his head and obeyed her; as the door closed behind them, he 
could hear that she cried softly, and that Lightmark, his silence at last 
broken, consoled her with inaudible words.


Chapter 24

Rainham turned at random out of Grove Road, walking aimlessly, and very 
fast, without considering direction. He had passed the girl's arm through 
his own as they left the house; and in a sort of stupefied obedience she 
had submitted. To her, too, one way was the same as another, as dreary and 
as vain. With Rainham, indeed, after the tension of the last few minutes, 
into which he had crowded such a wealth of suffering and of illumination, a 
curious stupor had succeeded. For the moment he neither thought nor 
suffered: simply, it was good to be out there, in the darkness - the 
darkness of London - after that immense plunge, which was still too near 
him that he should attempt to appreciate it in all its relations. By-and-
bye would be the season of reckoning, the just and delicate analysis, by a 
nicely critical nature, of all that he had deliberately lost, when he might 
run desperately before the whips of his own thought; now he felt only the 
lethargy which succeeds strenuous action, that has been, in a measure, 
victorious; the physical well-being of walking rapidly, vaguely, through 
the comfortable shadows, allowing the cold rain to pelt refreshingly upon 
his face and aching temples. And it was not until they had gone so through 
several streets, whose names were a blank to him, that Rainham bethought 
him, with a touch of self-reproach, of his companion, and how ill her thin 
garments and slender figure were calculated to suffer the downpour, which 
he only found consoling. He drew her into the shelter of a doorway, 
signalled to a passing cab; and just then, the light of an adjacent street-
lamp falling upon her face, he realised for the first time in its sunken 
outline the progress of her malady.
"I beg your pardon," he said gently; "I did not understand that you were 
ill. You must tell me where you are lodging, and I will take you back." 
Then, as though he anticipated her hesitation, a tribute to her old 
ambiguity, become so useless, he added dryly: "You can tell me your 
address; you have no reason to hide yourself now."
She glanced up at him furtively, shrinking back a little as though she 
feared his irony.
"I live in Charlotte Street, No.- But pray let me go alone, sir! It will 
not be your way."
"I have rooms in Bloomsbury," he answered. "It will be entirely on my way."
And the girl made no further protest when he handed her into the cab, an 
inconvenient four-wheeler which had responded to his signal, and, after 
giving the driver the address which she had indicated, took his place 
silently beside her. Perhaps something of Rainham's own lethargy had 
infected her, after a scene so feverish; or perhaps she could not but feel 
dimly, and in a manner not to be analysed, how that, distant and apart as 
they two seemed, yet within the last hour, by Rainham's action, between her 
life and his a subtle, invisible chord had been stretched, so that the 
order of her going might well rest with him.
She cast furtive glances at him from time to time as he sat back, obscure 
in his corner, gazing out with eyes which saw nothing at the blurred gas-
lamps, and the red flashes of the more rapid vehicles which outstripped 
them. And now that the first stupefying effect of his intervention was 
wearing away - it seemed like a mad scene in a theatre, or some monstrous 
dream, so surprising and unreal - her primitive consciousness awoke, and 
set her wondering, inquiring. with bewilderment that was akin to terror, 
into the motives and bearing of their joint conduct. It had seemed to her 
natural enough then, as do the most grotesque of our sleeping visions when 
they are passing; but now that she was awake, relieved from the coercion of 
his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so stupendous a 
fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this sin of another's on 
his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of 'Philip!' at his entry recurred to 
her - the intimate nature of her appeal. The scent was promising; but it 
opened out vistas of a loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her 
mature cynicism of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted 
the idea. Did she not know 'gentlemen' and the nature of their love? The 
girl was hardened by ill-usage, bitter from long brooding over her shame. 
She was glad when he turned to her at last, breaking a silence which the 
sullen roar of London outside and beyond them, and the dreary rattling of 
the cab, seemed only to heighten, with a sudden gesture of despair.
"If I had only known! If you had only told me two years ago!"
The suppressed passion in his voice, his air, terrified the girl. She bent 
forward trembling.
"Ah! what have I done, what have I done?" she moaned. "How did I know that 
it would all come like this? I meant no harm, sir. He persuaded me to 
deceive you after I had found out who he really was, to put you off the 
scent, keeping his name a secret. He said he had a right to ask that. He 
told me he was married, though he wasn't then. And afterwards he made me 
move, when you were abroad: he wanted my address not to be known. That was 
the condition he made of his seeing after the child; he swore he would 
provide for her then, and bring her up like a lady. And he sent me the 
money for a bit pretty regular. Oh, it was only for her sake, I promise you 
that! I wouldn't have touched a brass farthing for myself. But, after all, 
she was his child. And then, somehow or other, the money didn't come. He 
went away - he was away all the summer - and he said he had so many calls 
on him, such expenses."
"Ah, the scoundrel!" cried Rainham, between his set teeth.
The girl took him up, hardly with an echo of his own resentment, rather 
with a sort of crushed directness, as one who acknowledged a bare fact, 
making no comment, merely admitting the obscure dreariness of things.
"Yes; he was a scoundrel. He was bad all along. I think he has no heart. 
And he has made me bad too. I was a good enough girl of old, before I knew 
him. Only something came over me tonight when I found her there, with that 
big house and the servants, and all that luxury, and thought how he 
couldn't spare a few pounds to bring his own child up decent. Oh, I was 
vile tonight! I frightened her. Perhaps it was best as it happened. It 
dazed her. She'll remember less. She'll only remember your part of it, 
sir."
She glanced across at him with timid eyes, which asked him to be so good as 
to explain: all that had confused her so.
"I don't understand," she murmured helplessly - "I don't understand."
He ignored the interrogation in her eyes with a little gesture, half 
irritable and half entreating, which coerced her.
"How did you come there?" he asked. "What was the good - "
His question languished suddenly, and he let both hands fall slowly upon 
his knees. In effect, the uselessness of all argument, the futility of any 
recrimination in the face of what had been accomplished, was suddenly borne 
in upon him with irresistible force; and his momentary irritation against 
the malice of circumstance, the baseness of the man, was swallowed up in a 
rising lassitude which simply gave up.
The girl continued after awhile, in a low, rapid voice, her eyes fixed 
intently upon the opal in an antique ring which shone faintly upon one of 
Rainham's quiet hands, as though its steady radiance helped her speech:
"It was all an accident - an accident. I was sick and tired of waiting and 
writing, and getting never a word in reply. My health went, too, last 
winter, and ever since I have been getting weaker and worse. I knew what 
that meant: my mother died of a decline - yes, she is dead, thank God! this 
ten years - and it was then, when I knew I wouldn't get any better, and 
there was the child to think of, that I wanted to see him once more. There 
was a gentleman, too, who came - "
She broke off for a moment, clasping her thin hands together, which 
trembled as though the memory of some past, fantastic terror had recurred.
"It doesn't matter," she went on presently. "He frightened me, that was 
all. He had such a stern, smooth-spoken way with him; and he seemed to know 
so much. He said that he had heard of me and my story, and would befriend 
me if I would tell him the name of the man who ruined me. Yes, he would 
befriend me - help me to lead a respectable life."
Her sunken eyes flashed for a moment, and her lip was scornfully curled.
"God knows!" she cried, with a certain rude dignity, "I was always an 
honest woman but for Cyril - Dick, she called him."
The intimate term, tossed so lightly from those lips, caused Rainham to 
quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete touch 
giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the girl's old 
relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present horror, startlingly 
real and distinct.
"Go on," he said at last wearily.
"Ah, I didn't tell him, sir," she explained, misinterpreting his silence. 
"I wouldn't have done that. He sore angered me, though he may have meant 
well. He was set on seeing the child then, but I wouldn't let him. It came 
over me after he was gone that that, maybe, was what he came for - the 
child. Someone might have put him on to take her from me - some society. 
Oh, I was at my wits' end, sir! for, you see, she is all I have - all - 
all! Then I made up my mind to go and see him. Bad as he is, he wouldn't 
have let them do it. Oh, I would have begged and prayed to him on my knees 
for that."
She stopped for a moment, hectic and panting. She pressed both hands 
against her breast, as though she sought composure. Then she continued:
"It was all a mistake, you know, my being shown in there to night! I would 
never have sought her out myself, being where she is. Oh, I have my pride! 
It was the servant's mistake: he took me for a fitter, no doubt, from one 
of the big dressmakers. Perhaps there was one expected; I don't know. But I 
didn't think of that when I came in and found her sitting there, so proud 
and soft. It all came over me - how badly he had used me, and little Meg 
there at home, and hard Death coming on me - and I told her. It seemed 
quite natural then, as though I had come for that, just for that and 
nothing else, though, Heaven knows, it was never in my mind before. I was 
sorry afterwards. Yes, before you came in with him I was sorry. It wasn't 
as if I owed her any grudge. How could she have known? She is an innocent 
young thing, after all - younger than I ever was - for all her fine dresses 
and her grand-ladyish way. It was like striking a bit of a childÖ God 
forgive him," she added half hysterically, "if he uses her as bad as me!"
Rainham's hand stole to his side, and for a moment he averted his head. 
When he turned to her again she was uncertain whether it was more than a 
pang of sharp physical pain, such as she well knew herself, which had so 
suddenly blanched his lips.
"For pity's sake, girl," he whispered, "be silent."
She considered him for a moment silently in the elusive light, that matched 
the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood. His expression puzzled, 
evaded her; and she could not have explained the pity which he aroused.
"I am sorry," she broke out again, moved by an impulse which she did not 
comprehend. "You did it for her."
"Oh, for her! What does it matter since it is done? Say that it was an 
accident - a folly - that I am sorry too."
"No," said the girl softly; "you are glad."
He shrugged his shoulders with increasing weariness, an immense desire to 
have the subject ended and put away with forgotten things.
"I am glad, then. Have it as you like."
But she resumed with a pertinacity which his irritated nerves found 
malignant.
"If it was that," she said ambiguously, "you had better have held your 
tongue. You had only to gain - Ah, why did you do it? What was the good?"
He made another gesture of lassitude; then, rousing himself, he remarked:
"It was a calculation, then, a piece of simple arithmetic. If it gives her 
a little peace a little longer, why should three persons suffer - be 
sacrificed - when two might serve?"
"Oh, him!" cried the girl scornfully; "he can't suffer - he hasn't a 
heart!"
Rainham looked up at her at last. His fingers ceased playing with his ring.
"Oh, let me count for a little," he murmured, with a little ghastly laugh.
The girl's eyes looked full into his, and in a moment they shone out of her 
face, which was suffused with a rosy flush that made her almost beautiful, 
with the illumination of some transcendent idea.
"Ah, you are a gentleman!" she cried.
In the tension of their nerves they were neither aware that the cab had 
come to a standstill, and before he could prevent her, she had stooped 
swiftly down and caught his hand passionately to her lips.
"Heaven forgive me! How unhappy you must be!" she said.


Chapter 25

After all, things were not so complicated as they seemed. For Kitty was 
nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with its 
commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of suffering, 
telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light and so wanting in 
buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and forgotten, amid the chaos of 
things broken and ruined.
"I don't want to die," she said, day after day, to the sternly cheerful 
nurse who had her in charge at the quiet, sunny hospital in the suburbs 
where Rainham had gained admission for her as in-patient. "But I don't know 
that I want to live, either."
And so it had been from the beginning, poor soul, poor wavering fatalist! 
with a nature too innately weak to make an inception either of good or 
evil, the predestined prey of circumstance.
As she lay in the long white room dedicated to those stricken, like 
herself, with the disease that feeds on youth, her strength ebbing away 
quite painlessly, she often entered upon the pathless little track of 
introspection, a pathetic, illogical summing up of the conduct of her life, 
which always led so quickly to the same broad end of reassurance, followed 
by unreasoned condemnation - the conventional judgment on her very 
inability to discover where she had so gravely sinned, how and when she had 
earned the extreme penalty of reprobation and of death. She was too wicked, 
she concluded hopelessly, vaguely struggling with the memories of the 
teaching of her Sunday-school, too wicked to find out wherein her exceeding 
wickedness lay.
One comfort she took to her sad heart, that Rainham had not condemned her; 
that he had only pitied her, while he reserved his damnation for the iron-
bound, Sabbatarian world which had ruined and spurned another helpless 
victim. Rainham she believed implicitly, obeyed unquestioningly, with a 
sense of gratitude which had been largely mingled with self-reproach, until 
he had told her that, so far as he was concerned, she had nothing to 
reproach herself with. It never occurred to her for a moment now to 
question or to resent the part he had made her play on that tragical 
afternoon in Grove Road. Why should she? The imputation of a lie, what was 
that to her? Had he not taken it all, all her misery upon himself? Had he 
not fed, and clothed, and lodged her like the most penitent of prodigals, 
although she had no claim upon him until he chose to give it to her? Her 
benefactor could do no wrong, that was her creed; and it made things 
wonderfully smooth, the future on a sudden strangely simple. She had lied 
to him at the bidding of the other, and he had not resented it when he came 
to know the truth: she had brought shame on him, and he had not reproached 
her. A man like this was outside her experience; she regarded him with a 
kind of grateful amazement - a wondering veneration, which sometimes held 
her dumb in his presence.
If she had felt unhappy at first about the future of her child - and there 
had been moments when this thought had been more bitter than all the rest 
of her life together - this care was taken from her when Rainham promised 
to adopt the little girl, or, better still, to induce Mrs. Bullen to open 
her motherly heart to her. "They'll be only too glad to get her," he had 
said decisively, interrupting her awkward little speech of thanks. "That 
will be all right. Mrs. Bullen hasn't known what to do with herself since 
her son went to sea; she wants a child to care for. You needn't worry 
yourself about that." It was after this that Kitty had owned to the nurse 
that she had no desire to live; and though the shifting of this burden 
enabled her to carry her life for a time less wearily, the end was not far; 
and the news of her death came to Rainham just after the first snowfall, in 
the middle of a dreary, cruel December.
The winter wore on, and still Rainham was to be seen almost nightly in his 
now familiar corner by the fireside at Brodonowski's, in the seat next that 
which had become Oswyn's by right of almost immemorial occupation. His 
negotiations with the company who were to buy him out of his ancestral dock 
were still incomplete, and now he felt a strange reluctance to hurry 
matters, to hasten the day on which he should be forced to leave the little 
room looking out upon the unprofitable river which he loved.
The two men would sit together, sometimes talking, but far more often not, 
until a very late hour; and when the doors were closed upon them they often 
wandered aimlessly in the empty streets, dismissing their cares in 
contemplation of great moonlit buildings, or the strong, silent river, 
sliding under the solemn bridges; united from day to day more closely by 
the rare sympathy which asks no questions and finds its chief expression in 
silence. One thing they both hated, to be alone; but loneliness for them 
was not what most mortals understand by the name. There was company for 
them in inanimate things - in books, in pictures, and even in objects less 
expressive; they were men who did not fear their thoughts, who looked to 
the past for their greatest pleasures. And now for Rainham the whole of 
life was a thing so essentially weary and flavourless that the ennui of 
little things seemed hardly worth consideration. He was dumbly content to 
let destiny lead him whither it would, without apprehension, without 
expectation. Oswyn had asked him, one evening, just before they parted on 
the doorstep of the club, with a certain abruptness which the other had 
long since learnt to understand, why he was in London instead of being at 
Bordighera? Rainham sighed, echoing the question as if the idea suggested 
was entirely novel.
"Why, because - Well, for one thing, because you are in London and the 
Dollonds are at Bordighera. You don't know Mrs. Dollond?" he added, seeing 
that the other looked at him with a certain air of wistful distrust, a 
momentarily visible desire to see behind so obvious a veil.
"No, thank God!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders, and 
turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impassiveness.
"But you have apparently heard of her," continued Rainham, with an effort 
towards humour. "And I am afraid people have been slandering her. She is a 
very excellent person, the soul of good-nature, and as amusing as - as an 
American comic paper! But in my present state of health I'm afraid she 
would be a little too much for me. I can stand her in homeopathic doses, 
but the Riviera isn't nearly big enough for the two of us as permanencies. 
No, I think I shall wait until next winter now."
Oswyn shot a quick glance at him, and then looked away as suddenly, and, 
after a brief silence, they parted.
Rainham was already beginning to consider himself secure from the 
inconvenient allusions to Lightmark and their altered relations which he 
had at first nervously anticipated. Oswyn rarely mentioned the other 
painter's name, and accepted, without surprise or the faintest appearance 
of a desire for explanation, the self-evident fact of the breach between 
the two quondam allies; regarding it as in the natural course of events, 
and as an additional link in the chain of their intimacy. Indeed, Lightmark 
had long ceased to be a component element of the atmosphere of 
Brodonowski's: he no longer brought the sunshine of his expansive, 
elaborate presence into the limits of the dingy little place; nor did its 
clever, shabby constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the 
popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who 
worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The fact that 
in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so often quoted; his 
demeanour when the more ignorant or less tactful of their mutual 
acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the well-being and work of 
his former friend, had not failed to suggest to the intimate circle that 
there had been a rupture, a change, something far more significant than the 
general severance which had gradually been effected between them, the 
unreclaimed children of the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant 
society painter; something as to which it seemed that explanation would not 
be forthcoming, as to which questions were undesirable. The perception of 
this did not demand much subtlety, and, in accordance with the instincts of 
their craft, Rainham's reticence was respected.
"It was curious when you come to think of it," Copal said reflectively one 
evening after his return from a late autumnal ramble in Finistere, and 
while the situation was still new to him, "very curious. Rainham and 
Lightmark were inseparable; so were Rainham and Oswyn. And all the time 
Lightmark and Oswyn were about as friendly as the toad and the harrow. 
Sounds like Euclid, doesn't it? Things equal to the same thing, and quite 
unequal to one another."
"Yes," assented McAllister, thoughtfully stroking his reddish beard. "And 
there was a time - not so very long ago, either - when Lightmark and Oswyn 
were on pretty good terms too!"
"Ah, well; most people quarrel with old Oswyn sooner or later. But it 
certainly does look a little as if - as if Lightmark had done something and 
the other two had found it out - Oswyn first. However, it's no business of 
ours. I suppose he's safe to be elected next week, though he isn't a 
Scotchman - eh, Sandy, old man?"
"Quite," said the other laconically.
And then their conversation was modulated into a less personal key as they 
resumed their discussion of the colony of American pleinairistes with whom 
Rathbone had foregathered at Pontaven, and of the 'paintability' of fields 
of sarrasin and poplars.
Rainham found it rather difficult to satisfy his inner self as to his real, 
fundamental motive for wintering in England. Sir Egbert's orders? They had 
not after all amounted to much more than an expression of opinion, and it 
was somewhat late for him to begin to obey his doctors. The transfer of his 
business? That could have been carried out just as well in his absence by 
his solicitors.
For sometime after Kitty's death - and her illness had certainly at first 
detained him - he was able to assure himself that he was waiting until 
little Margot (so he called the child) should have secured a firm foothold 
in the affections of his foreman's family; the fact that the Bullens were 
so soon to leave him seemed to render this all the more necessary. But now, 
in the face of Bullen's somewhat deferential devotion and his wife's 
vociferous raptures, there hardly seemed to be room for doubt on this 
score. For the present, at least, the child ran no risk greater than that 
of being too much petted.
And at last he was obliged to own that his inability to follow his 
established precedent was due to some moral deficiency, a species of 
cowardice which he could only vaguely analyse, but which was closely 
connected with his reluctance to isolate himself among the loquacious herd 
of those who sought for health or pleasure. If Oswyn would have accompanied 
him to the Riviera he would have gone; but Oswyn was not to be induced to 
forsake his beloved city, and so he stayed, telling himself that each week 
was to be the last.
On a bright day, when spring seemed to be within measurable distance in 
spite of the cold, he made an expedition with Margot to Kensington Gardens; 
and they passed, on their way through the Park, the seat on which he had 
rested after his interview with Lady Garnett on that far-away October 
evening - the memory struck him now as of another life. It was frosty 
today, and the seat raised itself forlornly from quite a mound of snow. And 
when they left the Garden she hailed a cab, and, before they had reached 
the Circus on their homeward journey, bade the man turn and drive 
northward, up Orchard Street and into Grove Road.
It was dusk now, and there were bright touches of light in the windows of 
the low white house, which he glanced at almost surreptitiously as they 
passed, and two carriages waited before the outer door.
"My dear child," he remarked suddenly to the little girl, who was growing 
almost frightened by his frowning silence, "you should always, always 
remember that when a man has made a fool of himself, the best thing he can 
do is to clear out, and not return to his folly like the proverbial dog!"
Margot looked solemnly puzzled for a moment, and then laughed, deciding 
boldly that this was a new and elaborate game - a joke, perhaps - which she 
was too little to understand, but which politeness and good-fellowship 
alike required her at least to appear to appreciate. They were great 
friends already, these two. Children always recognised an ally in the man 
who made so few friends among his peers, and for children - especially for 
pretty children of a prettiness which accorded with his own private views - 
Rainham had an undeniable weakness.
On slack days - and they were always slack now - loungers about the 
precincts of the dock often caught a glimpse of the child's fair hair above 
the low level of the dark bow-window which leaned outwards from Rainham's 
room; and the foreman had even gone so far as to suggest that his master 
was bringing her up to the business. "Pays us for looking after her", he 
confided to his wife, "and looks after her himself!"
Mrs. Bullen laughed and then sighed, being a soft-hearted woman, and 
inclined to grieve over their impending desertion of their unbusinesslike 
master.
"Mr. Philip couldn't do more for her if he was her own father," she 
acknowledged appreciatively.
Whereat Bullen had smiled with the superior air of one who knew - of one 
who had been down to the sea in ships, and was versed in the mysteries of 
the great world, of fathers and of children.
"Right you are, old woman," he chuckled, "no more he could. Blessed if he 
could! And there's no mistake about that. And when you and me go North in 
the spring, why, it strikes me that we shall have to leave missie behind. 
Yes, that we shall: though I'd take her, glad enough, without the money."
If at first his association with Margot reminded Rainham of another little 
girl whom he had loved, and whose place she could never even approximately 
fill, the memory was not a bitter one, and he was soon able to listen to 
her childish questioning without more than a gentle pang. In time, he even 
found a dreary transient pleasure in closing his eyes on the dank, dun 
reality of Blackpool, while the child discoursed to her doll in the nook of 
the bow-window, and his fancy wandered in another sunnier, larger room, 
with open windows, and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent 
snatches from the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires 
in the balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and 
bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint 
colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel, 
sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the dream 
lasted and recurred: he had always been a dreamer, and every day found him 
more forgetful of the present, more familiar with the past.
Upon his return, rather late, to the dock, he recognised, with a thrill of 
pleasure tinged with something of self-reproach, among the little pile of 
business letters which Mrs. Bullen brought to him with his tea-tray, the 
delicate angular hand-writing of Lady Garnett, and he made haste to possess 
himself of the secret of the narrow envelope, of a by-gone fashion, secured 
with a careful seal.

"MY DEAR" (so she wrote),
"This is very absurd; yes, at the risk of offending you, I must tell you 
that it is not clever of you to take things so very much au serieux. I know 
more than you think, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, who means well, doubtless - 
but, mon Dieu, what a woman! - Mrs. Sylvester has been here; she has spoken 
to me, and I am afraid I have scandalised her. 'You don't suppose he has 
married her,' I said, I confess not altogether disingenuously, and how 
mystified she looked! You will say that Mrs. Sylvester ought to mind her 
own affairs, and you will even find me a trifle impertinent, perhaps. But I 
claim my privilege. Am I not your godmother? Still, I am rather intrigued, 
I own. I don't want to ask what you have done, or why; whatever it is, I 
approve of it. What I find fault with is what you are doing, the part you 
are playing. You must not give me the chagrin of seeing Mrs. Sylvester and 
the admirable Charles triumphant at your expense, Philip. You must show 
yourself: you must come and see me; you must come to dinner forthwith, or I 
shall have to make you a visit at your dock. I must talk to you, mon cher! 
I am troubled about you, and so is Mary. Come to us, and Mary shall play to 
you and exorcise your demons. Besides, I am bored - horribly bored. Yes, 
even Mary bores me sometimes, and I her, doubtless; and we want you. We 
will own that we are selfish, after all, but you must come!"

Then there was a postscript:

"Mary suggests that possibly you are not so incomprehensible as I think; 
perhaps you are at Bordighera? But you ought to let us know."

Rainham sat with the letter before him until Margot came to bid him good-
night. And then he decided to take advantage of the suggestion of the 
postscript: surely, if he did not answer the dear old lady's letter, she 
would conclude that he was indeed upon his travels!


Chapter 26

If Eve could have mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so that for 
the outward world it would still present the same uncompromising surface, 
so that no inquisitive or bungling touch could bring to light the grim, 
disfiguring fracture which it had sustained, it is probable that she would 
have chosen this part, and hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of 
all save those who were so inseparably connected with the tragedy of that 
autumnal afternoon. But it was so completely shattered, the pieces were so 
many; and, worst of all, some of them were lost. To forget! What a world of 
bitter irony was in the word! And she could not even bury her illusions 
quietly and unobserved of uncharitable eyes; there was the sordid necessity 
of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts to be fashioned, and the half-
truths to be uttered, which bore an interpretation so far more damning than 
the full measure which it seemed so hard to give.
Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on the 
alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than before, had 
soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere; an explanation had 
been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat in its least attractive 
features by Eve's natural reticence, had gone to swell the volume of 
similar experiences recorded in Mrs. Sylvester's brain. That she felt a 
genuine sorrow for Rainham is certain, for the grain of her nature was 
kindly enough beneath its veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was 
more than tempered by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval 
of the prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so 
irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of pride 
which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless perfectly sincere 
regret was an almost visible element in her moral atmosphere, as she 
emerged from the door of her daughter's house after this momentous 
interview, drawing her furs about her with a little shiver before she 
stepped into her well-appointed brougham. She had the air of saying to 
herself, 'Dear me, dear, dear! it's very sad, it's very terrible; but I! 
how clever I have been, and how beautifully I behaved!' There was nothing 
particularly novel from her point of view in the story which she had just 
extracted from her reluctant daughter; the situation called for an 
edifying, comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what 
might have been expected - though this (which was somewhat hard) did not 
render the episode any the less reprehensible.
And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's homeward 
drive, and the half hour's tete-a-tete before dinner, which she had 
utilised for an exchange of confidences with her son.
"I didn't know that there had been an - an exposure," he said, as he stood, 
a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little drawing-room. 
"But I had an idea that it was inevitable from - from certain information 
which I have received. In fact, I have been rather puzzled. You must do me 
the justice to remember that I never liked the man - though he had his good 
points," he added a little awkwardly, as inconvenient memories of the many 
kindnesses which he had received at Rainham's hands thrust themselves upon 
him. "But I'm afraid he's hardly the sort of person one ought to be 
intimate with. Especially you, and Eve. Of course, for her it's out of the 
question."
"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Sylvester decisively; "and they haven't seen him 
since, I need hardly say. In fact, they haven't even heard of him. They 
haven't told a soul except me, and of course I shan't tell anybody," the 
lady concluded with a sigh, as she remembered how difficult she had found 
it to drive straight home without breaking the vow of secrecy which her 
daughter had exacted from her.
Whatever Mrs. Sylvester may have thought, it is certain that the interview, 
from which she enjoyed the impression of having emerged so triumphantly, 
had brought anything but consolation to her daughter, whose first impulse 
was to blame herself quite angrily for having admitted to her secret places 
after all so natural a confidante.
Nor had Eve repented of this feeling. As time went on she found her 
mother's somewhat too obviously complacent attitude more and more 
exasperating, and she compared her want of reserve very unfavourably with 
her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his reasons for a 
certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also, she cherished 
something of resentment, for he, too, more especially in collaboration with 
her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly moral reflections, which, 
although for the most part no names were mentioned, were evidently not 
directed generally and at hazard against the society of which the Colonel 
and Mrs. Sylvester formed ornaments so distinguished.
Upon one afternoon, when Christmas was already a thing of the past, and the 
days were growing longer, it was with considerable relief that Eve heard 
the outer door close upon her mother, leaving her alone in the twilight of 
the smaller portion of the double drawing-room. She was alone, for Mrs. 
Sylvester had been the last to depart of a small crowd of afternoon 
callers, and Dick was interviewing somebody - a frame-maker, a model, or a 
dealer - in the studio. She sat with a book unopened in her hand, gazing 
intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her face, 
giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display 
itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of 
her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which 
she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, 
by living perpetually in a crowd. Indeed, to such a point had she carried 
her endeavours, that Mrs. Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter 
of almost public interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded 
by sharp-eyed journalists at the playhouses on 'first nights'; her carriage-
horses performed extensive nightly pilgrimages in the regions of Kensington 
and Mayfair; and she had made a reputation for her dressmaker. And already 
she realised that her efforts to live outside herself were futile; moments 
like these must come, and the knowledge that, in spite of her countless 
friends and voluminous visiting-list, she was alone.
Her mother? Dick? After all, they were only in the position of occupying 
somewhat exceptionally prominent places on the visiting-list.
As for her husband, after all these long months of married life, she could 
not say that she knew him. She regarded him with a kind of admiration of 
his personal, social attractions, in which she recognised him as fully her 
equal, with a kind of envy of the genius, which she could not entirely 
comprehend, but which seemed to make him so vastly her superior. And yet 
there was a shadow of doubt about it all: there had been sinister flashes, 
illumining, dimly enough, depths which the marital intimacy still left 
unfathomed, making her wonder whether her husband's candour might not mask 
something more terrible than forgotten follies, something that might prove 
a more real and irremovable barrier between them than even that indefinable 
want of a mutual horizon, of common ground upon which their traditions 
could unite themselves.
So long as Dick had remained cheerfully masterful, and picturesquely 
flamboyant, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness which 
makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of oppression, 
his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part for which he had 
obviously been cast - of a good-humoured, ornamental domestic tyrant, to be 
openly obeyed and covertly coerced. A husband who assisted her acquisition 
of social laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed 
for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses - yes, her mother certainly 
had reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely 
conscious of a defect, a short-coming. It was all very well so far as it 
went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had he not 
also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there was a sting in 
this) where success was somewhat more difficult of achievement?
Now, moreover, he had begun to carry an aggrieved air - an air which 
suggested that he pitied himself, that he considered that he had been 
unfairly dealt with, that he was entitled to assume the attitude of an 
innocent, injured victim of some blindly-dealt retribution. What did that 
mean? The only explanation which his wife could find for this symptomatic 
manifestation had its origin in the unhappy episode of which the memory was 
always on the threshold of her solitary thoughts, and, perhaps, of his. She 
began to feel, with a certain compunction, that Dick must resent the 
circumstances which obliged him practically to sever his acquaintance with 
a man who had indisputably figured for so many years as his nearest friend; 
and she asked herself sometimes whether the circumstances in question did 
not, in effect, centre in herself.
Although the world was as yet far from being an open book for her, it was 
conceivable that Philip Rainham (even if one judged by appearances), had 
done nothing which need necessarily cast him beyond the pale of the 
unregenerate society of bachelordom. It never occurred to her that, so far 
as she herself was concerned, a renewal of the old relation was among 
possible things: if she had met Philip in public she would have made it 
clear to him that he was no longer on the same plane with her; that, from 
her point of view, he had practically ceased to exist.
It was only when she was alone, and pleasant, bitter memories of the old 
days recurred, that she owned to herself how hard it was to think of this 
intimacy as severed by a rule of moral conduct no less inexorable, and even 
more cruel, than death. And yet there were moments - and this was one of 
them - when her husband's bearing seemed more portentous, when the 
explanation she had found possible seemed no longer probable, and 
uncomfortable doubts as to the real meaning of his uneasiness assailed her 
mind.
A fragment of burning coal fell with a clatter into the grate: she welcomed 
the interruption, and for the moment abandoned her thoughts, only, however, 
to enter upon them again by a different path.
"I wonder why I don't hate him?" she asked herself, almost wistfully. (She 
was not now thinking of her husband.) "I ought to hate him, I suppose, and 
to pity her. But I pity him, I think, and I hate - her."
The fire still crackled cheerfully, and she began to feel its heat 
oppressive; she let her hands fall with a gesture half of contempt, half of 
despair, and then rose abruptly, and walked into the darkness of the larger 
room, from the unshuttered windows of which she could see the dark bulk of 
her husband's studio looming against the gray, smoke-coloured sky.
While she stood, leaning with something of a forward tilt of her gracile 
figure upon the ledge of the low square window, the side door of the studio 
opened, letting a flood of light out upon the lawn, and with absent eyes 
she saw that her husband's visitor was taking his leave. Presently the door 
closed; the broad rays which had shone coldly from the skylight of the 
building died out, so abruptly that the change seemed almost audible; and 
simultaneously she heard her husband's careless step in the long glazed 
passage, half conservatory, half corridor, which led from her domain to 
his. He came in, softly humming an air from a comic opera, and then paused, 
peering into the darkness for an instant before he distinguished his wife's 
shape in dusky relief against the pale square of window.
"Don't light the room!" she said quickly, as she saw him stretch his hand 
towards the little button which controlled the electric light; "we can talk 
in the dark."
He stopped with his hand on the porcelain knob, breaking off his ditty in 
the middle of a bar.
"By all means, if you like," he said, "though I should prefer to see you, 
you know."
Then he dropped luxuriously into an easy-chair by the side of the fire, 
which continued to exhibit a comfortable, glowing redness.
But very soon Lightmark became aware of a certain weight of apprehension, 
which took from him the power to enjoy these material comforts; 
unattractive possibilities seemed to hover in the silent darkness, and his 
more subtle senses were roused, and brought to a state of quivering tension 
which was almost insupportable. His wife moved, and he felt that she had 
directed her eyes towards him, though he could not see her; and he winced 
instinctively, seeking to be first to break the silence, but unable to find 
a timely word to say. The blow fell, and even while she spoke he felt a 
quick admiration for the instinct which had enabled him to anticipate her 
thought.
"Dick," she said quietly, without moving from her place by the window, 
"have you seen him since - ?"
There was no need of names; he did not even notice the omission. Could she 
see his face, he wondered, in the fire light?
"No!" he sighed, "no!"
She came nearer to him, so near that he could hear her breathing, the touch 
of her fingers upon the back of a chair; and presently she spoke again:
"You think there was no excuse for him?"
"Ah - for excuse! She was pretty, you know!"
He got up, and stood facing her for a moment in the darkness, and then, 
while she appeared to consider, glanced at his watch, and made a suggestion 
of movement towards the door.
"Only a minute, Dick," she said, in the same set voice. "You will do me the 
justice to admit that I haven't alluded to this before. But I have been 
thinking - I can't help it - and I want to know - "
"To know?" he echoed impatiently.
"To know your position - our position; what you had to do with it all."
"What is the good? What difference can it make?"
"It's the doubt," she said - "the doubt! I thought you might like to 
explain."
"To explain? Good Lord I what have I to explain? Is it not all settled, all 
clear? My dear child, let us be reasonable, let us forget; it's the only 
way."
There was less of anger in his voice, but if Eve could have seen his eyes 
in the firelight, she might have noticed that they were very bright, and 
their pupils were contracted to hard, iridescent points.
"How can it be settled," she asked wearily, "while there is this shadow of 
doubt? And to forget - Heaven knows I have tried!"
Dick shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.
"What do you want me to say? - to explain?"
"Could you not have warned him, Dick? Did you not see it coming? She, that 
woman, was she not your model? Did he not meet her at your studio? Was not 
that the beginning of it all? Ah, can you say that you were not to blame?"
She spoke fast, following question with question, as if she anticipated the 
answer with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and there was more of 
entreaty than of denunciation in her last words.
"It's such an old story," he rejoined, with an air of feeble protest. "How 
could I foresee what would happen? And," he added, hardening himself, "they 
did not meet for the first time at my studio; on the contrary, it was he 
who brought her to me, and I suspected nothing, What more can I say? Surely 
it is all plain enough?"
Eve sighed. It seemed to her husband that she was on the whole 
disappointed, and he felt that, while he was about it, he might have given 
himself a freer hand, and made himself emerge, not only without a stain 
upon his character - the expression occurred to him with a kind of familiar 
mockery - but with beaten drums and flying colours.
He reflected that this was another example of the folly of attempting to 
economise. At the same time, he was gently thrilled by what he owned to 
himself was a not ignoble emotion: that sigh seemed to speak so naturally 
and pathetically of disillusionment, it was such a simple little confession 
of a damaged ideal. It did not occur to him to suspect that the character 
of which his wife had formed too proudly high an estimate was his own.
"Don't you think you might trust me?" he said presently in a milder, almost 
paternal tone, magnanimously prepared for a charming display of penitence, 
which it would be his duty rather to encourage than to deprecate.
"To trust you?" replied Eve quickly. "Haven't I the appearance of trusting 
you? Don't I accept your explanations?"
It was Lightmark's turn to sigh. His wife moved away, with an air of 
dismissing the subject.
"It is quite dark; it must be time to dress for dinner. Please turn on the 
light." Then she added as she left the room, without waiting for an answer: 
"And you, do you find it so easy to forget?"
When Lightmark was alone, he stood for a few minutes before the fire in 
meditation; then he clenched his fist viciously.
"Confound the girl, and him, too! No, poor devil! he meant well. It was 
just the senseless, quixotic sort of thing one would have expected of him. 
But I don't know that it has done much good. It has made me feel a sneak, 
though I've only been lying to back him up. Why couldn't he let it alone? 
There would have been a storm, of course, but it would soon have blown 
over, and no one else need have known."
He stopped in front of a mirror - he had been pacing up and down the room - 
and found himself looking rather pale in the soft, brilliant glow of the 
incandescent lamps. Moreover, the clock pointed to an hour very near that 
for which the carriage had been ordered.
While he was dressing for dinner, it occurred to him - it was not for the 
first time - that, after all, it would take very little to render Rainham's 
bungling devotion, and his own meritorious aberrations from the path of 
truth, worse than nugatory. For what if Kitty should split? - so he 
elegantly expressed his fears - what if the girl, of whom he had heard 
nothing since the day of that deplorable scene, should break loose, and 
throw up the part which she had undertaken upon such very short notice?
Decidedly, he felt that he was abundantly justified in resenting the false 
position into which he had been thrust; the imposture was too glaring. 
Would it not even now be well to remodel the situation, with a greater 
semblance of adherence to facts? - to make a clean breast of it? The 
crudity of the idea offended him; the process would necessarily be wanting 
in art. But possibly it was not yet too late to substitute a story which, 
if it caused him temporary discomfort, would at least leave him more 
certain of the future, the master of an easier, a less violently outraged 
conscience.
At dinner the taciturnity, bordering on moroseness, of a talker usually so 
brilliant led his host to surmise that Lightmark had ruined a picture, his 
hostess to conclude that he had quarrelled with his wife. He came home 
early, and occupied the small hours of the morning in forming an amended 
plan of campaign, of which the first move took the shape of a somewhat 
voluminous letter, addressed to Philip Rainham.


Chapter 27

Charles Sylvester was a man of a somewhat austere punctuality, and there 
were few of his habits in which he took a juster pride than in the 
immemorial regularity with which he distributed the first few hours of his 
day. To rise at half-past seven, whatever might be the state of the 
temperature or the condition of the air; to reach the breakfast-room on the 
stroke of eight, and to devote half an hour to the perusal of the Times and 
of his more intimate correspondence - of course, there were certain letters 
which he reserved until his arrival in chambers - while he discussed a 
moderate breakfast which seldom varied; to ride in the Row for another half-
hour; and finally, having delivered his horse to a groom, who met him at 
the corner of Park Lane, to enter the precincts of the Temple, after a 
brisk walk through Piccadilly and the Strand, shortly after ten - these 
were infallible articles in his somewhat rigid creed.
Mrs. Sylvester, therefore, was struck with all the surprise which results 
from an unprecedented breach of custom when, descending to breakfast at her 
own laxer hour one dark morning in February, she found her son still 
presiding at the table, absorbed in his letters. He pushed aside these and 
a packet of telegram forms as she entered, and, rising to accept her 
discreet kiss, responded to her implicit inquiry as to whether anything was 
wrong - her eyes had strayed involuntarily to the clock - by pointing her 
attention to a paragraph in the morning paper. His manner was more solemn 
than usual; it betrayed an undercurrent of suppressed excitement.
"This is unusual," he remarked: "but, you see, I have an excuse."
She followed the direction of his finger: 'Death of the Member for North 
Mallow.' The cream of the news was contained for her in the heading, and so 
she did not read the rest of the notice, which was a short one.
Now, North Mallow was the respectable constituency in which a coalition of 
two parties had selected Mr. Sylvester to be their candidate at the next 
election, which this death had transferred into the immediate present.
"My dear boy!" said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically.
Then she checked herself, recognising that a too open satisfaction in the 
event - opportune as it might be - would be hardly decent.
"Of course, it is very sad for him, poor man!" she remarked. "But I cannot 
help feeling glad that you should be in the House, and so much sooner than 
we expected."
He interrupted her with another discreet embrace.
"My dear boy!" she said again vaguely. contentedly, as she poured herself a 
cup of tea.
"He has been in bad health for some time," continued Charles. "He died two 
days ago at Cannes. It is astonishing that I did not hear the news before. 
I have wired to Hutchins, my election agent, and if I can manage it, I 
shall run down to Mallow. Of course one is sorry, but since it has been 
ordered so, after all, one has to think of the party."
"Ah yes, the party," murmured Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically; "of course, 
that is the great thing. I am sure you will distinguish yourself. I suppose 
there is no danger of a defeat?"
"Oh, it is a safe seat! But one has always to canvass; there is always a 
certain risk. I sometimes wish - "He stopped short and pulled nervously at 
his collar, finding it a little difficult to express his meaning. "I 
think," he went on at last with a visible effort, flushing somewhat, "that 
I must marry. An intelligent woman devoted to my interests would be of 
great service to me now."
Mrs. Sylvester allowed her eyes to remain in discreet observation of the 
tablecloth.
"I have often thought so," she said at last quietly.
"Indeed!" he remarked politely. "Yes; it is a matter, perhaps, which I 
should have discussed with you before. I am fully aware of the right you 
have - I would not, I mean, have failed - "
"Oh, my son!" she protested, "I am sure you have always been most correct."
"I have tried to be," he said simply. "If I have said nothing to you, it 
has been because I wished to be cautious, not to commit myself, to be very 
sure - "
"Of the lady's affection, do you mean?"
"Ah, can one ever be sure of that? No; I mean rather of my own attitude, of 
my own situation. It has always seemed to me that marriage is a very great 
undertaking, a thing to be immensely considered, not to be embarked on 
rashly."
"You view everything so justly!" she exclaimed. "Have you - am I to 
understand that you have a particular person in view?"
He waived aside the compliment with a bland gesture, which asserted that 
only his magnanimity prevented him from acknowledging its truth.
"Surely, surely!" he said. "You are perhaps aware how immensely I admire 
Miss Masters; that I have paid her very great attention - marked attention, 
I may say?"
"I observed something of the kind at Lucerne. I did not know if it had 
continued; sometimes I thought so. Have you proposed to her?"
"No," he said slowly; "I have not yet proposed to her. Naturally, I wished 
to consult you first."
"I am sure, Charles," said his mother cheerfully, "that I shall be 
extremely pleased. She is a very nice girl. She is a great-niece of Lord 
Hazelbury, and connected with the Marshes, and I know she will have at 
least sixty thousand pounds."
He glanced across at her, frowning a little, with a certain irritation.
"I shall not marry her for her money," he said.
"My dear boy," she retaliated, "I did not suppose you would be mercenary; 
only, a little money is very desirable; and Lady Garnett has a great deal, 
and Mary will certainly get her share of it."
"Ah, I don't like her," put in Charles inconsequently; "she is a profane 
old woman."
"Neither do I; but one must accept her. And Mary, after all, is only her 
niece."
"She has a beautiful character," he continued slowly. (This time he was not 
speaking of Lady Garnett.) "I admire it more than I can say; it has very 
great. depths."
His mother looked up at him quickly, struck by his strenuous accent, for 
which she was scarcely prepared. She had a high notion of his character, of 
his ability, and was pleased, more pleased than she cared to admit, at the 
suitability of the match. He had always been an excellent, even a 
sympathetic son; and it had been part of his excellence that whenever he 
should marry, she had been quite certain that he would marry like this, 
selecting with dignity a young woman whom one could emphatically approve - 
a testimony to his constancy in certain definite traditions in which he had 
been reared, traditions, it may be said, which he adhered to with a 
tenacity that even exceeded her own.
It had never entered into her calculations, however, to look upon him as an 
ardent lover, and yet it was as an ardent lover that he had just spoken. 
She recognised the tone.
And, strangely enough, for the moment it happened to touch her, to give her 
an increased interest in the affair, though afterwards she could reflect 
that in a man of Charles' character, so soberly practical and mature, it 
was perhaps a trifle incongruous, and, at the best, not precisely the tone 
by which women are most likely to be won.
She said placidly:
"I hope you will succeed. If you take my advice, you will speak at once."
"I had meant to take the first occasion," he said.
"Ah, my dear," she put in, "you had better make one yourself."
Charles simply smiled. Her approbation of his views, and the unwonted 
dissipation of a prolonged and indolent breakfast, together with the 
pleasant excitement of shortly taking the political field, had rendered him 
singularly mild.
He remembered that he was invited that night to a dance of some magnitude, 
at a house big enough for privacy to be easily secured, and where Mary 
would certainly be.
"Perhaps I will," he said, gathering up his voluminous papers as he 
prepared for departure, "this evening."
He was still in the same mood of cheerful resolution when, after an 
exceptionally busy day, which had also ministered in an exceptional degree 
to his self-esteem (it had included an interview with one of the whips of 
his party, as well as a satisfactory conversation with his agent on the 
temper of the constituency whose member was so seasonably deceased), he had 
dressed at his club, and dawdled at his accustomed table in the large 
bright room over a solitary dinner.
His head had been very full of his political ambitions, into which the 
image of Miss Masters had not inconveniently intruded. He had eminently 
that orderly faculty of detachment which allows a man to separate and 
disconnect the various interests of his life, admitting each only in its 
due order and place; but none the less had he been conscious all along that 
somewhere in the background of his mind her image subsisted, and now that 
he was at leisure again to give her that place of honour in his 
consideration which she had long been insensibly acquiring, he was more 
than ever determined to do all that lay in his power to make her his wife.
It amazed him almost that he had not put the important question long 
before, so vital and inevitable had it become; and he scarcely considered, 
in his curious egoism, his scant acquaintance with the subtlety of a 
woman's mind, how much Mary herself might have contributed to the delay by 
her careful avoidance of intimate topics, by the cloak of elaborate 
indifference in which she had wrapped herself whenever she had not been 
able to avoid being alone with him; so that, however much he had desired 
it, he could never, without doing her gross violence, have succeeded in 
striking the precisely right personal note.
Tonight, however, there should be no more fencing; of that he was 
thoroughly resolved. He would be eloquent and sustained, impassioned, and, 
if necessary, humble - but, above all, perfectly direct; he would brook no 
faltering, feminine evasions; would insist on an answer, and on a right 
answer too, pointing out, with the close reasoning acquired in his 
profession, the superb propriety of the match. And he believed that she 
would be convinced. Was it not half of her attraction that she was a woman 
of intelligence, not a silly schoolgirl, who flirted and danced?
In spite of his self-esteem, however, he was not unwise enough to feel sure 
of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them, notoriously 
perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that inopportune third party, 
a preferred rival, to be counted with, who might have been first on the 
field.
Considering these things, he allowed himself a glass of chartreuse with his 
coffee, and the unwonted luxury of a cigar, over which he lingered, growing 
more nervous as its white ash lengthened and the occasion drew near. Yet he 
could remind himself at last that - at any rate, to his knowledge - there 
was no one else whose pretensions the lady preferred, since Rainham, the 
man whom he had marked as dangerous, was socially damned, and no longer to 
be feared.
It was very nearly eleven before he reached the house to which he had been 
invited, and where he found a very brilliant party already in progress. The 
house was chiefly a legal and political one, although there seemed to be a 
fair leaven of literary and artistic celebrities among the more solid 
reputations; and for some time he was engrossed by various of his 
Parliamentary acquaintances, who questioned and encouraged him. Two or 
three had newly arrived from the House, where an important division had 
just been declared; and Charles listened with some impatience to their 
account of it, gazing absently, over their heads, at the maze of pretty 
toilettes, which made an agreeable frou-frou over the polished floor, 
although the debate had been upon a question in which he was warmly 
interested.
He escaped from them at last with a murmured apology, an intimation that he 
wished to find somebody, and made his way slowly into the adjoining room, 
from which the strains of waltz music floated in, and where they danced. 
His friends found his demeanour noticeable, and were inclined to wonder 
with some amusement, knowing his habitual equanimity, that the vacancy at 
North Mallow should have undermined it. When he entered the ball-room he 
stopped for a moment, flushing a little. The first person he had seen, 
between the heads of the floating couples, was Lady Garnett, on a little 
raised seat at the further end of the large room, engaged in an animated 
conversation with an ambassador. He realised quickly that she would not 
have come alone.
He waited until the music ceased and the dispersal of the dancers made the 
passage of the floor practicable; then he set off in her direction, 
trusting that he might find her niece in the vicinity. Half-way down he 
stopped again; he had recognised his sister, who fanned herself languidly, 
seated on one of two chairs partially concealed by a great mass of exotic 
shrubbery, in pots, which formed almost an alcove. She removed her long 
soft skirt, which she had thrown over the vacant seat, as he approached; 
and at this tacit invitation he accepted it.
"Only until the rightful owner comes," he explained. "But I see you so 
seldom now that I must not lose this chance. I suppose you are keeping it 
for someone?"
"It is for Miss Masters," said Mrs. Lightmark; "but she won't want it yet. 
She has just gone down to supper."
"Ah, so much the better. I want to see her."
"Do you?" she asked indifferently. "Well, you had better keep me company 
until she comes. It is a long time since I saw you."
He considered her for a moment with a heavy, fraternal appreciation.
"Yes," he said - "yes, it is a long time, Eve. But, of course, we have each 
our own occupations, our own duties now. And being the wife of a successful 
painter must involve almost as many as being - if I may say so - a fairly 
successful barrister. Gratified as we are, my dear - my mother and I - at 
the success of your marriage, which has proved more brilliant even than we 
hoped, I must say that we often regret having lost you. We are duller 
people, I fear, since you have left us. However, we can still think of the 
old days, as you, no doubt, do sometimes."
She gave a faint little elusive smile, behind her fan.
"Oh, I am afraid I have forgotten them," she said. Then she went on 
quickly, before he had time to reply: "Another thing, too, I had almost 
forgotten - to congratulate you - on Mr. Humphrey's death."
"My dear Eve!" He looked at her with some reproof, with an air of finding 
her a little crude. "You should not say such things, Eve! I deeply deplore 
- "
"Shouldn't I?" she asked flippantly. "Dick told me you were to succeed to 
his seat. Isn't it true?"
He ignored her question - busied himself with an obdurate button on his 
glove. She watched him over her fan, half smiling. with her brilliant eyes.
"You are cynical," he remarked at last. "I dare say I shall get in. Is 
Lightmark here?"
"Yes, he is here. He has taken Mrs. Van der Gucht - the American Petroleum 
Queen they call her, don't they? - down to supper. She wants him to paint 
her portrait, at his own price. He will be here to fetch me at half-past 
eleven. I believe we have to move on then."
"Move on?" he asked, with an air of mystification.
"Show ourselves at another house," she replied. "It's a convenient 
practice, you know; one gets two advertisements in one night. Besides, one 
saves one's self a little that way; one sometimes gets an evening off."
"You talk as if you were an actress," he said, with offended irony. "I 
don't understand your tone. Does Miss Masters accompany you?"
"I think not. Did you say you wanted to see her?"
"Particularly; it is chiefly for that I am here."
"She is a very nice girl," remarked his sister gently. "I hope - " She 
hesitated slightly; then held out her hand to him, which involuntarily he 
clasped. "I hope you will have a satisfactory conversation, Charles."
He glanced at her for a moment silently, feeling a secret pleasure in her 
discrimination.
"You look very well," he said at last, "only rather tired. That is a very 
pretty dress."
She smiled vaguely.
"I didn't know you ever noticed dresses. Yes, I am rather tired. Ah, there 
is Mary - and Dick."
The girl came towards them at this moment, looking pretty and distinguished 
in her square-cut, dark gown; and Lightmark followed, carrying her bouquet 
of great yellow roses, which he held appreciatively under his nose.
He nodded to Charles Sylvester, who was shaking hands with Mary; then he 
turned to his wife.
"If you are ready, dear," he said lightly, "I expect the carriage is. Miss 
Masters, you know we have another dance to do. My brother-in-law will see 
after you and your bouquet, if you will allow me."
"Oh, give it me, please," cried the girl, with a nervous laugh. "I really 
did not know you were carrying it. Thanks so much."
She had succeeded almost mechanically to Mrs. Lightmark's vacated chair; 
and as she sat there, with her big nosegay on her lap, he was struck by her 
extreme pallor, the lassitude in her fine eyes. He ventured to remark on 
it, when the other two had left them, and she had not made, as he had 
feared and half anticipated, any motion to rise.
"Yes, the rooms are hot and dreadfully full. There are too many sweet-
smelling flowers about; they make one faint. It's a relief to sit down in 
comparative quiet and calm for a little."
He was emboldened by her quiescence to resume his chair at her side.
"I won't ask you to dance, then," he said; "and allow me to hope that no 
one else has done so."
She glanced indifferently at her card. "No. 10," he added anxiously; "a 
waltz, after the Lancers."
"I see some vague initials," she said; "but probably my partner will not be 
able to find me, thanks to these shrubs."
"I hope not, with all my heart," said Charles devoutly. "At any rate, I can 
sit with you until you are claimed."
"As you like," she replied wearily. "Are you not anxious to dance?"
"I am not a great dancer at any time," he protested; "and to night my heart 
would be particularly out of it. I came for another purpose."
He spoke tensely, and there was a slight tremor in his voice, ordinarily so 
clear and dogmatic, which alarmed the girl, so that she forgot her 
weariness and meditated a retreat.
"Oh, so did I," she replied with forced gaiety. "I came to look after my 
aunt, which reminds me this is hardly the way to do it. Will you please 
take me to her?"
"I assure you she does not want you," cried Charles eagerly. "I saw her not 
ten minutes ago with M. de Loudeac. They seemed to be talking most 
intimately."
"He is an old friend," said Mary; "but, still, they may have finished by 
this time. One can say a great deal in ten minutes."
"Ah!" he put in quickly, "only give me them, Miss Masters."
"I really think it is unnecessary," she murmured with a rapid flush. She 
made another movement, as if she would rise, dropping her bouquet in her 
haste to prevent his speech. He picked it up quickly and replaced it in her 
hands.
"No, don't go, Miss Masters," he insisted. "I surely have a right to be 
heard. After all, I do not require ten minutes, nor five. Only I came to 
say - "
"Ah, don't say it, Mr. Sylvester," she pleaded. "What is the good?"
"I mean that I love you! I want you immensely to be my wife."
She bent her head over her flowers, so that her eyes were quite hidden, and 
he could not see that they were full of tears; and for a long time there 
was silence, in which Sylvester's foot kept time nervously with the music. 
The girl bitterly reproached her tiredness, which had dulled apprehension 
so far that she had not realised at once the danger of the situation, nor 
retreated while there was yet time. She had always dreaded this; and now 
that it was accomplished, an illimitable vista of the disagreeable 
consequences broadened out before her. The ice being once broken, however 
she might answer him now, a repetition, perhaps even several, could 
scarcely be avoided; she foresaw that his persistence would be immense, so 
that with whatsoever finality she might refuse him, it would all be to go 
over again. And with it all was joined her natural reluctance to give an 
honest gentleman pain, only heightened by her sense that, for the first 
time in her knowledge of the man, the evident sincerity of his purpose had 
given simplicity to his speech. He for once had been neither formal nor 
absurd, and the uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share 
in it, seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast 
aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a dart 
without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a desire to 
deal gently with him.
"Mr. Sylvester," she said at last, looking up at him, "I am so sorry, but 
please do not speak of this any more. Believe me, it is quite impossible. I 
am sensible of the honour you do me, deeply sensible, only it is 
impossible. Let us forget this - this mistake, and be better friends than 
we have ever been before."
"Ah, Mary," he broke out, "you must not answer me like that, without 
consideration. Why should it be impossible?"
"Forgive me," she said gently; "only I am tired now. And consideration 
would not alter it. Let me go."
He put one hand out, detaining her, and she sank back again wearily on her 
chair.
"If you are tired, so much the more reason that you should hear me. You 
will not be tired if you marry me. If you are tired, it is because your 
life has no great interests: it's frivolous; it is dribbled away on little 
things. You don't really care for it - you are too good for it - the sort 
of life you lead."
"The sort of life I lead?"
"The ideals of your set, of the people who surround your aunt, of your 
aunt, herself. The whole thing is barren."
"Are we more frivolous than the rest?" she asked suddenly.
"You are better than the rest," he said promptly. "That is why I want you 
to marry me. You were made for great interests - for a large scene."
"What are they - your great interests, your ideals?" she asked presently. 
"How are they so much better than ours? - though I don't know what ours may 
be."
"If you marry me, you will find out," he said. "Oh, you shall have them, I 
promise you that! I want you immensely, Mary! I am just going into public 
life, I mean to go far - and if I have your support, your sympathy, if you 
become my wife, I shall go much farther. And I want to take you away from 
all this littleness, and put you where you can be felt, where your 
character - I can't say how I admire it - may have scope."
"I am sorry," she said again; "you are very good, and you do me great 
honour: but I can only answer as before - it is not possible."
"Ah, but you give no reason!" he cried. "There is no reason."
"Is it not a good enough one that I do not love you?" said the girl.
"Only marry me," he persisted, "and that will come. I don't want to hurry 
you, you know. I would rather you would take time and consider; give me 
your answer in a week or two's time."
They were silent for a little; Sylvester was now perfectly composed: his 
own agitation seemed to have communicated itself to the girl, whom he 
watched intently, with his bland, impartial gaze. She had closed her eyes, 
was resting her chin on her bouquet, and appeared to be deeply meditating 
his words. She looked up at last with a little shiver.
"I am very tired," she said. "If I promise to think over what you have said 
tonight and to give you my answer in a month's time, will you try and find 
Lady Garnett for me now?"
"Ah, Miss Masters - Mary!" he said, "that is all I want."
"And in the meantime," she pursued gently, "to allow the subject to drop?"
"You must make your own terms," he said; "but surely I may come and see 
you?"
"Very well," she consented, after a moment; "if it gives you any pleasure, 
you may come."
At which Charles simply took her cold, irresponsive hand in his own, with a 
silent pressure. Irresponsive as it was, however, he reminded himself, she 
had made no effective protest against the gesture.


Chapter 28

At Lady Day, when the negotiations for the sale of his unprofitable 
riverside domain were finally concluded, Rainham scarcely regretted to find 
that an ample margin had been left before the new company took possession; 
and he had still several months, during which he might remain in occupation 
of his old habitation, and arrange leisurely for the subsequent disposition 
of his books and more intimate personal chattels. The dilapidated old house 
was to be pulled down by the new owners (the plans for an extensive 
warehouse, to be erected on the site of it, were already in the hands of 
the builders), and this also was a fact from which Rainham derived a 
certain satisfaction. Insensibly, the spot had discovered a charm for him: 
the few rooms, which had been his for so long, although, actually, so small 
a proportion of his days had been spent in them, had gradually taken the 
impress of his personality - the faded carpets, the familiar grouping of 
pictures and books, the very shape of the apartment, and the discoloured 
paper on the walls, expressed him in a way that certainly no other abiding 
place, which might conceivably await him, could ever do. And he took a 
dreary pleasure in the consideration that, after he had gone, the rooms 
would know no other occupant; that from the glazed and barred windows of 
the dreary building which was to take the place of the quaint old house, 
when it was levelled to the ground, no person would ever gaze out, exactly 
as he had done, at the white and melancholy river; in which, as he said to 
himself fantastically, he had cast, one by one, as the days lengthened, his 
interests, his passions, his desires.
Years before, by an accident of inheritance, he had come into the property 
with an immense antipathy: a white elephant that would bring him neither 
profit nor honour, but which the modest competence that he had previously 
enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had altered the tenor of his 
existence, destroyed his youth and his ambitions, and represented for many 
years, more completely than anything else, the element of failure which had 
run through his life.
And, after all, now that deliverance was at hand, he was by no means 
jubilant. In escaping from this thraldom of so many years, he felt 
something of the chagrin with which a man witnesses the removal of some 
long-cherished and inveterate grievance; the more so, in that he could now 
remind himself impartially how small it had been, how little, after all, he 
had allowed it to weigh upon him. In effect, had he not always done very 
much as he liked, lived half his time abroad in his preferred places, 
chosen his own friends, and followed his own tastes without greatly 
considering his inherited occupation? He must look deeper than that, he 
reflected, within himself, or into the nature of things themselves, 
actually to seize and define that curious flaw which had made life seem to 
him at last (from what wearied psychologist, read long ago and half 
forgotten, did he cull the phrase?) 'a long disease of the spirit.'
For appreciations of this kind, he had, nowadays, ample leisure; and 
unprofitable as it appeared (he did not even pretend to himself that it 
would lead anywhere, since what faint illumination he might strike from it 
could only refer to the past), he was seldom tired of searching for them.
A hard March, cited generally as the coldest within the memory of a 
generation, following a winter of fog and rain, had made him an inveterate 
prisoner within the four walls of his apartment. He had, indeed, the run of 
others at this time, for the Bullens had left him (at the last there had 
been no question of little Margot's appropriation; Rainham had taken it so 
serenely for granted that she would remain with him), but this was a 
privilege of which he did not avail himself. And the place, stripped of all 
its commercial attributes, had fallen into an immense desuetude, to which 
the charm of silence, and of a deeper solitude than it had ever possessed 
before, was attached.
The dock gates were finally closed; a hard frost of many days' duration had 
almost hermetically sealed them, and the drip of Thames water through the 
sluices formed immediately into long, fantastic stalactites of clear ice. 
Rainham found it difficult to believe, at times, that the bustle of the 
wharves, the roar of maritime London, still went on at his elbows, the 
deserted yard cast such a panoply of silence round him. It was as though he 
had fallen suddenly from the midst of men into some wholly abandoned 
region, a land of perpetual snows. It symbolised well for him the fantastic 
separation which he had suffered from the rest of the world; so that, but 
for the painter Oswyn, who was a constant visitor, and had, indeed, since 
the departure of the Bullens, a room set apart for him in the house, he 
might have been already dead and buried, and his old life would not have 
seemed more remote. And if he found the atmosphere of Blackpool, more often 
than not, to be of soothing quality, or at least a harmonious setting to 
the long and aimless course of introspection on which he had embarked, 
there were also times when it had a certain terror for him.
It came upon him in the evening, as a rule, when Margot had been carried 
away to bed by the hard-featured old woman who had succeeded Mrs. Bullen in 
the superintendence of his household; for the child, with her sweet, shrill 
voice and her infantile chatter, had come to seem to him far more even than 
Oswyn, about whom there would always lurk something shadowy and unreal, a 
last link with the living; when the tide was nearly out, so that the 
stillness was not even broken by the long, lugubrious siren of a passing 
steamer, his isolation was borne in upon him with something of the sting of 
sharp physical pain.
The dark old room, with its mildewing wainscot, became full of ghosts; and 
he could fancy that the spirits of his ancestors were returned from the 
other side of Styx to finger the pages of by-gone ledgers, and to mock from 
between the shadows of his incongruous bookshelves at their degenerate 
descendant. And these did but give place, amid strange creaking and 
contortions of the decaying walls, to spectres more intimate, whose 
reprobation moved him more: the faces of many persons whom he had known 
forming themselves, with extraordinary vividness, out of the darkness, and 
in the red embers of the fire, and each adding its item of particular scorn 
to the round accusation of futility brought by the rest. They were part of 
his introspection, all those - he was not sick enough to hold them real - 
but nevertheless they gave him food for much vigilant thought, which came 
back always to the great interest of his life. Futility! Did she too, the 
beloved woman, point an accusing finger, casting back at him a sacrifice 
which, certainly, in his then disability, seemed to him vain enough? For 
all his goodwill, had he gained any more for her than a short respite, the 
temporal reconstruction of a fading illusion? - and at what a price! The 
irony of things was just then so present to him that he could readily 
believe he had done no more than that - enough merely to embitter her 
knowledge, when it should finally come. And an old saying of Lady Garnett's 
returned to him, which, at the time, he had disputed, but which struck him 
no with the sharp stab of an intimate truth. 'You could have prevented it, 
had you wished.' Yes, he might have prevented it, if only he had foreseen; 
the wise old woman had not made a mistake. And yet he had wished to prevent 
it, in a manner, only his colder second thoughts - he made no allowance now 
for their generous intention - had found propriety in the match, and his 
long habit of spectatorship had made the personal effort, which 
interference would have involved, impossible.
Harking back scrupulously to the remote days of Eve's girlhood, his morbid 
recollection collected a variety of scattered threads, of dispersed signs 
and tokens, which led him to ask at last, with a gathering dread, whether 
he had not made a mistake, must not plead guilty to a charge of 
malingering, or, at least, of intellectual cowardice in acquiescing so 
supinely in defeat?
Was it true, then, that a man found in life very much what he brought to 
the search?
Certainly, the world was full of persons who had been broken on the wheel 
for their proper audacity, because they had sought so much more than was to 
be found; but might it not be equally true that one could err on the other 
side, expect, desire too little, less even than was there, and so reap 
finally, as he had done, in an immense lassitude and disgust of all things, 
born neither of satiety nor of disappointment, the full measure of one's 
reward? Perhaps success in the difficult art of life depended, almost as 
much as in the plastic arts, upon conviction, upon the personal enthusiasm 
which one brought to bear upon its conduct, and was never really compatible 
with that attitude of half-disdainful toleration which he had so early 
acquired.
Yet that was a confession of failure he was loath to make, or admit that he 
had been too much afraid of high passions and great affairs, had been 
fastidious and reserved only to dissipate his life on whims and small 
interests - those seemed to him now too great refusals to be contemplated 
without regret. His depression had reached its lowest pitch when he had 
asked himself whether in love, as in life, his error might not have been 
the same; and his passion, like the rest, a thing without conviction, and 
thereby foredoomed to fail. And it was a sensible alleviation of his mood 
when he could answer this question finally with a firm negative.
Certainly, his vain desire for her personal presence, for the consolation 
of her voice and eyes, was with him always, like the ache of physical 
hunger or thirst - the one thing real in a world of shadows.
Reaching this point one night, and relapsing, as was his wont, into a 
vaguer mood of reminiscence, not wholly unpleasant, which the darkness of 
the quiet room, lit only by the fire of logs, turned at last into 
drowsiness, he looked up presently, with a sudden start, to find Oswyn 
standing over him.
"I am sorry," said the painter; "I am afraid I have awaked you. The room 
was so dark that I imagined you had gone to bed. I came to warm myself 
before turning in."
Rainham shifted his chair a little, and watched the other as he extended 
his thin, nervous hands to the glow.
"Don't apologise," he said; "I haven't so many visitors that I can afford 
to miss the best of them. Besides, I was only half asleep, or half awake, 
as you like to look at it."
"Oh, look at it!" cried Oswyn. "My dear fellow, I don't, and won't."
He pointed his words, which Rainham found meaningless enough, with an 
impatient dig of his rusty boot against the fragrant wood, and his friend 
considered him curiously in the light of the blaze which his gesture had 
provoked.
"Is there anything wrong?" he asked. "More wrong than usual, I mean."
"As you like to look at it," echoed the other; "a mare's-nest - a discovery 
of the blessed public - oh, but a discovery! Two or three clever young 
newspaper men, with a tip from Paris to help them, have made a discovery; 
they have unearthed a disreputable painting genius, one Oswyn, and found 
the inevitable Jew of culture - you know the type, all nose and shekels - 
to finance their boom. Oh, it's genuine! I have Mosenthal's letter in my 
pocket - it was handed me by McAllister - offering his gallery, the pick of 
Bond Street. Oswyn's Exhibition, with expurgations and reservations, of 
course, but an exhibition! Don't you congratulate me?"
Rainham glanced up at him, smiling; at last he said whimsically:
"If you don't want me to, of course I won't. But apres, where's the harm?"
"Ah, they don't understand," cried the other quickly, acridly. "They don't 
understand."
He had drawn his chair beside Rainham, and sat with his large, uncouth head 
propped on one hand, and the latter could perceive that his mouth was 
twisted with vague irony and some subtle emotion which eluded him.
"You are the great paradox!" he sighed at last. "For Heaven's sake, be 
reasonable! It is a chance, whoever makes it, and you mustn't miss it, for 
the sake of a few - the just, the pure, the discreet, who do know good work 
- as well as for your own. After all, we are not all gross, and fatuous, 
and vulgar; there are some of us who know, who care, who make fine 
distinctions. Consider us!"
"Consider you?" cried the other quickly. "Ah, mon gros, don't I - more than 
anything?"
Then he continued in a lighter key:
"However, I don't refuse; you take me too literally. It was the last bitter 
cry of my spleen. I have put myself in Mosenthal's hands; I've sold him two 
pictures."
"In that case, then, why am I not to be glad?"
"Oh, it's success!" said Oswyn. He glanced contemptuously at his frayed 
shirtcuff, with the broad stains of paint upon it. "Be glad, if you like; I 
am glad in a way. God knows, I have arrears to make up with the flesh-pots 
of Egypt. And I have paid my price for it. Oh, I have damnably paid my 
price!"
Rainham shrugged his shoulders absently.
"Yes, one pays," he agreed - "one pays, some time or other, to the last 
penny."
His friend rose, pushing his chair back impatiently: he had the air of 
suppressing some fierce emotion, of anxiously seeking self-control. At last 
he moved over to the black square of window, and stood with his hands in 
his pockets, looking out at nothing, at the frosty fantasies which had 
collected on the glass.
"If it had come ten years ago," he said in a low, constrained voice, "ten 
years ago, in Paris.Ö Oh, man, man!" he went on bitterly, "if you could 
know, if you could dimly imagine the horrors, the mad, furious horrors, the 
things I have seen and suffered, since then."
He pulled himself up sharply, and concluded with a little mirthless laugh, 
as though he were ashamed of his outburst.
"You would consume a great deal of raw spirit, to take the taste out of 
your mouth. And my 'Medusa' is to hang for the future in Mr. Mosenthal's 
dining room! Will he understand her, do you think?"
Rainham was silent, wondering at his friend's departure from his wonted 
reticence, which, however, scarcely surprised him. He had never sought to 
penetrate the dark background, against which the painter's solitary figure 
stood. He was content to accept him as he was; asking no questions, and 
hardly forming, even in his own mind, conjectures as to what his previous 
history and relations might have been. He was not ignorant, indeed, that he 
was a man who had been in dark places; it had always seemed possible to 
account for him on the theory that he lived on the memory of an 
inextinguishable sorrow.
And now this possibility had received corroboration from his own words, 
shedding a new light, in which both his character and his genius became 
more intelligible. He had only stood out of the shadows which obscured him 
for one instant; but that instant had been enough.
And Rainham did not find the occasion less valuable. nor the impression 
which he had received less pitiful, because he believed it to be ultimate 
and unique; his friend would make no vain, elaborate confidences; he would 
simply step back into his old obscurity, leaving Rainham with the memory of 
that instructive cry which had been wrung from him by the irony of tardy 
recognition, when he had seen him luridly standing over the wreck of his 
honour and of his life. And with his pity there came to him a fresh sense 
of the greatness of the painter's work. His genius, so full of suffering, 
and of the sense of an almost fiendish cruelty in things, was, simply, his 
life, his experience, his remorse.
With the hand of a master, with the finest technique, which made his work 
admirable even to persons who misinterpreted or were revolted by its 
conception, he rendered the things he had known, so that his art was 
nothing so much as an expression of his personal pain in life.
In the light of this vision into the bottom of Oswyn's soul, Rainham's own 
pain seemed suddenly shallow and remote; he had gazed for a moment upon a 
blacker desolation than any which he could know. He felt a new, a tolerant 
sympathy towards his friend, and it struck him, not for the first time, but 
with an increased force, as he reminded himself how his days were bounded, 
that they had many things which they had still to say, things which must 
certainly be said.


Chapter 29

In the same room one afternoon a fortnight later, Oswyn sat, absently 
correcting the draft catalogue of his exhibition, when he received an 
intimation, which for some days he had expected - his friend felt strong 
enough to see him. He put down his pen, glancing up inquiringly at the 
bearer of this message, a young woman in the neat, depressing garb of a 
professional nurse; but for answer she slightly shook her head with the 
disinterested complacency of the woman used to sickness, who would 
encourage no false notions.
"It is only temporary," she said with deliberation. "I fear there has been 
no real improvement; the patient is steadily losing strength. Only, he 
insists on seeing you; and when they are like that, one must give them what 
they want. I must beg you to excite him as little as possible."
Oswyn bowed a dreary assent, and followed her up the obscure staircase, 
which creaked sullenly beneath his tread. And he stood for a few moments in 
silence, until his eyes were accustomed to the darkened room, when the 
nurse had gently closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with his 
friend.
He almost believed, at first, that Rainham must be sleeping, he lay back 
with such extreme quietness in the large old fashioned bed. And seeing him 
there in that new helplessness, he realised, almost for the first time, how 
little there was to say or to hope.
He had never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life was 
precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind before; 
only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting attitude towards his disabilities 
had half imposed on him, and made that possibility appear intangible and 
remote. But now, in view of the change which the last fortnight had wrought 
in him, he could cherish no illusions; the worst that was possible was all 
now that one could expect. He was a charming, generous, clever fellow, and 
he was dying; that was a thing one could not get over.
He moved across to the bedside, and Rainham's eyes suddenly opened. They 
were immensely large, strangely brilliant; his face had fallen in, was so 
white and long and lean, that these tremendous eyes seemed almost all of 
the man that was still to be accounted.
Oswyn derived the impression from them that, while his friend's body had 
been failing, his mind had never been more vigorous; that, during these 
long nights and days, when he had lain so motionless, in so continued a 
silence, it had only been because he was thinking with redoubled intensity.
Presently, as Rainham's lips moved slightly, he drew nearer, and bent his 
head over him.
"Don't talk." he said nervously, as Rainham appeared to struggle with the 
difficulty of utterance; "don't tire yourself. I've only come to look at 
you. Wait until you are a little stronger."
Rainham raised his hand impatiently.
"It won't tire me, and tired or not there are things I must speak of. Is 
she in the room - the nurse?"
He spoke slowly, and with a visible effort; but his voice, although it 
scarcely rose above a whisper, and seemed shadowy and far away, was 
deliberate and distinct. Oswyn shook his head.
"She has given me half an hour; you must not abuse it. I have promised to 
keep you quiet. I really believe you are a little better."
"I am well enough for what I want - to talk to you. After that, I will be 
as quiet as you like, for as long as you like. Only I have been keeping 
myself for this all these last few days that I have lain here like a log, 
listening to the ticking of that merciless clock. They thought I was 
sleeping, unconscious, very likely. I have been collecting myself, thinking 
immensely, waiting for this.
"I have always been here," said the other simply, "in case you should send 
for me. I have been painting Margot. She is a dear little soul; she misses 
you sadly."
"It is of her partly that I must speak. I have left all I can to her. If 
you will sometimes give her a thought - she is absolutely without 
belongings. I don't wish to make it a charge on you, a burden, only 
sometimes it has struck me lately that you were interested in the child, 
that you liked her, and I have taken the liberty of making you a sort of 
guardian. She could live with the Bullens - "
"Oh, I like her - I like her!" cried Oswyn, with a short laugh. Then he 
went on more seriously, half apologetically, as though the other might have 
found his mirth ill-timed: "My dear friend, it is a great honour, a great 
pleasure, you give me. I, too, have no belongings, no interests; this might 
be a great one. I never thought of it before, I must admit; but I will 
adopt her. She shall live with me, if it's necessary. Only, ah! let us hope 
still that this may not be necessary, that it is premature."
The other held up a thin hand deprecatingly.
"Ah, don't let us fence with the truth. I have always seen it coming, and 
why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one is as tired as I 
am, there is only one other thing which happens - one dies. You don't 
suppose I should have sent for you like this if it hadn't been so?"
He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if the 
effort which speech cost him was considerable. At last he said abruptly:
"There are things you should know; she is Lightmark's child."
Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head 
averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with absent 
eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of medicine bottles on 
the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia of a sick-room.
"Yes, she is Lightmark's child," continued Rainham; "and the mother was 
that girl whom we found two years ago - do you remember? - the night of 
your first visit here - outside the gates. She called herself Mrs. 
Crichton. It's a miserable story; I only discovered it quite recently."
Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the strangely 
still room.
It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which a man 
feels when accident permits him to express cognisance of some fact of which 
he has long been inwardly assured.
"I knew that long ago," he said at last. "I suspected it when I first saw 
the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time: perhaps I was wrong. 
Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed no occasion; I had 
almost forgotten the episode."
"Yes," went on the other faintly; "we have all made mistakes - I more than 
most folk, perhaps."
Then he asked suddenly:
"Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?"
"It was the name Crichton - the man's pseudonym on the Outcry. It flashed 
across me then that shew as after Lightmark. He was just severing his 
connection with the paper. He had always kept it very close, and I dare say 
I was one of the few persons who were in the secret. That is why, at the 
bottom of his heart, he is afraid of me - afraid that I shall bring it up. 
It's the one thing he is ashamed of."
"I see, I see," cried Rainham wearily; "the wretched fellow!"
"Dear man, why should we think of him?" broke in Oswyn; "he isn't worth it. 
Now, of all seasons, can't we find a topic less unsavoury?"
"You don't understand," continued Rainham, after a slight pause in his 
thin, far away voice. "I am not thinking of him, or only indirectly. I have 
found him out, and I should be content enough to forget him if it were 
possible. Only, unfortunately, he happens to be inextricably entangled with 
all that is most sacred, most important to me. It is of his wife - Mrs. 
Lightmark: do you know her? - that I think."
Oswyn shook his head.
"I know her only by sight, as we all do; she is very beautiful."
"I don't mind telling you that I have considered her a great deal - yes, 
immensely. I should not speak of it - of her - unless I were dying; but, 
after all, when one is dying. there are things one may say. I have held my 
peace so long. And since I have been lying here I have had time to ponder 
it, to have thought it all out. It seems to me that simply for her sake 
someone should know before - before the occasion passes - just the plain 
truth. Of course, Sylvester by rights ought to be the man, only I can't ask 
him to come to me - there are reasons; and, besides, he is an ass."
"Yes, he is an ass," admitted Oswyn simply; "that is reason enough."
And just then there flashed into his mind the one notable occasion on which 
the barrister had run across him, his intriguing letter and the ineffectual 
visit which had followed it - ineffectual as he had supposed, but which 
might nevertheless, he reflected now, have had its results, ironical and 
inopportune enough. It was a memory of no importance, and yet it seemed 
just then to be the last of a long train of small lights that led to a 
whole torch of illumination, in which the existence of little Margot and 
her quaint juxtaposition with his friend, which in his general easy 
attitude towards the fantastic he had not troubled to investigate, was 
amply and generously justified. He turned round suddenly, and caught his 
friend's thin hand, which he held.
"Ah, don't trouble to explain, to make me understand," he murmured. "It's 
enough that I understand you have done something very fine, that you are 
the most generous of men."
Rainham was silent for a moment: he had no longer the physical capacity of 
smiling; but there was a gleam of the old humour in his eyes, as he 
replied:
"Only the most fortunate - in my friends; they are so clever, they see 
things so quickly. You make this very easy."
Oswyn did not shift for a while from his position: he was touched, moved 
more deeply than he showed; and there was a trace of emotion in his voice - 
of something which resembled envy.
"The happy woman! It is she who ought to know, to understand."
"It is for that I wished to tell you," went on Rainham faintly, "that she 
might know some day, that there might be just one person who could give her 
the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be always in ignorance of 
what she had made of her life, of the kind of man she had married. She was 
such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It was for that I did it - damned 
myself in her eyes; to give her a little longer - a sort of respite. Very 
likely I made a mistake! Those things can't be concealed for ever, and the 
longer the illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only, if it might 
serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it won't 
have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to know 
immensely - to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to me. Ah, 
don't mistake me! It's not for myself, it's not yet; I shall have done with 
life, done with love, by that time. When one is as tired as I am, death 
seems very good; only it hasn't those things. Nothing can make any 
difference to me; I am thinking of her, that some day or other it will be 
for her benefit to understand, to remember - "
"To remember?"
"Yes, to remember," repeated Rainham quietly, "that her unhappiness has its 
compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also been fervently 
loved."
The other said nothing for a long time - simply considered the situation 
which Rainham's words, and still more even than anything that he had said, 
the things that he had not said, had strikingly revealed to him, leaving 
him, at the last, in a state of mingled emotions over which, perhaps, awe 
predominated.
At last he remarked abruptly:
"It is you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all; you've 
such a long rest before you." Then he added with a new solemnity: "You may 
trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs. Lightmark shall know the 
truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it - Heaven knows! - stranger things 
have happened. You have my hand upon it; I think you are right."
"Right? You mean that it wasn't a mistake, a betise?"
"Felix culpa! If it was a mistake it was a very fine one."
"Ah! I don't regret it," said Rainham, "only - "
"Only it was a mistake to suppose that life was to be arranged. That was 
all I meant. Yes; I don't believe in much, but I believe in necessity. You 
can't get over it yourself, and you can't - no, not for all your goodwill, 
your generosity - get over it for another. There are simply inevitable 
results of irrevocable causes, and no place for repentance or restitution. 
And yet you help her, not as you meant to, and not now; but ah, you help 
her!"
"So long as I do that - " murmured Rainham, with a deep inhalation, closing 
his eyes wearily, in a manner which revealed how severely the intimate 
strain of conversation had told upon him.
Oswyn waited a little longer, in half expectation of his further utterance; 
but Rainham made no sign, lay quite motionless and hushed, his hands 
clasped outside the counterpane as if already in the imitation of death; 
then the other rose and made a quiet exit, imagining that his friend slept, 
or would soon sleep.
And yet actually, in spite of the extreme physical weariness which had 
gradually stolen over him, dulling his senses, so that he was hardly 
conscious of Oswyn's departure, or of the subdued entrance of the nurse, 
who had been discreetly waiting for it, Rainham's mind was still keenly 
vigilant; and it was in the relief of a certain new lucidity, an almost 
hieratic calm, that he reviewed that recent interview, in which he had so 
deliberately unburdened himself. It seemed as if, in his great weakness, 
the ache of his old desire, his fever of longing, had suddenly left him, 
giving place (as though the literal wasting away of his body had really 
given freer access to that pure spirit, its prisoner) to a love now 
altogether purged of passion, and become strangely tolerable and sweet.


Chapter 30

If Philip Rainham's name, during that long, hard winter and ungracious 
spring - near the close of which he turned his face, with the least little 
sigh of regret, to the wall - was not often mentioned in the house in 
Parton Street, at whose door he had formerly knocked so often, it must not 
be supposed that by its occupants it had been in any way forgotten. He had 
not committed the discourtesy of leaving Lady Garnett's note unanswered; on 
the contrary, he had answered it both promptly and - as it seemed to him - 
well, in a letter which was certainly diplomatic, suggesting as it did - at 
least, to Mary Masters, to whom it had been shown - that he was on the 
point of an immediate flight South.
Whether the elder lady was equally deceived by his ambiguous phrases, it 
was not so easy to declare. She had at this time less than ever the mode of 
persons who wear their hearts upon their sleeves; her mask of half-cynical 
good-humour was constantly up; and she met the girl's hinted interrogations 
- for directly the nature of their uneasiness, by a sort of tacit 
agreement, was not alluded to - with the same smiling indifference, the 
same air of bland reassurance which she brought to the discussion of a 
sauce or an entrmet at one of those select little dinner-parties on which 
she piqued herself, and which latterly had been more incessant and more 
select than ever.
Only on Mary's sensitive ear something in the elaborately cheerful tone in 
which she mentioned their vanished friend would occasionally jar. It was 
too perfectly well done not to appear a little exaggerated; and though she 
could force a smile at Lady Garnett's persistent picture of the 
recalcitrant godson basking, with his pretext of ill health, on the sunny 
terraces of Monte Carlo, she none the less cherished a suspicion that the 
picture was as little convincing to its author as to herself, that her aunt 
also had silent moments in which she credited the more depressing theory.
And the long silence simply deepened her conviction that, all the time they 
were imposing upon themselves with such vain conjectures, he was actually 
within their reach, sick and sorry and alone, in that terrible Blackpool, 
which she peopled, in her imagination of a young lady whose eastward 
wanderings had never extended beyond a flower show in the Temple Gardens, 
with a host of vague, inconceivable horrors.
From Bordighera, from Monaco, she argued, he would certainly have written, 
if it were only a line of reassurance, for there his isolation was 
impregnable. Only the fact that he had stayed on in London could account 
for the need of this second arm of silence, as well as of solitude, to 
enforce his complete withdrawal from the torment of tongues.
Certainly, wherever he might actually be, the girl had never realised more 
fully than just then what an irreparable gap estrangement from him made in 
her life. There was, indeed, no pause in the stream of clever, cultivated, 
charming persons who rang daily at their discriminating door, who drank tea 
in their drawing-room, and talked felicitously for their entertainment.
It was a miscellaneous company, although the portal was difficult in a 
manner, and opened only on conditions of its own - conditions, it may be 
said, which, to the uninitiated, to the excluded, seemed fantastic enough.
One might be anything, Lady Garnett's constant practice seemed to 
enunciate, provided one was not a bore; one could represent anything - 
birth or wealth, or the conspicuous absence of these qualities - so long as 
one also effectively represented one's self. This was the somewhat 
democratic form which the old lady's aristocratic tradition assumed.
It was not, then, without a certain pang of self-reproach that Mary 
wondered one evening - it was at the conclusion of one of their most 
successful entertainments - that a company so brilliant, so distinguished, 
should have left her only with a nervous headache and a distinct sense of 
satisfaction that the last guest had gone.
Was she, then, after all an unworthy partaker of the feast which her aunt 
had so long and liberally spread for her delectation?
As she sat in her own room, still in her dress of the evening, before the 
comfortable fire, which cast vague half-lights into the dark, spacious 
corners - she had extinguished the illumination of candles which her maid 
had left her, a sort of unconscious tribute to the economical traditions of 
her youth - she found herself considering this question and the side issues 
it involved very carefully.
Was it from some flaw in her nature, some lack of subtlety, or inbred 
stupidity, that she found the intimates of Parton Street so uninspiring, 
had been so little amused?
The dozen who had dined with them tonight - how typical they might be of 
the rest! - original and unlike each other as they were, each having his 
special distinction, his particular note, were hardly separable in her 
mind. They were very cultivated, very subtle, very cynical. Their talk, 
which flashed quickest around Lady Garnett, who was the readiest of them 
all, could not possibly have been better; it was like the rapid passes of 
exquisite fencers with foils. And they all seemed to have been everywhere, 
to have read everything, and at the last to believe in nothing - in 
themselves and their own paradoxes least of all. There was nothing in the 
world which existed except that one might make of it an elegant joke. And 
yet of old, the girl reflected, she had found them stimulating enough; 
their limitations, at least, had not seemed to her to weigh seriously 
against their qualities, negative though these last might be.
Had it been, then, simply the presence of Mr. Rainham which had leavened 
the company, and the personal fascination of his friendship - indefinable 
and unobtrusive as that had been - which had enabled her to adopt for the 
moment their urbane, impartial point of view?
Perhaps there had been a particle of truth in the charge so solemnly 
levelled at her by Mr. Sylvester: it was a false position that she 
maintained.
The attitude of Lady Garnett and her intimates, of persons (the phrase of 
Steele's recurred to her as meeting it appropriately) 'who had seen the 
world enough to undervalue it with good breeding,' must seem to her at last 
a little sterile when she was conscious - never more than now - of how 
clearly and swiftly the healthy young blood coursed through her veins, 
dissipating any morbid imaginations that she might feel inclined to 
cherish. She looked out at life, in her conviction that so little of it had 
yet been lived, that for her it might easily be a long affair, with eyes 
which were still full of interest and, to a certain degree, of hope; and 
this did not detract from at least one 'impossible loyalty,' from which it 
seemed to her she would never waver. And Charles Sylvester's infelicitous 
proposal recurred to her, and she was forced to ask herself whether, after 
all, it was quite so infelicitous as it seemed. Might not some sort of 
solution to the difficulties which oppressed her be offered by that 
alliance? Conscientiously she considered the question, and for a long time; 
but with the closest consideration the prospect refused to cheer her, 
remained singularly uninviting. And yet, arid as the notion appeared of a 
procession hand-in-hand through life with a husband so soberly precise, to 
the tune of political music, she was still hardly decided upon her answer 
when she at length reluctantly left her comfortable fire and composed 
herself to sleep.
It was not until a day or two later that a prolonged visit from the subject 
of these hesitations reminded her - perhaps more forcibly than before - 
that, however in his absence she might oscillate, in his actual presence a 
firm negative was, after all, the only answer which could ever suffice.
At the close of what seemed a singularly long afternoon, during which her 
aunt, who was confined to her room with a bad headache, had left to her the 
burden of entertaining, Mary came to this conclusion.
Mr. Sylvester had come with the first of her callers, and had made no sign 
of moving when the last had gone. And in the silence, a little portentous, 
which had ensued when they were left together, the girl had read easily the 
reason of his protracted stay. She glanced furtively, with a suggestion of 
weariness in her eyes, at the little jewelled watch on her wrist, wondering 
if in the arrival of a belated visitor there might not still be some 
respite.
"You are not going out?" he asked tentatively, detecting her. "I expect my 
sister will be here soon."
"No, I am not going out," admitted the girl reluctantly. "I am on duty, you 
know. Somebody may arrive at any minute," she added, not quite ingenuously. 
Let us hope it will be your sister."
"I hope not - not just yet," he protested. It is so long, Miss Masters, 
since I have seen you alone. That is my excuse for having remained such an 
unconscionable time. I have to seize an opportunity."
She made no remark, sitting back in the chair, her fine head bent a little, 
thoughtfully, her hands folded quietly in her lap, in an attitude of 
resignation to the inevitable.
"You can't mistake me," he went on at last eagerly. "I have kept to the 
stipulation; I have been silent for a long time, I have been to see you, 
certainly, but not so often as I should have liked, and I have said nothing 
to you of the only thing that was in my head. Now - " he hesitated for an 
instant, then completed his phrase with an intonation almost passionate - 
"now I want my reward! Can't you - can't you give it me. Mary?"
The girl said nothing for a moment, looking away from him into the corners 
of the empty room, her delicate eyebrows knitted a little, as though she 
sought inspiration from some of Lady Garnett's choicer bibelots, from the 
little rose and amber shepherdess of Watteau, who glanced out at her 
daintily, imperturbably from the midst of her fete galante. At last she 
said quietly:
"I am sorry, Mr. Sylvester, I can only say, as I said before, it is a great 
honour you do me, but it's impossible."
"Perhaps I should have waited longer," suggested Charles, after a moments 
silence, in which he appeared to be deeply pondering her sentence. "I have 
taken you by surprise; you have not sufficiently considered - "
"Oh, I have considered," cried the girl quickly, with a sudden flush. "I 
have considered it more seriously than you may believe, more, perhaps, than 
I ought."
"Than you ought?" he interrupted blankly.
"Yes," she said simply. "I mean that if it could ever have been right to 
answer you as you wished, it would have been right all at once; thinking 
would not alter it. I am sorry, chiefly, that I allowed this - this 
procrastination; that I did not make you take my decision that night, at 
Lady Mallory's. Yes, for that I was to blame. Only, some day I think you 
will see that I was right, that it would never have done."
"Never have done!" he repeated, with an accent full of grieved resentment. 
"I think it would have done so admirably. I hardly understand - "
"I mean," said poor Mary helplessly, "that you estimated me wrongly. I am 
frivolous - your interests would not have been safe in my hands. You would 
have married me on a misunderstanding."
"No," said Charles morosely, "I can't believe that! You are not plain with 
me, you are not sincere. You don't really believe that you are frivolous, 
that we should not suit. In what way am I so impossible? Is it my politics 
that you object to? I shall be happy to discuss them with you. I am not 
intolerant; I should not expect you to agree with me in everything. You 
give me no reasons for this - this absurd prejudice; you are not direct; 
you indulge in generalisations."
He spoke in a constrained monotone, which seemed to Mary, in spite of her 
genuine regret for the pain she gave him, unreasonably full of reproach.
"Ah!" she cried sharply, 'since I don't love you, is not that a reason? Oh, 
believe me," she went on rather wearily, "I have no prejudice, not a grain! 
I would sooner marry you than not. Only I cannot bring myself to feel 
towards you as a woman ought to the man she marries. Very likely I shall 
never marry."
He considered her, half angrily, in silence, with his unanimated eyes; his 
dignity suffered in discomposure, and lacking this, pretentious as it was, 
he seemed to lack everything, becoming unimportant and absurd.
"Oh, you will marry!" he said at last sullenly, an assertion which Mary did 
not trouble to refute.
He returned the next minute, with a persistency which the girl began to 
find irritating, to his charge.
"I don't understand it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you, your 
reasons; it's perverse - yes, that is what it is, perverse! You are not 
really happy here; the life doesn't suit you."
"What a discovery!" cried the girl half mockingly. "I am not really happy! 
Well, if I admit it?"
"I could make you so by taking you out of it. You are too good for it all, 
too good to sit and pour out tea for - for the sort of people who come 
here."
"Do you mean," she asked, with a touch of scorn in her voice, "that we are 
not respectable?"
"That is not you who speak," he persisted; "it is your aunt who speaks 
through you. I know it is the fashion now to cry out against one, even in 
good society, to call one straitlaced, if one respects certain conventions. 
There are some I respect profoundly; and not the least that one which 
forbids right-minded gentlewomen to receive men of notoriously disgraceful 
lives. One should draw the line; one should draw it at that Hungarian 
pianist, who was here this afternoon. Your aunt, of course, is a 
Frenchwoman; she has different ideas. But you, I can't believe that you 
care for this society, for people like Kronopolski and - and Rainham. Oh, 
it hurts me, and I imagine how distasteful it must be to you, that you must 
suffer these people. I want to take you away from it all."
The girl had risen, flushing a little. She replied haughtily, with a 
vibration of passion in her voice:
"You are not generous, Mr. Sylvester. You are not even just. What right 
have I ever given you to dictate to me whom I shall know or refuse to know? 
I, too, have my convictions; and I think your view is narrow, and 
uncharitable, and false. You see, we don't agree enough.Ö Ah, let it end, 
Mr. Sylvester!" She went on, more gently, but very tiredly, her pale face 
revealing how the interview had strained her: "I wish you all the good in 
the world, but I can't marry you. Let us shake hands on that, and say 
goodbye."
Sylvester had also risen to his feet, and he stood facing her for a moment 
indecisively, as though he hardly credited the finality of his rejection.
They were still in this attitude, and the fact gave a certain tinge of 
embarrassment to their greetings, when the door opened, and Mrs. Lightmark 
was announced.
"I was on the point of going," explained Charles nervously. "I thought you 
were not coming, you know."
Eve made no effort to detain him, half suspecting that she had appeared at 
a strenuous moment. When the barrister had departed (Mary had just extended 
to him the tips of her frigid fingers), and Eve's polite inquiries after 
Lady Garnett's health had been satisfied, she remarked:
"I really only came in for a cup of tea. I walked across from Dorset 
Square. I have sent the carriage to pick up my husband at his club: it's 
coming back for me. You look tired, Mary. I think I oughtn't to stay. You 
look as if you had been having a political afternoon. Poor Charles, since 
he has been in the House, can think of nothing but blue-books."
"Tired?" queried the girl listlessly; "no, not particularly. Besides, I am 
always glad to see you, it happens so seldom."
"Yes; except in a crowd. One has never any time. Have you heard, by the 
way, that my husband is one of the new Associates?"
She went on quickly, preventing Mary's murmured congratulations:
"Yes, they have elected him. I suppose it is a very good thing. He has his 
hands full of portraits now."
Then she remarked inconsequently - the rapidity with which she passed from 
topic to topic half surprised Mary, who did not remember the trait of old:
"We are going to the theatre tonight - that is to say, if my husband has 
been able to get seats. It's the first night of a new comedy. I meant to 
ask you to come with us, only it was an uncertainty. If the box is not 
forthcoming, you must come when we do go. Only, of course, it will not be 
the premiere."
"I should like to," said Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about first 
nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle does not care 
for English plays; she says they are like stale bread and-butter. I tell 
her that is not so bad."
"The mot, you mean?"
"Partly; but also the thing. Bread-and-butter is a change after a great 
many petits fours."
Mrs. Lightmark smiled a little absently as she sat smoothing the creases 
out of her pretty fawn-coloured gloves.
"Oh, the petits fours," she said, "for choice. One can take more of them, 
and amuse one's self longer."
They heard a carriage draw up suddenly in the street below, and Eve, who 
had been glancing from time to time expectantly at the window, went over 
and looked out. She recognised her liveries and the two handsome bays.
"Perhaps I had better not let him come up," she said; "it is late already, 
and you will be wanting to dress."
Lightmark had just alighted from the carriage when his wife joined him in 
the street. He held the door for her silently, and stopped for a moment to 
give the direction, 'Home,' to the coachman before he took the place at her 
side.
She turned to him after awhile inquiringly, finding something of unwonted 
gravity in his manner.
"Did you get the box?" she asked.
"The box?" he repeated blankly. Then, pulling himself up, "No," he said 
quickly, "I forgot all about it. The fact is, I heard something this 
afternoon which put it out of my head. I am afraid," he went on, with a 
growing hesitation, "you will be rather shocked."
"Ah," she cried quickly, catching at her breath, "something has happened. 
Tell me. Don't preface it; I can bear anything if you will only tell me 
straight out."
"It's Rainham," he murmured. "He died last night at Blackpool. I heard it 
from McAllister, at the club."
He looked away from her vaguely out of his window at the pale streets, 
where a few lamps were beginning to appear, waiting in a fever of 
apprehension, which he vainly sought to justify, for some word or comment 
on the part of his wife.
As none came, and the silence grew intolerable, he ventured at last to 
glance furtively across at her. Her face seemed to him a shade paler than 
before, but that might be exaggerated by the relief of her rich and sombre 
furs. Her eyes were quite expressionless and blank, although she had the 
air of being immensely thoughtful; her mouth was inscrutable and unmoved. 
And he experienced a sudden pang of horror at the anticipation of a dinner 
alone with her, with the ghostly presence of this news dividing them, 
before he reminded himself that Colonel Lightmark was to be of the party.
For perhaps the first time in his life the prospect of his uncle's company 
afforded him a sensation of relief.


Chapter 31

When Oswyn emerged from the narrow doorway of the gallery in Bond Street, 
which on the morrow was to be filled with the heterogeneous presence of 
those who, for different reasons, are honoured with cards of invitation to 
private views, it was still daylight, although the lamps had been lighted; 
and the east wind, which during the earlier hours of the day had made the 
young summer seem such a mockery of flowery illusions, had taken a more 
genial air from the south into alliance; and there was something at once 
caressing and exhilarating in their united touch as they wandered in gentle 
eddies up the crooked thoroughfare.
Oswyn paused upon the pavement, outside the showroom which Mosenthal called 
a gallery, gazing up the road towards Oxford Street, with a momentary 
appreciation of the subtle early evening charm, which lent so real a beauty 
even to a vista of commonplace shop-fronts and chimney-pots, straightening 
his bent figure, and wondering whither to betake himself.
He had not allowed his friend's death to be an excuse for abandoning the 
projected exhibition; indeed, when this event occurred, he was already too 
far compromised; and he even found the labour involved in the preparations 
for the new departure a very welcome distraction - the one thing which made 
it possible for the desolate man to stay on in London, which, he assured 
himself dogmatically, was the only place on earth where he could face life 
with an indifference which was at least a tolerable imitation of 
equanimity.
To get together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the kind 
which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack old 
portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few discriminating 
private patrons, works which had but recently left his studio and could 
still be traced; to utilise all the hours of daylight accorded to him by a 
grudging season for finishing, mounting, and retouching.
The man who made frames for Oswyn knew him of old as an exacting customer 
and hard to please, who insisted on a rigid adherence to his own designs, 
and was quick to detect inferior workmanship or material; but during the 
last few days he had been driven almost to rebellion by the painter's 
exigencies; never had such calls been made upon him for flawless glass, and 
delicately varied shades of gold and silver; never had artist's eye been so 
ruthless in the condemnation of imperfect mitres and superfluous plaster.
But now the work of preparation was at an end: the catalogues had been 
printed, and his impresario had judiciously circulated invitations to press 
and public: the work was done, and the workman felt only weary and 
indifferent. If the public howled, what did it matter? Their hostility 
would be for him a corroboration, for his Jew an invaluable advertisement. 
If they fawned, so much the better: it would not hurt him, and Mosenthal 
would still have his advertisement. If they were indifferent, well, so was 
he.
The question of pecuniary profit troubled him not at all (though here his 
Jew joined issue): what in the world could he do with money, now? He could 
paint a picture in a month which would keep him for six, and the dealer who 
bought it probably for a year.
Margot was already provided for, even handsomely: in that respect, at 
least. her first adopted father had left no void for his successor to fill.
So again he shrugged his shoulders. And upon that evening, for the first 
time since Rainham's death, he dined, more solitary and more silent than 
ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski's. He found that, after all, his 
nervous anticipation of inconvenient protestations of sympathy was not 
fulfilled; there were not many men who knew him more than by sight at 
Brodonowski's, and the few of his old associates who were there had the 
good sense to exhibit nothing extraordinary in their demeanour towards him. 
Only they were a little less wildly humorous than of old, and more 
forbearing in their sallies; the conversation died out for an instant as he 
made his way quickly, with the faintest sign of recognition, through their 
midst - and that was all.
Rainham's death had affected some of them for a few days perhaps, but it 
had not the shock of the unexpected; they chiefly wondered that he had 
dragged his life through so cruel a winter. And his close alliance with 
Oswyn had, as a natural consequence, debarred him from a real intimacy with 
any of the other men, who, for the most part younger, cultivated different 
friendships and different pursuits.
They had missed Oswyn during his seclusion of the last few weeks; he was so 
essentially the presiding silent genius of the place - a man to be pointed 
out to new-comers, half-ironically, as the greatest, most deeply injured, 
of them all; the possessor of a talent unapproached and unappreciated. They 
felt that his presence lent a distinction to the dingy resort which it 
otherwise frequently lacked: and he had come to be so far regarded as a 
permanent institution, of an almost official nature, that even on the 
coldest nights his chair by the fireside had remained untenanted.
When the next morning came, Oswyn felt desperately inclined to break the 
promise which Mosenthal had, with some difficulty, exacted from him, and to 
keep far from Bond Street and the crowd who even then were assembling to 
cast their careless glances and light words at the work of his life; it was 
only the fear of the taint of cowardice, and a certain perversity, which 
induced him eventually to present himself within the gallery rather late in 
the afternoon.
As he entered the room, looking about him with a kind of challenge, many 
eyes were turned upon him (for people go to private views not to see 
pictures - that is generally impossible, but to see and be seen of men), 
but few had any suspicion that this strange man, with the shabby, old-
fashioned apparel, and expression half-nervous, half-defiant, was the 
painter whose pictures they were pretending to criticise.
Very few of those present - hardly half a dozen perhaps - knew him even by 
sight; and while his evident disregard for social convention marked him, 
for the discerning observer, as a person of probably artistic distinction, 
the general conjecture set him down, not as a painter - he did not seem to 
be of that type - but as a man of letters - probably a maker of obscure 
verse.
When he had mastered the first wild impulse which prompted him to tear his 
pictures down, to turn their faces to the wall - anything to hide them from 
this smiling, languid, well-dressed crowd - and resigned himself to 
observation, he saw that Mosenthal was beaming at him complacently, through 
the massive gold spectacles which adorned and modified the bridge of his 
compromising nose, from his seat behind the table where information as to 
the prices of the exhibits could be obtained.
There were exactly forty drawings and paintings to be seen upon the 
sparsely covered walls, which had been draped for the occasion with 
coarsely-woven linen of a dull olive-green, and about half of these were 
drawings and studies, small in point of size, executed in chalk and 
pastels.
The greater part of these represented ordinary scenes of London outdoor 
life - a deserted corner of Kensington Gardens, with tall soot-blackened 
trees lifting their stately tracery of dark branches into the sky; a reach 
of the wide, muddy river, with a gaunt bridge looming through the fog; a 
gin-palace at night-time, with garish lamps shining out upon the wet 
streets and crouching beggars.
Of the remainder, which included a few portraits and some imaginative 
subjects, the greater number were painted in oils, and the largest canvas 
would not have seemed out of place on the walls of an ordinary room.
Oswyn smiled grimly as he noticed that the portrait of Margot, which he had 
begun for Rainham and finished for himself, was a considerable centre of 
attraction; there was quite a dense crowd in the vicinity of this canvas 
(it is true, it was near the tea-table), and it included two bishops, a 
duke, and an actress, of whom the last-named was certainly more stared at 
than the picture.
It irritated him, in spite of his contempt for the throng, to see people 
standing, chatting. with their backs turned towards his creations; and when 
Mosenthal informed him in a triumphant stage-whisper, leaning across the 
table littered with catalogues, that nine of the pictures had already found 
purchasers, he was almost inclined to rebel, to refuse to ratify the sales.
The only friendly face which he encountered during the afternoon was that 
of McAllister, who presently brought his congratulations and conspicuous 
presence to the corner to which Oswyn had betaken himself; and for a time 
he found himself listening, while the Scotchman enlightened him, somewhat 
against his will, as to the names and celebrity of the distinguished 
visitors whom he was supposed to be receiving.
He was assured that the press notices could not fail to be favourable (he 
mentally promised himself that nothing should induce him to read a 
newspaper for at least a fortnight), and the flattering comments of Mr. 
This and Lady That were half apologetically retailed for his presumed 
delectation.
As his eyes wandered, with his attention, furtively round the room, they 
presently encountered, in their passage from group to group, a face which 
seemed vaguely familiar - the face of a woman, whom he certainly had never 
known, but whose beauty, he thought, was not appealing to his admiration 
for the first time.
She was standing with her profile turned towards him, gazing gravely at his 
study of a pale figure, with beautiful eyes and an armful of wonderfully 
coloured poppies, which he called 'Thanatos, the Peacebearer.'
When she moved, presently, her gaze rested on him for a moment, with the 
faintest note of inquiry interrupting the smile with which she was 
listening to the sallies of her escort for the time being; the smile and 
glance revealed her more perfectly to Oswyn, and he was prepared to hear 
McAllister greet her as Mrs. Lightmark when, a few minutes later, she 
passed them on her way round the room.
Eve had spent the week which followed the afternoon upon which her husband 
had stunned her with the news of Philip Rainham's death almost in solitude.
Lightmark had been obliged to pay a hasty visit to Berlin, on business 
connected with an International Art Congress, and his wife at the last 
moment decided. somewhat to his relief, that she would not accompany him. A 
man of naturally quick perception, and with a certain vein of nervous 
alertness underlying his outer clothing of careless candour, he could not 
help feeling that when he was alone with his wife he was being watched, 
that traps were set for him - in short, that he was suspected. And not only 
when they were alone had he cause for alarm: in crowded rooms, at mammoth 
dinner-parties and colossal assemblies he frequently became aware, by a 
sense even quicker than vision, that his wife's eyes were directed upon him 
from the farther side of the room, the opposite end of the dinner-table, 
with that wistful, childish expression in their depths, which, growing 
sterner and more critical of late, had ended by boring him. Before 
Rainham's death, Eve, in her private discussions of the situation, had 
generally concluded by dismissing the subject petulantly, with a summing-
up, only partially convincing, that everything would come right in the end: 
that in time that miserable scene would be forgotten or explained away; and 
that the old intimacy, of which it was at once so bitter and so pleasant to 
dream, would be restored.
Her training - of which her mother was justly proud - had endowed her with 
a respect for social convention too great to allow her to think of 
rebelling against the existing order of things. She consoled herself by the 
reflection that at least she had committed no fault, and that no active 
discipline of penitence could justly be expected of her.
Concerning the truth of Rainham's story she could not fail to harbour 
doubts; that her husband was concealing something was daily more plainly 
revealed to her.
It was hard that she should suffer, but what could she do? At the bottom of 
her heart, in spite of the feeling of resentment which assailed her when - 
as it often did - the idea occurred to her that he had not exhibited 
towards her the perfect frankness which their old friendship demanded, she 
pitied Rainham. There were even times - such was her state of doubt - when 
she pitied her husband, and blamed herself for suspecting him of - she 
hardly owned what.
But, most of all, she pitied herself. She felt that in any case she had 
been wronged, whether Philip's ill-told tale was true or false. But her 
pride enabled her to keep her doubts locked within her own heart, to 
present a smiling, if occasionally pale, face to the world, in whose doings 
she took so large a part, and even to deceive Mrs. Sylvester.
And now Philip was dead! The severance, which she had persuaded herself was 
only temporary, was on a sudden rendered inexorably complete and eternal.
The blow was a cruel one, and for a time it seemed to be succeeded by a 
kind of rebellious insensibility. Eve felt demoralised and careless of the 
future; her frame of mind was precisely that of the man who is making his 
first hasty steps along the headlong road which is popularly spoken of as 
leading to the devil.
Later she began to reproach herself. She reflected, with a kind of scornful 
wonder at her weakness, that she had allowed all chance of explanation to 
escape; the one man whom she could trust, who would surely give her a 
straightforward answer if she appealed to him by the memory of the old 
days, was beyond the reach of her questions, silent to eternity. Her former 
sorrow seemed trivial by comparison with this.
On his return, Lightmark found his wife looking so pale and tired that he 
broke off in the middle of the story of his flattering reception at the 
German Court to express a suggestion for her benefit, that she had better 
go to Brighton or somewhere to recruit. She would never get through the 
season at this rate. Yes, she must certainly take a holiday, directly after 
the Academy Private View.
Eve caught at the idea, only she did not wait for the Academy to open. She 
went for a fortnight, accompanied by an old servant of the family, who 
regarded her mistress's birth as quite a recent event, to Mrs. Sylvester's 
cottage in Norfolk.
When Mrs. Lightmark came back to town her face was still pale, but her brow 
wore a serener air, and her eyes had lost their look of apprehension. The 
woman had arisen triumphant out of the ashes of her childhood, with a heart 
determined to know the truth, and to face it, however bitter it might prove 
to be. Meanwhile, she would not judge hastily.
As she drove up Bond Street one day soon after her return to town, the 
advertisement of Oswyn's exhibition caught her eye. She would probably have 
remembered a name so uncommon if she had only heard it once, and, as it 
was, she had heard it several times, and associated with it, moreover, a 
certain reticence which could not fail to arouse a woman's curiosity.
Later, when Mosenthal's card of invitation for the Private View arrived, 
she noted the day upon her list of engagements.
On the morning of Oswyn's ordeal, Eve sent a message to her husband, who 
was engaged with a model in the studio, to notify to him her intention of 
taking the carriage into town later in the afternoon; to which he had 
returned a gallant reply, expressing a hope that, if it would not bore her 
too much, she would pick him up somewhere and drive him home. Where and 
when could he meet her? The reply, "At Mosenthal's at five o'clock," did 
not surprise him. He did not happen to have the vaguest idea as to what was 
the attraction of the day at that particular gallery. It might be Burmese 
landscapes or portraits of parrots: it was all one to him. It was extremely 
decorous in his wife to affect picture-galleries, and Mosenthal's place was 
conveniently near to his favourite club.
A few minutes before the appointed hour he made his way from the new and 
alarmingly revolutionary club-house, where he had been indulging in 
afternoon tea in company with Felicia Dollond, to the gallery, outside 
which his horses were already waiting, and, perceiving Oswyn's name on the 
placards disposed on either side of the entrance, he felt only a momentary 
hesitation.
Oswyn would probably not be there; and, after all, why should he not 
inspect the man's pictures? Before reasons had time to present themselves 
he had passed into the room, and had been deferentially welcomed and 
presented with a catalogue by the proprietor in person.
The room was still crowded, and it was oppressively warm, with an 
atmosphere redolent of woollen and silken fabrics, like a milliner's shop 
on the day of a sale.
At first he made no effort to join his wife, whom he discerned from afar 
talking to a pillar of the Church in gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat.
He looked at the pictures whenever there was a break in the sequence of 
bows and greetings which had to be exchanged with two-thirds of the people 
in the room; and as he looked he was smitten with a quick thrill of 
admiration: he was still young enough to recognise the hand of the master. 
And in his admiration there was a trace of a frank envy, a certain 
unresentful humiliation - the feeling which he could remember to have 
experienced many times in the old days, when he put aside the sonnet he had 
just finished for some fashionable magazine, and took down from his limited 
bookshelf the little time-worn volume which contained the almost forgotten 
work of a poet whose name would have fallen strangely on the editorial ear.
Before long there was a general departure, and Lightmark, flushed with the 
triumphs of a conversation in which, in the very centre of an admiring 
group of his antagonist's worshippers, he had successfully measured swords 
with a notorious wit, turned to look for his wife; and, for the first time, 
meeting Oswyn's eye, half involuntarily advanced to greet him.
"This is an unexpected honour," said Oswyn coldly, disregarding the 
proffered hand; "unexpected - and unwelcome!"
Then he would have turned away, leaving his contempt and hatred unspoken, 
but his passion was too strong.
"Have you come to seek ideas for your next Academy picture," he continued 
quickly, with a sneer trembling on his lips, "or for the Outcry?"
Lightmark grew a little pale, biting his lip, and frowning for a moment, 
before he assumed a desperate mask of good-humour.
"Hang it, man!" he answered quickly, "be reasonable! Haven't you forgiven 
me yet? Though what you have to forgive - I only want to congratulate you, 
to tell you that I admire your work - immensely."
"I don't want your congratulations," interrupted the other hoarsely. "I 
might forget the wrong which, as you well know, you have done me; that is 
nothing! But have you forgotten your - your friend, Rainham? You had better 
go," he added, with a savage gesture. "Go! before I denounce you, proclaim 
you, you pitiful scoundrel!"
The man's forced calm had given way to a quivering passion; his lips 
trembled under the stress of the words which thronged to them: and as he 
turned on his heel, with a glance eloquent of loathing, he did not notice 
that Eve was standing close behind her husband, with parted lips, and 
intent eyes gleaming out of a face as pale as his own.
Lightmark recovered himself quickly, shrugging his shoulders, as soon as 
the other was out of earshot. He glanced at his wife, who was following 
Oswyn with her eyes; he did not dare to ask, or even to think, what she 
might have heard.
"The man's mad," he said lightly, "madder than ever!"


Chapter 32

It was Margot who gave him the letter: Oswyn remembered that afterwards 
with a kind of superstition. She came to meet him, wearing an air of 
immense importance, when his quick step fell upon the bare wooden stairway 
which led to his rooms.
"There's a letter for you," she said, nodding impressively, "a big letter, 
with a seal on it; and Mrs. Thomas had to write something on a piece of 
green paper before the postman would give it to her."
Then she followed him into the twilight of the attic which was his studio, 
and watched him gravely while he lighted the gas and, in deference to her 
curiosity, broke the seal.
The envelope contained a letter and a considerable bundle of papers, folded 
small, and neatly tied together with red tape.
When he had read the letter, he turned the package over with a sigh, 
reflectively eyeing it for some minutes, and then put it aside.
Later, when Mrs. Thomas, his landlady, had carried the child away to bed, 
he took the papers up again, and, after some hesitation, slowly untied the 
tape which encircled them.
The letter was from Messrs. Furnival and Co., the firm of solicitors who 
had acted for Rainham, and who were now representing Oswyn as his friend's 
sole executor.
It contained a brief intimation that the grant of probate of the late Mr. 
Rainham's will had been duly extracted, and ended with a request that the 
executor would consider the enclosed bundle of documents, which appeared to 
be of a private nature, and decide whether they should be preserved or 
destroyed.
When he had removed the tape, Oswyn noticed that a great many of the 
letters had the appearance of being in the same handwriting; these were 
tied up separately with a piece of narrow faded silk riband, and it was 
evident that they were arranged more or less in order of date; the writing 
in the case of the earliest letter being that of a child, while the most 
recent, dated less than a year ago, was a short note, an invitation, with 
the signature 'Eve Lightmark.'
Oswyn contemplated the little bundle with an air of indecision, falling at 
last into a long reverie, his thoughts wandering from the letters to the 
child, the woman who had written them, the woman whose name his friend so 
rarely breathed, whose face he had seen for the first time, proud and cold 
and beautiful, that very afternoon. Did she, too, care? Would she guard her 
secret as jealously?
Suddenly he frowned; the thought of Lightmark's effrontery recurred, 
breaking his contemplative calm and disturbing his speculations. He laid 
the papers aside without further investigation, and, after gazing for a few 
minutes vacantly out of the uncurtained window, rolled a fresh cigarette 
and went out into the night.
Next morning he made an expedition to Lincoln's Inn Fields to see Messrs. 
Furnival and Co., taking the packet with him. The partner who had the 
matter in hand was engaged, and he was kept waiting for nearly half an 
hour, in a dusty room with an elaborately moulded ceiling, and a carved 
wooden chimney-piece and scrolled panelling of some beauty, both disfigured 
with thick layers of dingy brown paint. A fire had just been lighted, in 
deference to the unseasonable coldness of the June day, and the room was 
full of pungent smoke.
As he waited his irritation increased. Lightmark's impertinent intrusion 
(such it appeared to him) and the scene which had ensued, had entirely 
aroused him from the state of indifference into which, when the incident 
occurred, he was beginning to relapse. The man was dangerous; a malign 
passion, a craving for vengeance, slept in him, born of his southern blood, 
and glancing out now and again at his eyes, like the fire which darts from 
the windows of a burning building.
He wondered now, as he thought of the wrongs he had borne, as it seemed to 
him, so patiently; in Rainham's lifetime there had doubtless been reasons, 
but was he never to retaliate? Had not he considered other people enough? 
His forbearance struck him now as a kind of weakness, as something almost 
contemptible, to be thought of with a feeling akin to shame.
Finally he was ushered up into Mr. Furnival's room, a pleasant apartment on 
the first-floor, with windows looking out upon a charming oasis of grass 
and trees. The lawyer apologised for keeping him waiting, intimated 
delicately that he had a pressing appointment in five minutes' time, and 
expressed his sympathy with Oswyn's difficulty as to the letters.
"It's quite a matter for you to decide," he said. "If you like to take the 
responsibility you may burn them forthwith, unread; or you may give them to 
me, to file with the other papers. But I should advise you to glance 
through the later letters, at all events. May I look at them? Thanks."
Oswyn had given him the packet of letters, and he spread them out on the 
table at which he was sitting, methodically, in little heaps, clearing a 
space among the piles of drafts and abstracts which lay before him.
"I think we may destroy these," said Oswyn, pointing to the little bundle 
tied up with riband. "I think I know what they are."
"As you like," said Mr. Furnival; "they appear to be from a lady. Yes, I 
don't think you need read them."
"And these," continued Oswyn. "They are all from Lady Garnett, and it is 
extremely unlikely that they can have any business reference."
"That disposes of nearly all," said the lawyer cheerfully. "I may put them 
on the fire, then?"
Oswyn bowed a grave assent, and Mr. Furnival dropped the little packets 
quickly into the hottest part of the fire.
"Now. here is a letter with a very recent postmark," he continued. "A man's 
writing, too, I should say. Will you read this, while I go through the 
others? It looks like rather a long epistle."
The handwriting seemed familiar to Oswyn, and his hand trembled slightly as 
he turned to the signature for corroboration. As he guessed, it was from 
Lightmark.
"I think I had better read this," he said grimly, half to himself.
He glanced quickly through the letter, and then read it a second time 
slowly, and while he was reading it his expression was such as to confirm 
the solicitor's previous opinion, that the man was a little bit mad.
When he had finished his perusal (he thought at the time that he should 
never forget a single word of that disgraceful letter), Oswyn sat in 
silence for some minutes, intently watching Mr. Furnival's struggles with a 
large bundle of papers and a small black bag.
The letter had, if such a thing were possible, increased his contempt for 
the writer; that the man was insincere (Oswyn would have used a far 
stronger term) he had been aware from the beginning; now he knew that he 
was a coward, a creature almost unworthy of his hatred.
A quick thought struck him, and he smiled.
"We won't burn this - at present, at any rate," he said quietly. "Is there 
anything else for me to read?"
The lawyer shuffled the remaining papers together quickly.
"I think not: these are chiefly bills which have since been paid. Will you 
keep that letter, or do you wish us to do anything about it?"
Oswyn deliberated for a moment, with a curious expression flitting over his 
face, biting his lip and frowning slightly, as he gazed at the fireplace, 
where Rainham's long-cherished letters from Eve and Lady Garnett's 
delicate, witty compositions were represented by a little heap of wavering 
black ashes.
The lawyer looked at his watch uneasily.
"I beg your pardon," said Oswyn quickly; "I needn't keep you any longer. 
Will you let me have an envelope? I dare say they can give me Mr. 
Sylvester's address downstairs - Mr. Charles Sylvester, the barrister?"
"The new member, you mean, of course?" said the lawyer. "He has chambers in 
Paper Buildings, No.11. Do you know him?"
"I am going to send him this letter." said Oswyn briefly, folding it up and 
bestowing it in the envelope which Mr. Furnival had given him. "Thanks, no, 
I needn't trouble you to have it posted: I prefer to leave it at Mr. 
Sylvester's chambers myself."
"He was a great friend of the late Mr. Rainham, as, of course, you know," 
said the lawyer, as they parted at the door. "Mr. Rainham introduced him to 
us when he was quite a young man - soon after he was called, in fact, and 
we gave him his first brief - the first of a good many! He's been one of 
our standing counsel for years. Good-day!"
As he made his way towards the Temple, Oswyn smiled to himself rather 
savagely, tasting in anticipation the sweets of long-deferred revenge. The 
flame of his ancient discontent with the academical art of the day, which 
had been fed by his personal hatred of one particularly successful exponent 
of it, was fanned into fury. And, at the same time, as he proceeded, with 
short hasty steps, amply armed for the vindication of his friend, in his 
grim fatalism he seemed to himself immensely the instrument of destiny, 
which had so given his enemy into his hands.
He paused when he reached Fleet Street; entering the first public-house, at 
haphazard, to order six pennyworth of brandy, which he drank neat across 
the counter, with slow, appreciative sips, as he reminded himself that, the 
excellence of his ammunition notwithstanding, he was still without any 
definite plan of campaign.
Would his luck desert him again? Would Sylvester be away, or refuse to see 
him? or while receiving him, contrive by some sinuous legal device adroitly 
to divert his attack? The mere contemplation of any such frustration dulled 
him strangely.
He called for his glass to be replenished, and emptied it sharply: and 
immediately the generous spirit moved his pulse, rebuked him for his 
depression, sent him briskly on his way.
As he lifted the ponderous knocker upon Sylvester's door, he remembered 
vividly the only other occasion upon which he had visited those chambers. 
With the member for Mallow, too, indiscreet busybody that he was, had he 
not a reckoning to settle? The choice of him as an instrument of his 
punishment, which, if it was primarily directed against another, should not 
leave him wholly unscathed, gave a zest to his malice and increased 
firmness to his manner, as he curtly ordered the clerk to take in his card.
"Is it an appointment?" this youth had asked dubiously, "because if it 
isn't - "
"Mr. Sylvester will see me," said Oswyn with irritation, "if you will have 
the goodness to do as you are told, and give him my name."
At which the youth had smiled loftily and retired, only to return five 
minutes later with an air of greater humility and information that the 
legislator was disengaged.
Charles looked up at him from the table at which he was sitting, with an 
open volume of Hansard before him, coldly waving him to a chair - an offer 
which Oswyn, mentally damning his superciliousness, ignored.
"My business is very brief," he said quickly; "I can explain it standing."
"I understand that it is urgent, Mr. - Mr. Oswyn. Otherwise, you know, I am 
a busy man."
"You mean that my call is inconvenient? I can quite imagine it. I should 
hardly have troubled you if you had not once taken the trouble to send for 
me - you, perhaps, have forgotten the occurrence; that seemed to give me a 
sort of right, a claim on your attention."
"I recognised it," said Charles gravely, in a tone which implied that, had 
he not given this nicety the benefit of his liberal consideration, the 
intruder would never have penetrated so far. "Since that is agreed, may I 
ask you to explain your business as expeditiously as possible?"
Oswyn smiled with some irony; and Sylvester suppressed a little shudder, 
reflecting that the man's uncouthness almost transgressed the bounds of 
decency.
"I can quote your own words on a previous occasion: it concerns the honour 
of a friend - the honour of your family, if you like it better."
Sylvester shut his volume sharply, and glanced up at the other with 
suppressed irritation.
"That is not a matter I can discuss with you," he said at last.
"I simply intend you to read," went on Oswyn calmly, "a letter which your 
brother-in-law wrote to my friend Philip Rainham a few weeks before his 
death."
Charles rose from his chair quickly, avoiding the other's face.
"I regret that I can't assist you." he said haughtily; "I have no interest 
whatever in the affairs of the late Mr. Rainham, and I must decline to read 
your letter."
He glanced significantly at the door, not suppressing a slight yawn; it was 
incredible how this repulsive little artist, with his indelicate 
propositions, bored him.
But Oswyn ignored his gesture; simply laying the missive in question on the 
table, he glanced casually at his watch.
"I can't compel you to read this letter," he said in the same studiously 
calm voice. "I warn you that your honour is gravely interested in its 
contents, and I will give you five minutes in which to decide. If you still 
persist in your determination, I have no course left but to send copies of 
it to some of Rainham's most intimate friends, and to your sister, Mrs. 
Lightmark."
He had his watch in one hand, but his gaze, curiously ironical, followed 
the direction of Charles's irresolute eyes, and the five minutes had not 
elapsed before he realised - and a touch of triumph mingled with his 
immense contempt of the man and his pompous unreality - that Charles's 
resolution had succumbed.
He stretched out his hand for the letter, unfolded it deliberately, and 
read it once, twice, three times, with a judicial slowness, which the 
other, who was now curiously moved, found exasperating.
When at last he looked up at Oswyn he shaded his eyes with one hand, but 
his face remained for the rest imperturbable and expressionless. The 
painter saw that his discretion was larger than he had imagined.
If the reading had been disagreeably illuminative - and Oswyn believed that 
under his surface composure he concealed, at least, a terrible wound to his 
pride - he was not going to allow this impression to appear.
"I might suggest that this document is a forgery," he said after a moment.
Oswyn indulged in a harsh little laugh, shrugging his shoulders.
"That would be too fatuous, Mr. Sylvester."
"I might suggest it," went on Charles slowly. "Perhaps, then, you will be 
surprised when I tell you that I believe it to be genuine. May I ask, Mr. 
Oswyn, why you move in this matter?"
"As Rainham's friend," said Oswyn quickly, "I intend to expose the 
miserable calumny which clouded his last days."
"A public scandal would be greatly to be deplored," Charles hazarded 
inconsequently, in the tone of a man who argued with himself.
Oswyn made as if he would have taken up the letter with a gesture of sudden 
impatience; but Charles intercepted him quickly, and his voice had a grave 
simplicity in it which arrested the other's attention. "Don't mistake me, 
Mr. Oswyn; I have not the least desire or intention to suppress this 
document. I must expect you to judge me harshly; but you will surely see 
that my honour is as deeply concerned in the redressing of Mr. Rainham's 
reputation as anyone's can be, only I am naturally desirous of sparing my - 
of sparing the innocent persons who are unfortunately mixed up in the 
affair unnecessary pain, the scandal of publicity."
"There are certain persons who must absolutely know the truth," said Oswyn 
bluntly.
"If I pledge you my word that the persons whom you mean shall be 
immediately enlightened, will you leave me to act alone?"
The other was silent for a moment, revolving the proposition, half 
surprised at the unwonted humility of the barrister's eagerness. At last he 
said, with a short, ambiguous laugh:
"I will leave it in your hands, Mr. Sylvester."
He underwent a momentary repentance of his own readiness when he was in the 
street, and had turned his face to Soho again; it seemed almost childishly 
trusting. But presently, remembering he knew not what shade of curious 
sternness in Sylvester's manner, he decided that he had done wisely - it 
was on some such result as this that he had counted in his coming - and 
that the score, stupendous as it was, would be accurately settled.
For a long while, after his unwelcome visitor had departed, Charles sat 
silent and buried in deep thought.
From time to time he glanced vaguely at the letter which Oswyn had 
abandoned, and he wondered - but quite inconsequently, and with no heart to 
make the experiment - whether any further perusal of those disgraceful 
lines could explain or palliate the blunt obloquy of the writer's conduct. 
His concise, legal habit of mind forbade him to cherish any false 
illusions.
Lightmark, writing in an hour of intimate excitement, when the burden of 
his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more intolerable than 
the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too effectually compromised 
himself. He had cringed, procrastinated, promised; had been abject, 
hypocritical, explicit.
It seemed to Sylvester, in the first flush of his honourable disgust, that 
there was no generous restitution which the man had not promised, no craven 
meanness to which he had not amply confessed.
He dropped his correct head upon his hands with something like a moan, as 
he contrasted the ironical silence which had been Rainham's only answer to 
this effusion - a silence which had since been irrevocably sealed. He had 
never before been so disheartened, had never seemed so intimately 
associated with disgrace.
Even the abortive ending of his passion - he knew that this was deep-seated 
and genuine, although its outward expression had been formal and cold - 
seemed a tolerable experience in comparison.
But this was dishonour absolute, and dishonour which could never be 
perfectly atoned.
Had not he in his personal antipathy to Philip Rainham - the tide of that 
ancient hostility surged over him again even while he vowed sternly to make 
the fullest amends - had he not seized with indecent eagerness upon any 
pretext or occasion to justify his dislike?
He had, at least, assisted unjustly to destroy Rainham's reputation, giving 
his adherence to the vainest of vain lies; and however zealous he might be 
in destroying this elaborate structure which he had helped to build, 
however successful the disagreeable task of enlightening his sister and the 
maligned man's most interested friends might prove, the reproach upon his 
own foresight would remain.
It was notable that, in the somewhat hard integrity of his character, he 
did not for a moment seek to persuade himself, as a man of greater sympathy 
might have done, that Eve was a person to whom the truth could legitimately 
be spared.
How she would suffer it, and whither her indignation might lead her, he did 
not care to inquire; these were matters with which henceforth he should 
decline to meddle. His part would be done when he had given her the simple 
information that was her due - that they had made a great mistake; that her 
husband was not to be trusted.
He tried to prepare the few set phrases in which the intelligence would be 
couched, but found none that were satisfactory. The effort appeared more 
and more stupendous as the afternoon advanced, until at last, with 
astonishment at his weakness which refused to be analysed, he recognised 
that, after all, it was not possible. It was news which he could not give 
to his sister with his own lips.
Mary Masters as a possible mediator suddenly occurred to him. He recognised 
by some occult instinct that she was one of the persons for whom Oswyn had 
stipulated, to whom restitution was due, and at once he resolved to appeal 
to her.
He reminded himself that the Lightmarks were entertaining that evening on a 
scale of quite exceptional grandeur, that he had a card for their fancy-
dress ball, from which Lady Garnett and her niece would hardly be 
absentees. If he could see the girl beforehand, she would doubtless find 
the time and occasion to say what was necessary.
He had recovered his composure when, at no considerable interval after the 
formation of this resolve, he was ushered into Lady Garnett's drawing-room. 
It was his first appearance there since the rejection of his suit (he had 
not had the courage to renew it, although he was by no means prepared to 
admit that it was hopeless), and in the slight embarrassment which this 
recollection caused him he hardly regretted the presence of a second 
visitor, although his identification as a certain Lord Overstock, whom he 
believed to be opposed to him in more ways than in his political views (he 
was a notorious Tory), was not made without a jealous pang. He greeted 
Mary, however, without undue formality, and went over to Lady Garnett.
The old lady glanced up at him rather listlessly. She was growing deaf, or 
feigned deafness. He said to himself that perhaps she was much older than 
they knew - was growing tired. Her persiflage, which Charles had never much 
appreciated, was less frequent than of old, and she no longer poured out 
her witticisms with the placid sweetness of a person offering you bonbons. 
There were sentences in her talk - it was when she spoke of the couple 
opposite them, who were conveniently out of ear-shot - which the barrister 
found deliberately malignant.
"You mean that it is settled?" she asked, affecting to misunderstand some 
trivial remark. "Ah, no, but it will arrange itself - it is coming. You 
think she will make an admirable duchess? She has sometimes quite the grand 
air. Have you not found that out? You know his father is very old; he 
cannot in reason live much longer. And such estates! Personally, too, the 
nicest of boys, and as proper as if he had something to gain by it. And 
yet, in England, a Duke can do almost anything and be respected. Ah, Mr. 
Sylvester, you did not use your opportunity!"
"I want one now," he said rather coldly, "of saying two words to Miss 
Masters."
She just raised her delicate eyebrows.
"Will it be very useful?"
Charles flushed slightly, then he frowned.
"It has nothing to do with myself. I have some news she should hear. 
Perhaps you yourself - "
She interrupted him with a little mirthless laugh.
"I will not hear anything serious, and you look to me very serious. I am 
old enough to have promised never again to be serious in my life."
She submitted, however, to listen to him, seeing that his weighty 
confidences would not be brooked; and when he had finished - he said what 
he had to say in very few words - she glanced up at him with the same air 
of impenetrable indifference.
"Come!" she said, "what does it matter to me that you acted in exceedingly 
bad taste, and repent it? It made no difference to me - I am not the police 
des moeurs. If I were you, I would hold my tongue."
Then she added, as he glanced at her with evident mystification, shrugging 
her shoulders:
"When one is dead, Mr. Sylvester, what does it matter?
He turned away rather impatiently, his eyes following the fine lines of 
Mary's face, which he saw in profile.
He noticed that she talked with animation, and that Lord Overstock's 
expression was frankly admiring. At last the old lady said:
"But, yes; you must tell Mary - by all means. To her it will mean much. 
See, the Marquis is going; if you wish I will leave you alone together."


Chapter 33

"Now, isn't it a pretty dance?" murmured Mrs. Dollond rapturously, as she 
sank into a low chair in a corner secure from the traffic of the 
kaleidoscopic crowd which had invaded Mrs. Lightmark's drawing-room, and 
opened her painted fan with a little sigh intended to express her 
beatitude.
Colonel Lightmark, to whom Mrs. Dollond addressed this complimentary query 
(which, after all, was more of an assertion or challenge, in that it took 
its answer for granted), was arrayed in the brilliant scarlet and silver of 
the regiment which had once the honour of calling him Colonel; his tunic 
was so tight that sitting down was almost an impossibility for him, and 
Mrs. Dollond, who looked charming in her powder and brocade, could not help 
wondering whether any mortal buttons could stand the strain; and, on the 
other hand, the dimensions of his patent leather boots were such that 
standing, for a man of his weight, involved a torture which it was hard to 
conceal. And yet the veteran was happy - he was positively radiant. He felt 
that his nephew's success in the world of Art and of Society considerably 
enhanced his own importance; he was not ashamed to owe a portion of his 
brilliance to borrowed light - and tonight one could not count the 
celebrities on the fingers of both hands.
The old hero-worshipper gazed complacently at the little ever-shifting 
crowd which surrounded his nephew and his niece (so he called her) at their 
post near the doorway, and he listened to Mrs. Dollond's sparkling sallies 
with a blissful ignorance of her secret ambition in the direction of a 
partner who would make her dance, and for whose edification she would be 
able to liken the Colonel's warlike figure to a newly-boiled lobster or a 
ripe tomato.
"Regular flower-show, isn't it?" he suggested, naively reinforcing her 
simile. "I don't know what the dickens they're all meant for, but a good 
many of them seem to have escaped from the Lyceum - Juliets, and Portias, 
and Shylocks, and so forth."
"Yes," said Mrs. Dollond. "I think the Shylocks must be picture-dealers, 
you know. But their conversation isn't very Shakespearian, is it? I heard 
Hamlet say, just now, that the floor was too perfect for anything, and 
Ophelia - she was dancing with a Pierrot incroyable - told her partner that 
she adored waltzing to a string band!"
They both laughed, the Colonel shortly and boisterously, Mrs. Dollond in a 
manner which suggested careful study before a looking-glass, with an effect 
of dimples and of flashing teeth.
"What wicked things you say, Colonel Lightmark," she added demurely. "Who 
is that stately person in the dark figured silk, with a cinque-cento ruff? 
Isn't it Lady Garnett's niece?"
"Yes, that's Miss Masters," said the Colonel, "and I suppose that's Lady 
Garnett with her. I don't think I've ever met Lady Garnett, though I've 
often heard of her. What is her dress - whom is she intended to represent? 
I don't see how the dickens one's expected to know, but you're so clever."
"Oh, she's dressed as - as Lady Garnett! What a lot of people - real 
people, you know - there are here tonight! Dear me, there's the music again 
already. I believe I've got to dance this time. I do hope my partner's 
dress won't clash with mine too awfully. That's the worst of fancy dress 
balls; they really ought to be stage-managed by a painter, and the period 
ought to be limited. One's never safe. Our dance, Mr. Copal? Number six? 
Yes, I think it must be! A polka? Then we'll waltz!"
And the Colonel, who was not a dancing man, was left in not unwelcome 
solitude to reflect somewhat ponderously on the advantages of possessing a 
nephew and niece young enough, brilliant enough, and rich enough - though 
that was partly his affair - to cultivate the very pink and perfection of 
smart society. He regarded Dick in the light of a profitable investment.
When the young people, so to speak, came to the rescue of the avuncular 
hulk, it was already beginning to drift into the corner of the harbour 
devoted to derelicts.
The friends who had developed about his path in such flattering numbers 
when he came home from India, and retired, with a newly-acquired fortune 
and a vague halo of military distinction about his person, into the ranks 
of the half-paid, were beginning to find him rather old and, frankly, a 
considerable bore; but the timely benevolence which he had extended to his 
nephew was, it appeared, to have its reward in this world in the shape of a 
kind of reflected rejuvenescence, a temporary respite from the limbo of 
(how he hated the word!) fogeydom.
When Dick married, his uncle was already settling down in a narrow groove 
among the people of yesterday; now he felt that he had once more 
established his foothold among the people of today.
Presently he noticed that Lady Dulminster had arrived, and he made his way 
across the room to meet her with a quite youthful bashfulness, cannoning 
apologetically against Romeos and Marguerites, hoping that she would like 
his uniform.
There was one person, at least, in the room who made no attempt to assure 
herself that she was enjoying the vivid gaiety of these parti-coloured 
revels.
Mary Masters, when she had time for solitary thought, found that the 
atmosphere of the charming room was full of mockery. For her, the 
passionate vibrations of the strained, incessant strings seemed to breathe 
the wild complaint of lost souls; the multitudinous tread of gliding feet, 
the lingering sweep of silken skirts, the faint, sweet perfume of exotic 
flowers, all had a new and strange significance; the effect of an 
orchestral fugue wearily repeating the expression of a frenzied 
heartlessness, a great unrest.
The girl was completely unstrung. Since Charles had brought her news, 
which, after all, had been merely a corroboration, her nerves had played 
her false; the balance of her mind was thrown out of poise; and the fact 
that she was there at all seemed only a part of her failing, an additional 
proof of her moral collapse.
Seated on a low ottoman, in a little recess among the tall palms and tree 
ferns, which lined the passage leading from the ballroom to the studio, she 
was startled presently from her reverie by Mrs. Lightmark, who confronted 
her, a dainty figure in the pale rose colour and apple-green of one of 
Watteau's most unpractical shepherdesses.
"Not dancing, Mary!" she protested, smiling a little languidly. "What does 
it mean? Why are you sitting in stately solitude with such an evident 
contempt for our frivolity?"
"Frivolity!" echoed Miss Masters. "I have been dancing, this last waltz, 
with Lord Overstock. I have sent him to find my fan. I told him exactly 
where to look, but I suppose he can't discover it. He's not very clever, 
you know!"
"Poor Lord Overstock! I hope he won't find it just yet and come to turn me 
out of his seat. I'm so tired of standing, of introducing men whose names I 
never knew to girls whose names I have forgotten, and of trying to avoid 
introducing the same people twice over. It's so difficult to recognise 
people in their powder and patches!"
"Yes," said Mary slowly, with a kind of inward resentment which she could 
not subdue, although she felt that it was unreasonable; "I almost wonder 
that you recognised me."
Eve glanced at her, struck by her tone, trying to read her expression in 
the dim light, a shadow of bewilderment passing over her own face and for a 
moment lowering the brilliancy of her eyes. Then she smiled again, 
dismissing her thought with a little laugh which broke off abruptly.
"One so soon forgets!" the other added, with an intention in her voice, an 
involuntary betrayal which she almost immediately regretted.
"Forgets!"
Eve caught up the word eagerly, almost passionately, her voice falling into 
a lower key.
"Forget! Forgive and forget!" repeated Mary quickly and recklessly, letting 
her eyes wander from her own clasped hands to Eve's bouquet of delicate, 
scentless fritillaries, which lay neglected where it had fallen, on the 
floor between their feet. "How easy it sounds! - is perhaps - and yet - I 
have not so much to forget - or to be forgiven!"
The last words were almost whispered, but for Eve's imagination, poised on 
tiptoe like a hunted creature blindly listening for the approach of the 
pursuer, they were full of suggestion, of denunciation.
She remembered now, with a swiftly banished pang of jealousy, that this 
girl had loved him.
Her thought sped back to a summer evening nearly a year ago, when it had 
seemed to her that she had surprised her friend's secret.
"What do you mean, Mary?" she demanded courageously. "What have I to be 
forgiven? Don't despise me; don't, for heaven's sake, don't play with me! I 
am all in the dark! Are you accusing me? Do you think because I say nothing 
that I have forgotten - that I can forget? Is it something about - him?"
Mary cast a rapid glance at her.
"Are you afraid of his name, then?"
Eve dropped her hands despairingly.
"Ah, you do! You are playing with me! About Philip Rainham, then! For 
heaven's sake speak! Do you know what I only guess - that he was innocent? 
For God's sake say it!"
It was Mary's turn to look bewildered, to feel penitent. She began to 
recognise that there were greater depths in Eve's nature than she had 
suspected, that her indifference might, after all, prove to have been 
merely a mask.
"You guess - innocent - don't you know, then?"
"Nothing, nothing! I only suspect - believe! I have been groping alone in 
the darkness - and yet I do know! He was innocent - he played a part?"
"Yes," said Mary gently; "he sacrificed himself, for another!"
"He sacrificed himself - for me. Ah, say it! say it!"
Mary was greatly puzzled and at the same time moved - filled with a supreme 
compassion for this woman who was yet such a child, so dainty and frail a 
thing to confront the deadly knowledge that she had made a shipwreck of a 
life, of lives.
And yet, was there not also a ring of exultation, a challenge in her last 
words?
At least, her sorrow was ennobled. She was invested with a sombre glory, as 
one who had inspired a rare and perfect devotion.
And, after all, had she not already been considered enough?
A silence ensued, during which Eve seemed to be wrapped in steadfast 
thought.
She grew calmer, picking up her bouquet, and sedulously arranging its 
disordered foliage; while Lord Overstock, who had arrived with Mary's fan, 
poured forth elaborate apologies, protesting that she must give him another 
dance - the second extra - to make up for the time he had lost.
Already the music was beginning for the next dance, and people passed in 
couples, laughing and talking gaily, a motley procession, on their way into 
the ballroom.
"I thought your brother would have told you," said Mary softly, bending 
over her programme and gathering her skirts together with a suggestion of 
departure.
"Charles? He was always prejudiced against him - always his enemy!"
"That is why; he is very just, very conscientious. He told me this 
afternoon."
Mary's voice sank a little lower. She was standing now. She could see her 
prospective partner looking for her. She wondered vaguely whether Eve 
accepted the alternative, whether she realised that, to prove Philip 
innocent, was to establish her husband's guilt, his original wrongdoing, 
and subsequent cowardice.
"But - Charles! How did he know? Does he believe it? Who told him?"
Mary had gently disengaged her arm from Eve's restraining hand. She stepped 
back for an instant, excusing herself to her expectant cavalier.
"One of Philip's friends told him today - proved it to him, he says. It was 
a Mr. Oswyn."
A minute later Mary found herself in the ballroom, making heroic efforts to 
divide her entire attention impartially between the strains of the band and 
the remarks of her partner.
She was afraid to pass in review the conduct of those few minutes which had 
seemed so long. Had it really all occurred in the interval between two 
waltzes?
For the present she drew a mental curtain over the scene. She lacked the 
courage to gaze upon her handiwork, although she was not without a hopeful 
instinct that, when she criticised it in sober daylight, she would even 
approve of what she had done. Her determination did not, however, carry her 
further than the middle of the dance.
The room was now crowded to repletion, and she readily fell in with her 
partner's suggestion that they should take a turn in the cooler atmosphere 
of the garden; and as she passed the threshold, a rapid, retrospective 
glance informed her that Eve was once more playing her arduous part of 
hostess.
Never had actress more anxiously awaited the fall of the curtain upon her 
scene. Her husband, in the gallant russet of a falconer, was dancing now 
with Mrs. Dollond: she could hear his frequent laughter, and, though she 
turned her eyes away, see him bending over his partner to catch the words, 
trivial enough no doubt, which she seemed to whisper with such an air of 
confidence. But, though she had heard him address Mrs. Dollond by her 
Christian name, she did not pay him the compliment of being jealous: the 
time for that had passed. The account which she had to demand of him 
related to a matter far more serious than the most flagrant of flirtations 
- she only longed to confront him, to tear from him a confession, not so 
much with a view to humiliate him as to enlighten herself, and to force him 
to make the only reparation in his power.
When the music had ceased, and the measured tread of feet lapsed into the 
confusion of independent wanderings, Eve turned to find her husband close 
behind her, and Mrs. Dollond firing off a neat little speech of 
congratulation, panting a little and making play with her elaborate fan.
She was quick to seize the opportunity for which she had waited so eagerly; 
with a few words of smiling apology to Mrs. Dollond and the others who were 
gathered round her, she intimated to her husband that she wished him to 
come with her, to attend to something: she assumed a playful air of 
mystery.
"Oh, you must go!" said Mrs. Dollond, "your wife is planning some 
delightful surprise for us: I can see it in her eyes! Though, what one 
could want more - "
The music began again, and the couples took their places for the Lancers: 
there was to be a Shakespearian set, and another of Waverley notabilities.
Under cover of the discussion and confusion which this scheme involved, Eve 
withdrew, leading the way into the room which they called the library, and 
which was full of superfluous furniture, removed from the drawing-room to 
make space for the dancers. Her husband followed, lifting his eyebrows, 
with a chivalrous but not wholly successful attempt to disguise his 
impatience.
When he had closed the door, Eve turned suddenly and confronted him, 
interrupting the question which was on his lips. He noticed, with a quick 
apprehension, that she was very pale, that the smile which she had worn for 
her guests had given place to an expression even more ominous than her 
pallor and the trembling of her lips.
"Why have I brought you here?" she echoed. "I don't know, I might have 
asked you before them all - perhaps you would have preferred that! But I 
won't keep you long. The truth! That is all I want!"
He frowned, with a vicious movement of his lips: then meeting her gaze, 
made an awkward effort to seem at ease.
"My dear child!" he said, stepping back and leaning his back against the 
door, "what melodrama! The truth! what truth?"
"How often you must have withheld it from me, to ask like that! The truth 
about Philip Rainham and that woman: that is what I ask!"
Lightmark exclaimed petulantly at this:
"Haven't we discussed it all before? Haven't you questioned me beyond all 
limits? Haven't you said that you believed me? And what a time - "
"Yes, I have asked you before. Is it my fault that you have lied? Is it my 
fault that you have made it possible for - for someone else to prove to me, 
tonight, that you have deceived me? The time is not of my making. But now, 
I must have the truth; it is the only reparation, the last thing I shall 
ask of you!"
"You must be mad!" he stammered, his self-possession deserting him; "you 
don't know - you have no right to speak to me like this. You don't 
understand these things; you must let me judge for you - "
"The only thing I understand clearly is that you have blackened another 
man's - your friend's - memory. Isn't that enough? Can you deny that you 
have allowed him to bear your shame? I know now that he was innocent; I 
insist that you shall tell me the rest!"
"The rest!" he repeated impatiently, shifting his attitude. "I won't submit 
to this cross-examination! I have explained it all before; I decline to say 
any more!"
"Then you cling to your lie?"
"Lie? Pray, don't be so sensational; you talk like the heroine of a fifth-
rate drama! Who has put such a mad idea into your head? Let me warn you 
that there are limits to my patience!"
"I will tell you, if you will come with me and deny it to his face - if you 
will refute his proofs."
"Proofs! You have no right to ask such a thing! I tell you, I have acted 
for the best. Why should you believe the first comer rather than me?"
"Why? You can ask why!" she interposed.
"Let me beg of you to come back with me to our guests; we shall be missed - 
people will talk!"
Eve shrugged her shoulders defiantly, ironically.
"You prevaricate; you won't, you can't be candid! There is only one other 
man who can tell me the truth - you make it necessary, I must go to him."
Lightmark clenched his hand viciously upon the handle of the door.
"I decline to discuss this damnable folly any longer; if you won't come 
with me I shall go alone; I shall say that you are ill - really, I think 
you must be!"
"Go by all means!" she replied indifferently, "but tell me first, where can 
I find Mr. Oswyn?"
He paused, gazing at her blankly.
"Oswyn?"
"Yes. The man who is not afraid to denounce you. If you won't enlighten me, 
if you won't clear your - your friend's memory - it may be at the expense 
of your own - perhaps he will."
"Oswyn!" he stammered; "Oswyn!"
"His address!" she demanded quickly. "Please understand that for the future 
I am independent; I will go to him at once! If you won't give me his 
address, if - Would you prefer that I should ask my brother for it? That is 
my alternative!"
Lightmark found something very disconcerting in his wife's steadfast gaze, 
in the uncompromising calm, the quiet passion of her demeanour; his one 
desire was to put an end to this scene, which oppressed him as a nightmare, 
before he should entirely lose all power of self control.
He felt himself almost incapable of thought, unable to weigh the meaning of 
her words, her threats; the readiness of resource which served him so 
deftly in little things had deserted him now, as it invariably did in the 
face of a real emergency.
If he could temporise, he might be able to arrive at something more like a 
plan of action, to concentrate his efforts in one direction.
He realised that if his wife fulfilled her threat, which was the more 
alarming in that it was not an angry one but had every appearance of being 
backed by deliberate intention - if she appealed to her brother, whose 
moral principles he estimated more highly than his tact or worldly wisdom - 
there appeared to be every prospect of an aggravated scandal. For if 
Charles Sylvester (who was unfortunately among the revellers) declined to 
furnish his sister with Oswyn's address, was it not certain that she would 
apply elsewhere? And, after all, might not Oswyn adhere to the silence 
which he had so long maintained?
He reasoned quickly and indeterminately, vaguely skimming the surface of 
many ominous probabilities and finding no hopeful resting-place for 
conjecture, finally allowing a little desperate gesture to escape him.
The music had stopped amid the desultory clapping of hands, and he could 
hear people passing outside on their way into the garden. He turned the 
handle slowly without opening the door.
"Be reasonable!" he appealed. "There is still time; let us go into the 
ballroom; let us forget this folly!"
"You may go," she replied contemptuously; "I have no wish to detain you - 
far from it. But if you leave me without giving me Mr. Oswyn's address I 
shall ask Charles for it, and if Charles - "
Her husband interrupted her savagely.
"Oh, if you are bent on making a fool of yourself, I suppose I can't 
prevent you. The man lives at 61, Frith Street. Now you have it. I wash my 
hands of the whole affair."
He opened the door, and she passed out gravely before him, holding her 
bouquet to her down-turned face; and then they parted tacitly, the husband 
turning towards the door which led into the garden, the wife making her way 
into the ballroom, and thence towards the studio.


Chapter 34

In the empty studio, from which, for one night, most of her husband's 
impedimenta had been removed to allow place for the long supper-table, 
which glistened faintly in the pale electric light, she paused only long 
enough to wrap her fantastic person in a dark cloak which she had caught up 
on her way.
Then she let herself out quietly by the private door into the road. And she 
stood still a moment, blotted against the shadows, hesitating, vaguely 
considering her next step.
The honey-coloured moon, casting its strange, silken glamour over the white 
house, over the black outline of the trees in the garden, spangled here and 
there with Japanese lanterns, gave an air of immense unreality to the 
scene; and the tremulous notes of the violins, which floated faintly down 
to her from the half opened windows of the ballroom, only heightened this 
effect, seeming just then to be no more than the music of moonbeams to 
which the fairies dance.
For a moment a sudden weakness and timidity overcame her. In a world so 
transcendently unreal - had not she just seen her happiness become the very 
dream of a shadow? - was it not the merest futility to take a step so 
definite, to be passionate or intense? Better rather to rest for a little 
in this vague world of half-lights into which she had stepped, under the 
cooling stars, and then to return and take up one's old place in the 
masque.
But her fantasy passed. In the distance two glowing orbs of a hansom came 
slowly towards her, and her purpose grew suddenly very strong.
The man reined in his horse with an inquiring glance at the hooded figure 
on the pavement, seeking a fare. And it was without hesitation that she 
engaged him, giving him the number of Oswyn's house in Frith Street, Soho, 
in her calm, well bred voice, and bidding him be quick.
But the horse was incapable - tired, perhaps (she recalled the fact long 
afterwards, and the very shape and colour of the bony, ill-groomed animal, 
as one remembers trivial details upon occasions of great import); and after 
a while she resigned herself to a tedious drive.
As they rattled along confusedly through the crowded streets, she caught 
from time to time the reflection of her own face in the two little mirrors 
at each side, and wondered to find herself the same. For she did not 
deceive herself, nor under value the crushing force of the blow which she 
had received.
To her husband, when she turned scornfully from his clumsy evasions - for a 
moment, perhaps, to herself - she had justified the singular course she was 
taking by an overwhelming necessity of immediately facing the truth, in 
which, perhaps, there still lurked the dim possibility of explanation 
whereby her husband's vileness might find the shadow of an excuse.
But with further reflection - and she was reflecting with passionate 
intensity - this little glowworm of hope expired. The truth! She knew it 
already - had known before, almost instinctively - that Philip Rainham's 
justification could only be the warrant of her husband's guilt; no 
corroboration of Oswyn's could make that dreary fact any plainer than it 
was already.
No, it was hardly the truth which she desired so much as an act of tardy 
expiation which she would make. For with the bitterness of her conviction 
that, for all her wealth, and her beauty, and her youth, she had, none the 
less, irretrievably thrown away her life, there mingled an immense 
contrition at having been so blind and hard, so culpably unjust to the most 
generous of men, who had deliberately effaced himself for her good.
And the exceeding bitterness of her self reproach, which alone saved her 
composure, forbidding the mockery of tears, was only exaggerated when she 
remembered how vain her remorse must remain. It mattered no jot that she 
was sorry, since death had sealed their estrangement ironically for all 
time.
In her passionate recognition of his constant justice and kindness, which 
of old, vainly striving to perpetuate the fading illusion of her husband's 
honour (her generosity did not pause to remember how vain these efforts had 
been), she had discounted for hypocrisy, she felt that no price of personal 
suffering would have been too heavy if only for one hour, one moment, she 
could have recalled him from the world of shadows to her side.
She could figure to herself, refining on her misery, his attitude in such a 
case: the half sad, half jesting reassurance of his gravely pardoning eyes.
They haunted her just then, those eyes of Philip Rainham, which had been to 
the last so ambiguous and so sad, and were now perpetually closed.
And for the first time a suspicion flashed across her mind, which, while it 
made her heart flutter like a frightened bird, seemed to her the one drop 
hitherto lacking in the cup of her unhappiness. Had, then, after all, that 
gentle indifference of her friend masked an immense hunger, a deeply-felt 
need of personal tenderness, which she might have supplied - ah, how 
gladly! - if she had known? Could he have cared more deeply than people 
knew?
She reminded herself the next moment, as they came to a sudden standstill 
before a dark-green door, how idle all such questions were - vain beating 
of the hands against the shut door of death!
She alighted and dismissed her cab, and in the interval which elapsed 
before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant, who gaped 
visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should be taken up to 
Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to realise the strangeness of 
her course.
Her mother, Charles, her guests - Felicia Dollond and the rest - how would 
they consider the adventure if ever they should know? It was easy to 
imagine their attitude of shocked disapproval, and her brother's disgusted 
repudiation of the whole business as a thing, most emphatically, which one 
did not do. Ah, no! it was not a departure such as this that a well-bred 
society Spartan could even decently contemplate! And it was almost with a 
laugh, devoid, indeed, of merriment, that Eve tossed consideration of these 
scruples contemptuously away.
At last she was in revolt against their world and the pedantry of its 
little inflexilbe laws; and all her old traditions had become odious to 
her, seeming, for the moment, deeply tainted with dishonour, and partly the 
cause of her disastrous plight. A great, ruining wave had broken over her 
life, and in her passionate helplessness she cried only for some firm and 
absolute shore, else the silence of the engulfing waters, not for the vain 
ropes of social convention with which they would drag her back into the 
perilous security from which she had been swept; and she had forgotten 
everything but her imperative need, which had brought her there, when the 
lodging-house drudge returned and ushered her clumsily into Oswyn's 
presence.
It was a sitting-room on the second floor which the artist occupied, by no 
means an uncomfortable apartment, though Eve's first impression of it was 
immeasurably sordid, and she realised, with a touch of pity, that the 
painter's difficult genius had no tact of application to his surroundings.
Had, then, the painter of 'Thanatos, the Peacebearer' - that incomparable 
work! - no personal taste, to be violated by the crude wallpaper and the 
vulgar vases, containing impossible flowers, which jostled against broken 
tobacco-pipes and a half empty bottle of milk on the mantelpiece?
There was an immense untidiness everywhere; a disorder of children's toys 
and torn picture-books would have prepared Eve for the discovery of a 
sleeping child with brilliant hair coiled up in a rug on the sofa, if her 
eyes had not been arrested by an unframed canvas on an easel, the only 
picture, save some worthless prints in common gilt frames, which was 
visible. It was the head of Philip Rainham, immortalised by the brush of 
his friend, which awaited her - the eyes already closed, the pale lips 
still smiling with that superbly ironical smile of the dead.
She had not greeted Oswyn on her entrance, and now she had ceased to 
remember that he was there, as she stood contemplating the portrait with 
her rapt and sorrowful gaze, while Oswyn, leaning across the table, 
implicitly accepting the situation, which had to him all the naturalness of 
the unexpected, considered her in his turn.
He had never before seen her to such advantage, and remembering that early 
presentment of her which Lightmark had exhibited in the Grosvenor, he 
realised how much she had developed. The singular nobility and purity of 
her beauty amazed him; it shone out like the starry night; and, standing 
there remote and silent (in her abstraction she had let her cloak slide to 
the ground, revealing her white arms, her fanciful, incongruous attire), 
she seemed, indeed, a creature of another world."
When she turned to him at last there was an immense and solemn entreaty in 
her eyes for candour and directness, an appeal to be spared no bitter 
knowledge that he might possess - for the whole truth.
"Tell me," she began slowly, calmly, though he was not ignorant that her 
composure was the result of an immense inward effort. "I can't explain why 
I have come to you - perhaps you yourself can explain that better than I! I 
don't know what you may think of me - I am too unhappy to care. I have no 
claim upon you. I only entreat you to answer me a question which perhaps no 
one now living can answer but you. Ah!" - she broke off with a gesture of 
sudden passion - "I have been so cruelly kept in the dark."
Oswyn lowered his eyes for a moment, considering. A curious wave of 
reminiscence swept over him, giving to this strange juxtaposition the last 
touch of completion.
He remembered Rainham's long reticence, and his unburdening himself at the 
last, in a conviction that there would be a season when the truth would be 
best. And he said to himself that this time had come.
"Mrs. Lightmark," he said at last, in a low, constrained voice, "I promise 
to answer any question that is within my knowledge."
"It is about my - my husband and Philip Rainham. What passed between them 
in the autumn of last year? Who was that woman?"
He did not reply for a moment; but unconsciously his eyes met hers full, 
and in their brief encounter it was possible that many truths were silently 
told. Presently she continued:
"You need not tell me, Mr. Oswyn. I can see your answer as plainly as if 
you had spoken. It is my husband - "
She broke off sharply, let her beautiful head droop with a movement of deep 
prostration upon her hands.
"What have I done, what have I done," she moaned, "that this dishonour 
should come to me?"
It was a long time before she looked up at him.
"Why did he do it?" she whispered.
"Have you never guessed?" he asked in his turn. "I will tell you, Mrs. 
Lightmark. I was with him when he was dying. He wished you to know; he had 
some such time as this in his mind. It was a sort of message."
"He wished me to know - a sort of message," she repeated blankly. "He spoke 
of me, then - he forgave me for my hard judgment, for knowing him so ill?"
"It was himself that he did not forgive for not having guarded you better, 
for having been deceived by your husband. He spoke of you to me very fully 
at the last, when we both saw that his death was merely a question of days. 
I saw then what I had sometimes suspected before, that you had absorbed his 
whole life, that his devotion to you was a kind of religion."
"He loved me?" she asked at last, in a hushed, strange voice, white to the 
lips.
Oswyn bowed his head.
"Ever since you were a child. It was very beautiful, and it was with him at 
the last as a light. Don't reproach yourself; it was to prevent that that 
he wished you to be told."
"To prevent it!" she cried, with tragical scorn. "Am I not to reproach 
myself that I was hard and callous and cold, that I never understood nor 
cared; that I was not with him? Not reproach myself? Oh, Philip, Philip!" 
she called, breaking down utterly, laying her face in her hands.
Oswyn averted his eyes, giving her passion time to appease itself. When he 
glanced at her again, she had gathered her cloak round her and was standing 
by the picture, from which she seemed loath to remove her eyes.
"You gave him great happiness," he suggested gently, "in the only manner in 
which it was possible. Remember only that. He must in any case have died."
He imagined that she hardly heard him, absorbed in the desolation of her 
own thought; and when she turned to him again, quite ready for departure 
now, he saw by the hard light in her eyes that she had recurred to her 
husband, to the irreparable gulf which must henceforth divide them.
"I can't go back to him," she whispered, as if she communed with herself. 
"I hate him; yes, I hate him, with my whole soul. He has lied to me too 
much; he has made me do such a cruel wrong. There are things which one 
can't forgive. Ah, no! it's not possible."
Oswyn viewed her compassionately, while a somewhat bitter smile played 
about his mouth.
"No, you will go back, Mrs. Lightmark! Forgive me." he added, raising his 
hand, interrupting her, as she seemed on the point of speech. "I don't want 
to intrude on you - on your thoughts, with advice or consolation. They are 
articles I don't deal in. Only I will tell you - I who know - that in 
revolt also there is vanity. You are bruised and broken and disillusioned, 
and you want to hide away from the world and escape into yourself, or from 
yourself; it's all the same. Ah, Mrs. Lightmark, believe me, in life that 
is not possible, or where it is most possible, is in a crowd. Go back to 
your guests, I know, you see, whence you come; take up your part in the 
play, the masque; be ready with your cues. It's all masks and dominoes; 
what does the form or colour of it matter? Underneath it all you are 
yourself, with your beautiful sorrow, your memories, your transcendent 
happiness - nothing can touch that; what does it matter?"
"Happiness!" she ejaculated, rather in wonder than in scorn, for in spite 
of her great weariness she had been struck by the genuine accent struggling 
through his half ironical speech.
"Most happy," he said, with a deep inhalation. "Haven't you an ideal which 
life, with its cruelties, its grossness, can never touch?"
Then he added quickly, in words of Philip Rainham, which had flashed with 
sudden appositeness across his mind:
"Your misery has its compensation; you have been wronged, but you have also 
been loved."
"Ah, my friend!" she cried, turning toward the picture with a new and more 
beautiful illumination in her eyes, "was it for this that you did it?"
Oswyn said nothing, and Eve moved towards the door, discovering for the 
first time, on her way, the sleeping child. She stopped for a moment, and 
the other watched her with breathless curiosity, uncertain how far her 
knowledge might extend.
And as she stood there, wondering, a great wave of colour suffused her 
white face; the next moment she was gone, but in the light of that pure 
blush Oswyn seemed to have discovered that her tragical enlightenment was 
complete.
When she turned once more into the street, she had already set herself 
gravely, with a strange and factitious composure, to face her life. It 
stretched itself out before her like a great, gray plain, the arid 
desolation of the road being rendered only more terrible by the flowers 
with which it would be strown. For suddenly, while Oswyn had been speaking, 
she had recognised that after all she would go back; the other course had 
been merely the first bitter cry, half hysterical, of her grief.
By her husband's side, with the semblance of amity between them still, 
utterly apart and estranged as they must in reality henceforth perpetually 
be, it seemed to her that she could none the less religiously cherish the 
memory of her friend because she would turn a smiling mask to the world's 
indifference, wearing mourning in her heart. And deeply as she had 
suffered, in the midst of her remorse she could still remind herself that 
in the last half hour she had gained more than she had lost; that life, 
however tedious it might be, was in a manner consecrated by this great 
devotion, which death had embalmed, to be a light to her in lonely places 
and dark hours, a perpetual after-thought against the cynicism or despair 
to which her imitation of happiness might conduce.
The mask of a smile, and mourning in her heart! Yes, it was in some such 
phrase as that that life which began then for her must be expressed - for 
her, and perhaps, she reflected sadly, for others, for many, the justest 
and the best.
And in the meantime she would go back to her dancers, resume once more her 
well worn role of the brilliant and efficient hostess. She wondered if it 
would be difficult to account for herself, to explain an absence so 
unprecedented, if, as was doubtless the case, her figure had been missed. 
But the next moment she smiled a trifle bitterly, for she had reminded 
herself of her husband's proved facility of prevarication, which she felt 
certain would already have been usefully employed.