‘Mademoiselle Dahlia’

Part I

Chapter I

“Oh, shut up singing hymns, Delia!”—the young voice came shrilly through the scream of the wind; “you make me quite sick with it!” Timothy Browne stooped to the beach and aimed a well-directed stone at his sister.

“I can’t help it!” Delia was screaming it back. “It makes me, somehow. Just look at the waves, Timothy. Shut up throwing stones—I’ll throw them back if you don’t. ‘Praise my soul, the King of Heaven,’” Delia was singing again, her face turned to the waves, her short, atrociously cut hair streaming unevenly out round her face.

“Hopeless!” Timothy Browne shrugged his slender shoulders disgustedly, and started to walk as quickly as he could in the opposite direction. Biarritz was full; it was the English season, and all the English people from the Medina Hotel were dotted over the golf links. His feet made great uneven, splodgy footmarks in the sand as he hurried. Disgusting to have them noticing Delia howling about by the edge of the sea; that sort of thing mattered—fearfully it mattered. Delia never seemed to think that it did matter, but it did. Timothy thought furiously as he hauled each young foot in turn out of the yielding sand, his sensitive, flushing face turned to the pine woods that fringed the shore. That was the worst of girls; they were always making you conspicuous.

They were. Jim Chester was thinking the same thing, only rather more mildly, as he walked over the short, springy turf under the crumbly cliff. The girl beside him was boring him acutely. Most of the girls at the Medina were so nice; well-bred and well-dressed, and remaining attached to the sides of equally well-bred mothers and fathers. But this girl seemed to be at a loose end, and she dragged out horrid things like powder-puffs and lipsticks at odd moments. She had found Jim sitting alone in the lounge at the Medina, and on the pretext of wanting the Daily Mail that was lying on a table beside him, had scraped up acquaintance with him.

“They make you pay ten francs for walking round the links at Cannes.” Maude Pritchard was getting a little breathless. In between his strokes, Major Chester walked so very fast.

“What a good plan!” Jim Chester was turning to take another club from his golf-bag, and he spoke a little sardonically.

“Why? Do you think so?” Maude Pritchard suddenly felt awkwardly abashed. She had taken a violent fancy to the tall, soldierly man. Her rather common but extremely kindly mother had encouraged it. She herself was confined to her room with a heavy cold, and the thought of her Maude all alone among all those smart people had depressed her. But now she had got to know one of them—all off her own bat, too. “Trust my Maude to fall on her feet,” she had thought, lying sniffing dejectedly in her extremely comfortable suite of rooms. And then the wonderful selflessness of real mother-love had risen up and made her resolve to stay in bed longer than she need. “I’m not right,” she had suddenly thought, stretching out a fat, ringed hand to take her Mackenzie’s smelling-bottle from the little table by her side. How she was not right she did not know, but she knew that she wasn’t. Maude made her feel it sometimes, too. Little things—little glances. Mrs. Pritchard suddenly sniffed more fiercely than usual as she sank back on the pillow and started to uncork the smelling-bottle. She would spoil her Maude’s chances if she hung about by her side. But it seemed hard, when you only had one daughter. However—Mrs. Pritchard took long inhaling breaths of the smelling-bottle and thought comfortingly of the extremely good lunch that would soon be brought to her bedside. Such a little bit as they give you in the early morning, too, she thought, thinking gloomily of the beautiful rolls and coffee that the smart garçon whisked in and out of her room with at eight o’clock in the morning.

But Maude, on the links, looked a little uncomfortably at the man by her side. She had suggested walking round the links with him that morning, because she knew that he was going alone; the man he was generally with was going to St. Jean de Luz with a party. But perhaps it hadn’t been right to suggest it. But then, how would she have been able to go with him? He wouldn’t ever have suggested it. Maude looked at him again, uncomfortably this time. “Why do you think it a good plan?” she asked again.

But by this time Jim had recollected his extremely good manners, and he spoke pleasantly enough. “Because it keeps unnecessary people off the links,” he said. “Jove, I’ve nearly holed down! Hooray!” and he started to walk quicker than ever over the short turf.

“I think perhaps I’d better go back.” Maude was following him, panting a little. She was hungry, too; there wasn’t much in a couple of rolls and five tiny scrapey bits of butter to keep you going until half-past twelve, either, she thought. “See you later,” she said, and she tried to smile airily. “Ta, ta!” and Maude turned, her short well-pleated skirt showing a pair of extremely well-shaped and smartly stockinged legs.

“Good heavens!” Hurriedly dragging off his cap, Jim turned and watched her go. What had possessed her to hang on to him, he wondered, as he went on again. Surely he was not in the least her type. She would like—she would like—well, what would she like? Something that wore a frock-coat and top-hat on Sundays, he concluded, thinking vaguely of his youth—at least, if there were any people like that left. He shut up his clubs in his locker and went quietly up the steep path that led on to the road that curled round the cliff and eventually deposited you at the Medina. But at the top he paused, and almost unconsciously taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his hair and stared out over the Atlantic. Exquisitely beautiful. He watched one great wave swirl ponderously over a jutting rock and then recede whitely and brokenly to curl itself round a jagged edge of cliff. Surely there was nothing so beautiful in the world as the sea, he thought, standing a moment before putting on his cap again and turning to walk up to the hotel.

Chapter II

The Villa Bliss was not in the least like its name. Delia Browne thought so again as she arrived at it about half an hour after her brother. It stood in a long, narrow front garden, and had queerly lopped plane-trees on both sides of it. It was the shape of the wooden chalets that you see in French shops, and had a pointed roof tiled with what looked like drainpipes cut in half. The narrow windows of it had wooden shutters to them which turned back outside against the walls. It had glass windows as well; the shutters were only to keep out wind in the winter and the fierce sun in the summer, but they gave the house a queer, blinking look, so Delia always thought. The one redeeming feature of the whole thing, and this, of course, only at this time of year, was a beautiful mimosa-tree. It stood, glorifying the whole place with its cascades of feathery yellow flowers and making the whole front garden fragrant with its scent. The lawn was speckled with the tiny golden blooms. Delia picked up a handful of them and thrust her nose appreciatively into their midst.

“Come on, it’s time for déjeuner.” Timothy suddenly put his rather large head out of one of the lower windows and spoke fluently in French. “Maria’s started to rave; she says the omelette will be spoilt.”

“Omelette—cheers!” Delia took a large spreading step that landed her in the narrow hall, and dragging off her shabby straw hat, tossed it up on to a peg. “But if you say I make you feel sick when I sing hymns, Timothy, I tell you that you make me feel sick when you will talk French. Can’t you talk English, boy? Try!” Delia gave an amiable smile at her brother.

“Too hard.” Timothy’s intelligent head, far too large for his body, was nodding. He had a dancing look about his face; Delia often wondered what it was. He always reminded her, only she did not tell him so for fear of hurting his feelings, of the Master Tape the Tailor’s Son in the game of Happy Families. His hair came squarely down over his eyes like that young person’s. He had that slightly detached, desolate look that made you want to pet him up and love him. That was why her mother and Maria adored him so, thought Delia, generously glad that it should be so. They did not really know how fearfully well able to take care of himself Timothy was. But he was so frightfully nice with it all, fearfully understanding.

“Petkins!” Delia grinned affectionately as she caught hold of his shabby sleeve.

“Shut up, miss”—Timothy spoke disgustedly in French—“and come on: you know what Maria is when she’s really roused. And she says mother has a headache too.”

Timothy was leading the way into the little salle à manger, where a square table laid for a meal stood in the middle of the floor. It was about the only thing in the room, except for four wooden chairs. The floor was bare and beautifully pale with constant scrubbing, and the four legs of the table were pale also with scrubbing. The cloth on the table was spotlessly clean, although coarse in texture, and it was of the pattern used in simple French households—blue and red squares on a pale cream canvas-like background. The spoons and forks and the black-handled knives were good of their kind: they were about the only things that Mrs. Browne had been able to save from the wreck of her home in India.

She had left it, with her children, about five years before. Colonel Browne, a delightful, hopelessly unpractical man, had been so deeply in debt when his retirement was due that he had been obliged to remain in the country. They had lived at Kotagiri, a tiny hill-station in the Nilgiris, and there they had been able to live fairly decently on what was left of Colonel Browne’s pension after the heavy percentage had been deducted to pay his debts. But he had died, quite suddenly, from a chill contracted after influenza, and the kindly residents, aided by a few more wealthy planters, had subscribed the necessary amount to send Mrs. Browne and her children to England. “It’s simply awful to see them running about in the compound like natives.” The English Chaplain was deeply concerned about the happy-go-lucky family, and breathed more freely when he had shepherded them all on to the luxurious liner that called at Colombo and mercifully took second-class passengers at a largely reduced rate.

But they had not got to England after all. With the dreadful ill-luck that seemed to dog poor ineffectual Mrs. Browne, Timothy contracted chicken-pox on the voyage and was landed with his mother and sister at Marseilles. But it turned out a godsend in the long run. Maria, a kindly elderly wardmaid in the hospital to which Timothy was conveyed, suddenly seemed to flood out all her starved maternity on to the sick boy. She sought out Mrs. Browne in her miserable lodgings on the third floor of an apartment house in the Rue St.-Honoré.

“I lof heem”—Maria knew a little English and gave vent to it excitedly.

“What does she say, dear?” Mrs. Browne spoke helplessly. This was all being so dreadfully unusual. These awful lodgings and funny flat lumps of sugar, and no handles to the chests of drawers. Only a key to the top drawer and that generally stuck so that you had to haul out the others with a button-hook.

“She says she loves Timothy. She’s like the stewardess on the Erin; she cried when she said good-bye to him.” Delia was entertained and intrigued with all the novelty of things. She had been hanging out of the window when Maria had been announced. The street was so far below, and everything tore along on the wrong side of the road, and the policemen wore capes.

“But she can’t have come round to say that, dear.” Mrs. Browne was looking vaguely from one to the other. “Find out what she wants, Delia; perhaps Timothy is worse. Oh dear!”—and Mrs. Browne began to cry.

So Delia, eleven years old and with all the competence that her mother lacked, soon found out what Maria had come to say. The old woman of fifty-five adored Timothy and could not be separated from him. She would go to England as his nurse.

“But we can’t afford it, Delia.” Mrs. Browne gazed more helplessly than ever at her child. But she stopped crying; Timothy was the apple of her eye, and this tribute to his charm delighted her.

And this was the beginning of endless discussions. Eventually the English Consul was sought out and the whole plan laid before him. Maria wanted Mrs. Browne and her two children to go back to Biarritz with her and share her little home. In return for the home and her own services, Mrs. Browne should finance the whole concern. “I am only a servant and wish to remain so”; with dignity Maria made this clear to the Consul, who was able to discuss the whole plan with her in French as good as Maria’s own. And eventually Maria had her way. The only relatives in England who were communicated with showed the most painful eagerness to keep Mrs. Browne where she was. The return of this practically destitute family would mean constant disbursements for the children’s education.

“In France they will learn to speak French like natives.” Mrs. Graves, in her comfortable flat in Hill Street, gave vent to this sentiment with satisfaction.

“Yes, but it won’t help the boy to earn a living.” Mr. Graves, being a man, felt a certain amount of responsibility for his youngest sister. Certainly he had helped old Browne a good deal in the past, and it had always gone the same way. But, still—— However, he wrote a certain number of letters and sent the English Consul a draft on the Marseilles branch of Lloyds, and then comfortably forgot all about his sister and her children. As his wife so wisely said, both were young yet; plenty of time to think about them presently.

And that was five years ago. And in the Villa Bliss Delia and Timothy had grown up like young saplings. Both had completed their course at the École Secondaire. Both spoke French like natives, and Timothy had the most beautiful soprano voice that he never let anyone hear. It was just beginning to show signs of breaking, and showed promise also of something even more beautiful to come. But that even Delia did not know, for Timothy, with the strange prescience of the artist, was beginning to cherish his voice. It was golden and flawless—even he knew that, although he did not know how he knew it.

Chapter III

Mrs. Browne was feeble, as so often is the case when the children of the feeble mother are clever. But it was not the sort of feebleness that really mattered, for it only aroused in those who came in contact with it the longing to protect. It did so very specially with her two children, so that when the vegetable soup and the omelette had been dispatched and there was obviously nothing else to follow, both being still ravenous, they took the long stick-like loaf of crackly, crusty bread and cut pieces off it for themselves and gnawed them, Timothy every now and then dipping his in his café au lait and sucking it discreetly. Both were still ravenous, but both would have died rather than let their mother know it.

“Why do you do that, Timothy?” Delia had been watching her brother for a moment or two. She herself was biting her hard bread with gusto, and crunching it up with sharp, even teeth.

“One of my teeth hurts,” said Timothy, and he flushed painfully. “It won’t hurt for long; it gets fits of it,” he added apologetically. “Shut up asking questions.” He signed graphically across the table.

“Oh, my darling, have you got toothache?” Mrs. Browne withdrew her eyes from the sunny oval of the window, through which the mimosa-tree showed gloriously, and rested them anxiously on her son. Her thoughts had been very far away: she had been wondering, with a ferocity very unusual with her, how on earth they were going to manage until the next instalment of her pension was due. An attack of influenza had brought in its train a doctor’s bill, and their very slender income was practically exhausted.

“No, mother.” Timothy spoke in French, and kicked his sister violently under the table.

“You have.” Delia’s eyes filled with anxious tears as she started to hack another piece of bread off the rapidly shortening loaf. That was why Timothy was getting that funny bulgy look about his head; he didn’t have enough to eat, and it made him have toothache and sometimes a headache. She herself wasn’t like that; she often was awfully hungry, but then Maria would give her a chunk of the country cheese that old Madame Morvé made, and she would gnaw at that until she was satisfied. But Timothy was not like that; he was more fastidious, and, although he always disclaimed hunger, and went politely away after a meal was finished, Delia knew somehow that he was hungry. He would stand staring up at the mimosa-tree and whistling, and then wander off down to the beach; but he would always be back exactly at tea-time. And if there was not any butter sometimes, his eyes would fill with tears. And lately there had hardly ever been butter, and Delia was beginning to get a sort of tortured feeling that Timothy must have it, even if she stole it.

After she had cleared away the simple meal and folded the stripy tablecloth, and swept up the crumbs with the doll’s dustpan and brush that she had had in her stocking many years before, she crossed the uneven-bricked hall to seek out old Maria. Maria would tell her how the land lay, and how it was that rations were beginning to get short. They had been short before, but never quite so short as this.

Maria, in her spotless cap and grey-and-white striped dress, was washing up ferociously. She had a wrinkly brown face and her eyes were grey, like her dress—eyes full of a divine kindliness. She herself had only had the hard bread and the thin coffee for her déjeuner. But she would have starved for the gentle widow and her two children. Besides, in another three weeks the joyful strip of paper would arrive from London, and Mrs. Browne would make a tremulous journey by tram to the Biarritz Branch of Lloyds Bank. And there would be brioches for petit déjeuner, instead of the hard bread. And Timothy could put on his butter in lumps, as he loved to do, and there would be a round sugary cake for tea—at any rate at first. But now, they were the jours maigres, thought Maria with melancholy. But there would be an end to them, as there always was an end to anything unpleasant.

But this time it was rather more difficult to reply to Delia’s questionings with the selfless optimism that made Maria such a priceless asset in any household. She was insufficiently nourished herself, and that made her outlook gloomy. She tipped up the pulp washing-up bowl and straightened herself with difficulty. “The money is all finished, Mademoiselle Delia,” she said gloomily. “It will come again, but not yet. Till that time we must manage.”

“We can’t”—Delia’s French was abrupt and emphatic. “Maria, Timothy has had toothache, and the other day he had a headache. He is beginning to get that funny pale look that the doctor said he mustn’t have. We must have proper food.” Delia began to cry, excitedly and nervously. Suddenly the whole weight of the world seemed to be resting on her shoulders. She was sixteen and Timothy was only fourteen and a half. She must do something. Suddenly, too, their position loomed dreadfully and unnaturally in front of her. Why shouldn’t she go to one of the hotels and ask for bits of what was left, like the Manaton family did? For about fifty centimes they got lovely ends of creamy puddings, and sometimes bits of meat—veal, and rissoles made of chicken. That would keep them going for ages. But because they were supposed to be better bred and in a different position to the working-class Manatons, whose father mended shoes when there were any to be mended, they had to go hungry. It was wrong! Delia stared fiercely through a blur of tears.

“The petite must not weep.” Old Maria had wiped her hands on a spotless tea-cloth, and was coming to sit down by Delia. The open scullery window gave on to a tiny little lawn and its scent of the three mimosa-trees in the next-door garden was blowing fragrantly in. “See what the old Maria has prepared for the baba’s tea. It was from the old Jean that the money came. ‘Mend my best coat, Maria, and I will reward thee’—so he spoke as he went to mow the lawn at Monsieur le Curé’s. And here is the result”—and Maria, bursting with pride, displayed a plateful of new and crumbly croissons and a large piece of butter.

“Oh!” Delia could only fling her arms round the old woman and grope hysterically for her handkerchief. Butter! and Timothy loved it so. But it was Maria’s money; it wasn’t right that she should feed them, however heavenly it might be to get it unexpectedly like this. She must do something herself—she, Delia. But how? She detached herself from the old woman’s tender grasp, shaking her hair out of her eyes.

“I’m going to earn some money,” she said, speaking in English. “I must; I simply will.”

“You cannot: it would not be fit.” Maria had wiped her own wet eyes and was beginning to collect the things for scrubbing the little bricked kitchen. “All will be well in three weeks or so, and meanwhile old Maria will arrange.”

“You arranging means taking more of your savings out of the bank, Maria, and I simply cannot stand it.” Delia was still speaking in English because she knew that Maria could understand it, although she could not speak it herself. “It’s a ghastly way to live, and somehow, now I’m getting older I seem to feel it more. You don’t get anything out of us, and yet you spend your money on us. It’s all the wrong way round.” Delia’s soft grey eyes were beginning to fill with tears again.

“It is the way I wish,” said Maria, and she said it with simplicity and sweetness. “I have you here—in my soul. It is my happiness to work for you. And now, Mademoiselle Delia, you must go away. I have work to do—much work. Shoo!” Maria made a little playful driving gesture with her coarse apron.

Delia, laughing, skipped in her soft felt slippers across the kitchen, shutting the door of it carefully behind her. And then she stood in the little hall wondering. Should she go to her mother and really talk things seriously over with her? Things could not go on like this; it was suddenly borne in on her that they couldn’t. Somehow, up to the present, life at the Villa Bliss had seemed more like a game than anything else. First, the time at school, sitting on benches with noisy little French children with hair like mouse’s fur. Rushing home at twelve o’clock for a meal, and after eating it with relish rushing back to school again. Learning all their lessons in French—fearfully difficult while the Hindustani of their earlier days was fresh in their minds, but much easier afterwards. Always keeping together, she and Timothy, because the little French children never really cared for them, although they were dressed in the same clothes; funny, shapeless print frocks for Delia, and a beret and long knickerbockers for Timothy. And in the winter, wooden sabots which they kicked off when they got inside the school doors, sitting and swinging bare feet—oh, the cold of them! Delia remembered it with a shiver even now. Then the leaving of school and the tremendous joy and freedom of the long, careless days, spent principally on the beach below the golf links or in the pine woods that ran along by the edge of the tram-lines. In the season they would sit on the bank that sloped down to the lines and watch the trams full of English and French people going to St. Jean de Luz or Bayonne. In the summer the trams would be full of fat Spanish people, very grandly dressed, and staring out of the windows with heavy unwinking eyes. This was all the most gorgeous fun and very entertaining. But, somehow, lately Delia had begun to get the feeling that it couldn’t go on. Life wasn’t like that: you had to do things, be something.

Chapter IV

But what? Delia was wondering it with renewed force as, after a very good tea, she wandered down to the sands and sat in a sheltered corner of the dunes, her hat pulled down closely over her ears. The sight of Timothy at tea had made her feel, with a deadly and fierce certainty, that if she killed herself she was going to see that he always had enough to eat. He had wandered into the house rather vaguely just before four o’clock, and had not said anything about tea; but Delia, who was standing underneath the mimosa-tree with a fragrant bough of it dragged down to her face, had watched him through the open window. His rather pointed eyebrows had lifted as he gave one great step towards the table, and when he had seen the croissons and the butter he had passed his hand over his mouth, and then looked again to see if it was really true. But it was; and when, healthily replete, he had pushed his chair back from the table and chuckled in his old humorous way, with his eyes dancing, Delia had felt that an awful cloud was lifted from her heart. Timothy was going to be properly fed, even if she had to kill herself so that there was one less in the family to feed.

As she sat staring out to sea, the idea came to her. It came to her in a flash as a golf-ball dropped close to her feet and Mimi Manaton came tearing in her felt slippers, with the bag of golf-clubs bumping on her back, to locate it. She would be a caddy; nearly all the girls and boys in the tumbledown villas close to theirs were caddies, and they made a great deal of money. Biarritz was a place where people played golf all the year round. Why had she never thought of it before? Delia got on to her feet with a funny, dazed feeling in her brain. Why, she could make heaps of money. Regular money, too. You worked under a caddy-master and had a fixed rate of pay. She would settle it at once, that instant. Maria knew Jacques Poiret, the caddy-master; she would fix it up for her. Delia started to tear over the dunes in the direction of her home. Her heelless felt slippers, bright green, flashed like emeralds as she ran. Everyone in France wore felt slippers unless they were dressed up to go out, and Delia had chosen a green pair, when, a few weeks before, the delirious moment had arrived to have new ones. Delia had waked in a transport of excitement on that great morning, new things were such rare occurrences in the Villa Bliss. The Bonheur de Biarritz had seemed like an enchanted castle when she walked into it with her ten-franc note clutched damply in her hand. And now she had that same feeling in her head again—like soda-water, boiling and fizzing to get out.

But Maria supplied the damping note. She was dubious— not only dubious, but almost quelling.

“Your mamma!”—she spoke in excited French, ceasing from her operations by the stove and turning a distressed and wrinkled face on Delia. “It is the position. You are the child of gentlepeople; you must refrain and bear in patience what the good God has sent you. For the Manatons it is another matter altogether. They are bourgeois, like myself, born to work,” and Maria turned again to her stirring.

“They aren’t!” Delia was crimson in her eagerness. “That’s just where gentlepeople are so futile, Maria. They stew in hopeless misery just because they’re too proud to do ordinary simple things that bring in money. I’m not going to be: you’ve got to help me, Maria.” Delia backed from against the rough wooden door and advanced across the kitchen.

“How ‘stew’?” Maria spoke in hopeless French. She never could understand how Delia had kept up the fluency of her English. She could understand it, but not when Delia used odd words like this. She looked up, distressed again, from her cooking.

“‘Stew’ means grovelling about in shallows and miseries when you ought to get out of them and do something definite.” Delia’s eyes were suddenly shining. Her mind fled back to the English Chaplain at Kotagiri: he was always trying to stir the people up like that, quoting wonderful thundering passages out of poets, even at the afternoon children’s service—a service where Timothy had permanently disgraced himself one Sunday by thrusting up a thin arm at the question, “Which of you little boys has a Bible at your home?” and saying, “We haven’t!” How her father had laughed at that!—the Chaplain had told it him at the Club the next day—roared, and chaffed Timothy about it until he cried; telling people when they dropped in to have a drink. “What do you think of that, eh, Wilton? Regular heathen—what?” until Mrs. Browne had asked her husband not to say any more about it. “It sounds so funny, dear, when you say it like that. We have Bibles in the house—two, if I remember rightly,” and Colonel Browne had nodded and laughed good-temperedly, and had then gone out to the Club and had not come back until very late. Too late for dinner, remembered Delia vaguely; her mother had had to send to the servants’ quarters to fetch Francis, the Goanese butler, to help her father to take off his boots.

But that was many years ago. And now Delia confronted the old servant with shining eyes.

“The moment has arrived, Maria,” she said; “I am going to do something. Go now and tell Jacques that I am going to be a caddy, and that if he doesn’t say I can, I shall tell people that he really knows where half the golf-balls fall, but that he tells the boy caddies that they aren’t to say, because he likes to go out after dark and collect them and sell them again as repaints for five francs.”

And whether that threat, or whether Maria’s inner consciousness that things were very bad financially at the Villa Bliss and that something must be done or the whole thing would go to pieces, settled it, Delia never knew. But Maria came back after about twenty minutes and said that the matter was arranged.

“But it will kill your mamma,” she said, and she let two or three tears drop into the lentil broth as she took the wooden spoon from Delia.

“She won’t know.” Delia said the words on a high, excited breath as she turned and stared out of the kitchen window. The mimosa-tree in the next garden, with the setting sun shining through it—how entrancing, how exquisitely beautiful it looked!

Chapter V

But Timothy took it dreadfully hardly when Delia, bursting with excitement, mooted the great scheme to him. “I say, you simply can’t.” His dancing eyebrows drew downwards.

“Of course I can.” Delia had flown excitedly down to the beach to tell him. She had found him there, his eager face turned to the Atlantic. He had been singing, Delia could tell that by the queer exalted look in his eyes. But he had stopped directly she had come within hearing. He seemed to know by instinct that she was there, turning the moment she had come to the end of the dune that fringed the sandy beach and looking at her with his fair hair blowing back into his eyes, and then turning unconcernedly back again. “Of course I can.” She said it again, excitedly this time.

“I ought to.” Timothy’s eyes filled with tears and he stared out to sea.

“You! Why, you’re years younger than me! Pah!” Delia flung a large stone recklessly in front of her. “Those great golf-bags thumping about on your back, you’d die after the first round. Besides, these English people are awfully nice to women; so are the Americans. You’ve only got to look a little dying, and if the course isn’t crowded they let you rest. ‘Mais oui, un peu fatigué, monsieur.’” Delia hunched her shoulders and spoke with her small head a little on one side. “Why, Mimi Manaton told Maria that one day, when she was beginning la grippe and nearly fainted, an Englishman from the Medina carried her all the way to the Club-house. Pooh! it’s child’s play.” Delia spoke sturdily, shooting a side-glance meanwhile at her brother.

“I’m the boy; I ought to.” Timothy spoke heavily, winking once or twice.

“You can’t—it would drive me mad with worry to think that you were doing it. Timothy, you’ve got to get fat and strong to save your voice; you know it’s wonderful. I don’t talk about it, because you don’t like it, but you know it is. One day it’s going to keep us all. Don’t blight my efforts to make you fat.” Delia’s voice suddenly broke. Suddenly the whole weight of the world seemed on her shoulders. What was going to become of them? Their mother was so useless in making any arrangements or grappling. She, Delia, must do it. But if Timothy—— Delia broke down completely and began to cry.

“Good heavens, don’t!” Timothy suddenly spoke in English and in a voice far beyond his years. “Delia, stop it! I’ll go in for any mortal thing, only don’t——” His large pale face was working and quivering.

“All right!” Delia made hurried dashes at her face with a handkerchief far from clean. “You see, Timothy,” she said, stuffing it hastily into her pocket, “things have come to a crisis with us. We now actually don’t have enough to eat. That’s all very well for a day or two, but it can’t go on indefinitely. It will tell on Maria, too, if it goes on, and Maria is our only hope. We actually live in her house, you see, and use her furniture. If she were to die, some awful relation of hers would swoop down on it and turn us out. She always says that she will make a will and leave it to us, but she won’t. Those sort of people never make wills—they think they’re going to die if they do. So you see Maria must be kept well and active at any cost.”

“We had a nice tea,” said Timothy, the cloud lifting a little from his brow.

“Yes, but Maria paid for it. Old Jacques gave her something for mending his coat. Well, you know——” Delia paused.

“Yes, I see; it can’t be done.” Timothy still spoke in English, and still with an odd maturity. When did he practise his English? thought Delia wonderingly. Probably when he sang, only he would loathe to be asked, so she would not ask him. Anyhow, she was awfully glad that he could still speak it without an accent. “Tim, you do agree with me,” she said, and she moved a little closer to her brother.

“Yes, I do; only it’s ghastly.” Timothy was staring fixedly at the sea, and he spoke with an effort. “Only if any of those boys—great lumping brutes—— Delia, don’t let them be rude to you.” Timothy suddenly turned and flung himself at his sister. “If they are, I’ll—I’ll smash their heads in!” He was clinging to her, weeping.

“They won’t.” Delia strained him to her heart with a sudden passion of maternity in her wide, childish grey eyes. “If they are, I’ll call you, Timothy, that instant. You’ll settle them.” Delia was staring up at the lighthouse, and again her mind fled back to the English Chaplain in Kotagiri. It was a little story he had told them at a children’s service of a missionary in the East End of London visiting the slums and meeting a little girl labouring along with a baby much too heavy for her in her arms. “Why, my little girl, that baby is much too heavy for you to carry,” he had said kindly to her.

“Oh no, sir; that’s my brother.” The little girl had been quite surprised. And Delia suddenly knew why she had been. Of course, your brother was like nothing else. You got that bursting feeling in your soul when you thought about him being hungry or wretched or anything else. He had to be happy at any cost, whatever happened to you.

“Timothy, they won’t be rude to me; besides, if they are. I’ve always got you to back me up.” Delia was holding her brother a little away from her and looking anxiously down into his eyes. Such nice dancing eyes, generally. They had got to be it again.

And they were—almost at once. Timothy was suddenly put out at having cried. “It’s this beastly spray”—he was blowing his minute nose with a handkerchief even more dreadfully black than Delia’s.

“Yes, I know; isn’t it awful? it makes me feel like that too.” Delia drew her hand across her face with a total disregard of appearances. Timothy was all right again; that was all that mattered. And she herself was going to do something to lift the awful load of depression from the Villa Bliss. Why was it that food mattered so awfully? she thought as she and Timothy walked home—walked with an easy friendliness. If you were hungry, every thing was ghastly; if you weren’t, everything was all right, she thought. She dipped the crusty bread into the thin soup that night at supper feeling more cheerful than she had done for some weeks. But it was earthy to be like that; Delia was more and more sure of it as in her funny hard bed that night she drew the great humpy duvet up to her shoulders and tried not to feel where the sheet was so short that you could feel the mattress with your feet. Earthy, when there was so much that was heavenly, thought Delia, lying with her wide, intelligent eyes and staring out at the pencilled featheriness of the mimosa-tree showing black against the moon instead of yellow. Earthy, when all the things that really mattered were—— And having got as far as this, Delia slept. Lying looking pathetically helpless under the great heap of feathers, one sensitive little brown hand hanging out over the edge of the bed, the pointed fingers of it a little curled up.

Chapter VI

Yes, all the things that really mattered were things that you couldn’t take hold of. Delia was more and more certain of it, as when the next morning arrived she washed and dressed in a fever of excitement. Feelings were what counted, she thought, wielding skilful scissors over her short, wavy hair; it must be shorter, Delia had decided; then she could go out without a hat. Her hat was too disreputable even to be a caddy in—at least her everyday hat was. There was another hat, minute and made of felt. Maria had bought it one day second-hand from one of the chambermaids at the Medina, but that was kept for state occasions. Yes, feelings. Delia was quivering with all sorts of new ones as she stepped into her short stockinette skirt and dragged it up high above her waist, so that it should not come down below the very short blazer that Maria had also bought second-hand. Gorgeous feelings like she was having now—feelings of actually being able to do something, be something, be of some use, instead of only staying at home and eating up food that you couldn’t afford to pay for and therefore couldn’t have. Delia, incoherent with excitement, thought disconnectedly and without sequence.

And it was awfully difficult not to show her excitement at breakfast. They all had their petit déjeuner together in the bare sun-flooded little salle à manger. A huge stick-like loaf and pale café au lait were on the checked tablecloth; all cut bits off the loaf and dipped them in the coffee. “To-morning morning he shall have butter, and perhaps the next day he shall go to the dentist,” thought Delia, stooping over her thick cup and watching over the edge of it how Timothy dodged the soaking bread round his mouth to find an easy place to bite it.

“Are you going out so soon, dear?” The simple meal over, Mrs. Browne was drifting across the hall into the kitchen.

Somehow her two energetic children seemed to leave her gasping and helpless. They were so placidly certain of what they were going to do, she somehow never quite knew.

“Yes, mother; I shall be back to déjeuner.” Delia was excitedly struggling with one of her green felt slippers. The seam of it had come unsewn at the back, and she was standing with one stockinged foot on a little wooden stool, wielding a darning-needle torn from the protesting Maria. “The cotton in it is brown,” the old woman had protested, and tried to wrench it back again.

“Never mind—c’est plus gai, comme ça!” Delia had snatched at it and rushed away into the hall. And now she stood balancing and pulling her shoe on again. This was a day of days. “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven,” she was singing fiercely as she dashed into the kitchen again. “Good-bye, Maria; good-bye, mother. Timothy, see you at half-past twelve.” Delia was out at the narrow front-door and tearing down the uneven-bricked path to the gate.

“Where is she going so early, Maria; do you know?” Mrs. Browne had sunk down into the hard wooden chair and was looking at the old Frenchwoman as she stood with her wrinkled hands rolled up in her apron.

“No, madame.” Maria spoke with decision. “She is doubtless going to the Rocher de Vierge to see the waves,” she said; “they would be very beautiful to-day, and Monsieur Timothy is doubtless going with her.” Maria spoke encouragingly: everyone spoke encouragingly to Mrs. Browne, she looked in such hopeless need of it.

“Oh yes, perhaps they are!” Mrs. Browne smiled and settled herself a little more comfortably in her chair. She would have a little chat with her dear faithful Maria before she started on her day’s round of duties. For, in her rather ineffectual way, Mrs. Browne did a good deal in the house. There were beds to be made, rooms to be dusted, brick floors to be swept. Maria could not do it all, although she was too wonderful.

Meanwhile, Delia tore down to the golf-house, singing all the way to give her confidence. For now that the thing was actually on her she felt more afraid. Jacques, the caddy-master, was a big, hulking boy. Supposing he was rude, as Timothy had thought he might be, how would she be able to defend herself against him? She wouldn’t be able to. But he wasn’t. Maria was an old resident of Biarritz and much respected in the tiny corner of it in which the Villa Bliss was situated. It was called Crépuscule, the tiny corner in which all the villas were old and tumbledown. And she had impressed Jacques with the way she had declaimed the nobility of Delia’s motives. “It is grand—it is magnifique!” Maria had stamped about the Poirets’ little bricked kitchen the day before, gesticulating with her old hands. “She sees the child Timothy in need of more nourishment, and she has said that she will provide it. And it is to you, my friend, to make it easy for her.”

So Jacques for once in his rather bovine life was stirred to generosity of spirit. Besides, the boys of Biarritz were devils and not to be depended upon. Girl caddies were far better. “Stand here by me,” he called brusquely to Delia when she arrived, breathless and scarlet with mingled excitement and apprehension. “And when the gentlemen arrive from the Medina I will allot you to one of them.”

And that was how Jim Chester first saw Delia. And it was that first impression of her that remained with him all his life. The tremblingly eager Delia, all out for what she wanted at the moment—no subterfuge. All one passionate desire to be and to do what at the moment was required of her. And he lunged cheerfully towards her as Jacques rather sheepishly indicated her as his caddy for the day.

“She’s too small.” Jim had never got quite over his dislike of seeing a female thing labouring along under his golf-clubs. But, as he had to admit to himself, the “female thing” did it much better than the male.

“But she is strong.” Jacques felt his position in danger of question and he spoke sturdily.

“But is she?” Jim turned to the man beside him and spoke in English. “It’s like a terrier asking to be taken for a walk,” he said. “Look at its eyes!”

“Hmn——” Colonel Robins was not interested. He wanted to get on with his game. Golf was his one passion: women, or anything connected with them, a bore.

“Can you carry a golf-bag?” Jim disregarded Jacques and spoke in laboured French to Delia.

“Mais oui, monsieur!” Even Delia had seen the vital necessity of keeping her nationality a secret. No one could ever tell by her accent that she was not really French—certainly not an Englishman.

“She says she can carry clubs.” Jim turned again to his friend.

“Of course she can, or she wouldn’t be here.” Colonel Robins spoke a little testily, and walked away to greet a compatriot from the Medina. Chester was always such a man for stirring up things when he needn’t, he thought. Take it for granted that the girl could carry the clubs, and if she couldn’t, get another one who could. Colonel Robins was accepting an invitation to play in a foursome that afternoon with avidity. Chester was a rattling good chap but such a dreamer, he thought impatiently.

But Jim was still looking at Delia. “What’s your name?” he asked kindly, noting her trembling hands snatching vaguely at her neck.

“Delia, monsieur.” Delia gave the name its French rendering as she stared upwards. This man had a mouth like an angel’s, she thought, watching Jim’s lips as they broke into a smile.

“Dahlia! Oh, that’s done it—it’s my favourite flower! Carry on, Mademoiselle Dahlia. Give her my clubs, Jacques. Robins, I’m ready, if you are. Hurry, or we shall have to wait to let that foursome go on ahead. And old Peters has never been able to forget that he was once Governor of Bengal. Makes you wait, by Gad, while he tells you about it, too!” Jim was laughing as he covered the short turf with his long strides.

And Delia followed him, keeping up with alternate long spreading steps and little runs. She was shy and frightened at the first tee, but Jim showed her kindly how to pinch up the little mound of sand, and by the third tee she could do it quite well. Mimi Rodier, Colonel Robins’s caddy, was cross and would show Delia nothing. She had got the man that Mimi wanted. Colonel Robins was stout and bellowed when he was cross. Monsieur Chester walked like a god and smiled like one. Everybody wanted to caddy for him; why should Delia Browne, the new caddy and English into the bargain, have got him?

But Jacques had chosen wisely and had done well for both parties. Jim Chester had the innate chivalry towards all womanhood that made him even considerate of a caddy. And Delia had the agonized conscientiousness of her type. She returned with tears standing like stars in her grey eyes from her first unsuccessful hunt for a ball.

“I can’t find it.” She spoke in French, trying meanwhile to steady her lower lip with her small teeth.

“Never mind, we must put down another.” Jim was intensely amused. This was the first time that he had ever seen a caddy cry over a lost ball, he thought humorously. He told his friend about it as, the round over, they strolled back together to the Club-house. Delia and Mimi were coming along behind, Delia trying valiantly not to show how dog-tired she was. The heavy bag seemed almost to drag her down to the ground. But there was not so fearfully much farther to go, and Major Chester was not going to play again that afternoon. In a way, it seemed deceitful to know this without being told, but as she understood English, she could not help it.

But Colonel Robins was not interested. Chester was cracked about women, he thought, as he stood his golf-bag up in his locker. Apparently they all fell in love with him, young or old. He and Jim had been in the same up-country station, before this last leave, and there had been two women quite off their rocker about him. Not that he seemed to encourage it at all he just went his own way and all female things fled after him. “It must be the attentive way he listens to them and looks at them,” thought Colonel Robins as, about half an hour later, he stood and waited for Jim in the lounge of the Medina. There he was now. Maude Pritchard had got hold of him as he came out of the lift, and there he was standing and looking at her, and although he was ravenous—they were a little late for the twelve-thirty déjeuner—he stood and looked at her as if she were the only living creature in the world at that moment. Listening to her, too, and the woman had a voice like a file.

“How you can stick her!” Colonel Robins spoke crossly as he sat down at the little round table for two and unfolded his table-napkin.

“Who?” Jim had just given the girl sitting at the desk a little courteous inclination of his head. The manners of all these English people were none too good, he thought, also sitting down at the table, and then suddenly struggling half out of his chair again to return the bow of a lady sitting at a table some way away.

“That Pritchard female!”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Jim laughed good-temperedly down at the wine-list. “What about some lager, Robins; feel like it to-day?”

“Yes, think I do.” Colonel Robins suddenly felt good-tempered again. There undoubtedly was something about the fellow that you couldn’t quite explain. And, oddly enough, Delia was feeling the same thing too, as, with her four francs clutched in her hand, she climbed her way a little heavily back to the Villa Bliss. “A sort of heavenly look about his mouth that makes you feel comfortable all over,” she thought to herself, trying to make it clear to herself in words.

Chapter VII

Delia soon became an exceedingly good caddy. Everyone does well what he or she wants to do, and after about the first day or two Delia wanted to be a caddy more than anything on earth. To begin with, she adored it for itself, and then also it meant so much to the Villa Bliss and the people in it.

“Oh, but, Maria—do you think we ought to?” Mrs. Browne would survey the crisp crumbly croissons and the slab of Côte d’Argent butter on the stripy tablecloth with a sort of vague helplessness.

“Mais oui, madame!” Maria, herself much better fed, and because of it much more cheerful, would speak with comfortable assurance. “C’est pour Monsieur Timothy. It is necessary that le petit eats well and nourishingly. See how he already fats!”—and Maria, with a wave of her old hand, pointed out Timothy, suffocating with suppressed laughter. But it was true that he was “fatting”; Delia saw the same thing, as after a delicious petit déjeuner she and her brother strolled out into the garden together.

“See how he fats!” Delia sang the little refrain. “It’s like ‘Three Blind Mice,’ Timothy; didn’t you think you’d expire when she said it?”

“Die!” Timothy was dragging a bough of mimosa down to his face. “But there’s no doubt—that butter! I could go on and on at it for ever, Delia.”

“So could I. But look here.” Delia suddenly became serious. “You simply must go to the dentist,” she said. “You don’t have to pay till afterwards. And the longer you wait, the worse it is. There’s an American one in the Rue de Gare.”

“I know, but he’ll hurt.” Timothy slid a nervous tongue round his mouth. “I believe the tooth’s all right,” he said suddenly.

“I’m sure it isn’t.” Delia spoke with decision. “Let me have a look,” she said; “I’ve time before I need go down to the links. Tip your head back—farther. Yes, I can see it.” Delia spoke after a minute inspection: “Only a weeny hole; what a blessed mercy it is that we’ve got such good teeth, Timothy.”

“I haven’t, if I’ve got to go to the dentist.” Timothy spoke crossly, dragging his hand across the back of his neck. “You hurt me, forcing my head back like that,” he said.

“Sorry!” Delia spoke with extreme good temper. She could see that her brother was nervously afraid of what lay before him. “I’ll take you,” she said suddenly, “this afternoon, if Major Chester is not going to play golf again.”

“He will, I expect.” Timothy spoke hopefully. Two or three rounds meant more money; besides, they wouldn’t have to go to the dentist if Delia had to go back after déjeuner. But she would not have to; she announced it rather gloomily as she came into the little gate just before half-past twelve that morning.

“Why not? What’s the god going to do?” Timothy spoke derisively. Delia was always raving about Major Chester. She would do it as they strolled along the tram-lines in the evenings. It had to be done out of doors because of their mother. And Timothy would listen good-temperedly. Major Chester had the most wonderful plus fours, and shoes made of something brown and rough like thick suede. His ties were always perfect. His hands were always clean and his nails were exactly the right shape. And his mouth went exactly like an angel’s mouth when he smiled.

“How do you know?” asked Timothy.

“I know*,” said Delia with decision. “He speaks like an angel too. And he has angels’ teeth.”

“Have they teeth?” inquired Timothy politely.

“Yes, of course they have. There’s something about it in the Bible. ‘Of the stature of a man, and therefore of an angel,’” quoted Delia wildly.

“I know: ‘Therefore with angels and archangels,’” interpolated Timothy, pleased at having been able to score.

“That’s another bit,” said Delia briskly. “But he’s perfect, Timothy, absolutely perfect. All the other caddies wish they’d got him and I have him. He always asks for me, too.”

“Of course, he does when he sees how you slog about for him,” said Timothy shrewdly. “Look at you the other night: it was pitch-dark when you came back with that ball he’d lost in the rough. That was worth more than ten francs to him, to begin with. I bet he didn’t give you anything for it.”

“He did,” said Delia hotly. “Didn’t I buy you a new beret that very afternoon? You are disgustingly ungrateful, Timothy,” and Delia relapsed into a sudden heavy silence. Somehow, taking that five francs tip had stung her soul. It was the sort of thing that Mimi Manaton would have done and rejoiced over. To Major Chester she was only like Mimi Manaton; of course she was. How could she be anything else?

And to-day, as she came heavily into the gate and heard Timothy’s mocking question, she felt the same gloom steal over her. Major Chester had played golf that morning with the lady from the Medina. Delia had seen her on the links once or twice, but never with Major Chester before, and somehow she sensed that they were going out somewhere together that afternoon. Delia felt a sudden queer despair. The lady was so perfectly dressed: all in a colour like café au lait. Suede coat, check skirt, felt hat, shoes and stockings all to match. And she had gazed at Major Chester in a way that somehow made Delia feel quite sure that she was in love with him. She gazed at him when he was not looking at her: adoringly, at his back, at his hands, at any part of him that she could see; she almost seemed to be worshipping his golf-bag, thought Delia, with a sudden sick fury of feeling. How she abhorred the lady in café au lait. And Mimi Manaton had been so disgusting, assuming with little quirks of her precocious head that they were engaged. “Fiancés!” she had declared, adding, with horrid spitefulness, that the mademoiselle was alarmingly rich, and so the Englishman, being dreadfully poor and in debt, as they all were, had made sure of her money by asking her to marry him.

“He hasn’t,” flamed Delia, standing in the little queue of caddies waiting to be paid, and thinking that if she could only see Mimi Manaton falter and fall dead at her side how glad she would be.

“He has,” jeered Mimi; who was glad of this opportunity of working off an old score. Delia always got the nice Englishman to caddy for, and it wasn’t fair. She, Mimi, only had the fat Colonel, who, when he swore, heaved his false teeth up and down and once nearly dropped them. She was glad of Delia’s enhanced colour and shaking fingers. If she had dropped a franc, she would have snatched it up and run away with it. Jacques was a beast always to give the English girl the nicest man.

But Jacques had the wholesome fear of old Maria at his back. Besides, Delia was a good caddy, he could see that. He dropped the four francs into her hand with an awkward smile.

“Merci, Jacques,” Delia returned the smile with courtesy. It was very necessary to be on good terms with your caddymaster if you wanted to get on. Besides—fancy, if he turned her off the links—they could do it, if they didn’t like you. Delia felt suddenly sick as she clutched her money and started to walk a little wearily home.

Chapter VIII

Mr. Hamish Sayer, D.D.S., was young and exceedingly clever at his job. And being young, he was still a little curious, so that when he heard a violent scrimmage going on in the narrow hall outside his surgery door he opened it and looked out. A murmured apology was enough for the large, clean-shaven man in the chair, gaping hopelessly at the ceiling. He would be glad of a respite; besides, he was a compatriot of his own and always came to him when he arrived for his annual visit to Biarritz.

“Say, what’s happening?” Mr. Sayer in his short duck-coat stood with his own excellent teeth showing in a pleasant grin. There were two people at the front-door, both young and queerly dressed, and both fighting for the handle of it.

“He says he won’t stay”—there were almost tears in Delia’s agitated voice.

“Won’t stay? Why, sonny, what’s upset you?” Mr. Sayer advanced down the cork carpeting to where Timothy clutched at the small handle of the Yale lock, struggling unavailingly to wrench it round. His secretary had announced the arrival of two children without an appointment only a few moments before, and without turning from his medicine-chest, where he was mixing a stopping, Mr. Sayer had told her to show them into the waiting-room until he was ready.

“I don’t care about it.” Breathlessly, Timothy was still trying to be polite. This was like hell, he thought, this being shut up in a place where a nurse in cap and apron opened the door to you. At first it had been all right; there was a decent room full of illustrated papers, and he had fallen on the Sphere and become absorbed in it. And then Delia had spoken absently, looking up from Punch.

“I wouldn’t half mind being a person like that one who opened the door,” she said, and then she buried her face in the paper again.

“Why not?” queried Timothy, getting up from his chair to find another paper.

“Because you’d always have the feeling that it wasn’t you,” said Delia, and she also got up to forage anew.

“Wasn’t you what?” asked Timothy, and this time he did not sit down with his paper. There was suddenly menace in the stiffly furnished room; menace and gloom in the gas fire, burning desolately alone, as if no one ever sat down by it; menace in the hopeless apathy of the fly, settled down to die in the corner of the window because no one would ever open it and let it out; menace in the—— And then Timothy’s imagination, flaming to the horrors of the unknown, sent him tearing headlong out into the passage.

And there Mr. Hamish Sayer found him, with his funny little ruffly-looking sister, and he laughed until the tears stood under his nice sandy eyelashes. “Come along back,” he said, and he took hold of one slender little hand, showing white at the knuckles where it clutched.

Timothy, desperate, was talking hurriedly in French. “I’ll come back, sir,” he said; “I’m sorry I can’t stay now. Delia, help me with the door.” He suddenly almost burst it out.

“He won’t ever come back!” Delia, unnerved, had begun to cry. “He only has the weeniest hole in one of his teeth,” she choked, “and it will get larger if he leaves it.”

“But he’s not going to leave it.” Mr. Sayer spoke largely and reassuringly.

“Yes, but the nurse! You don’t have people dressed like nurses unless things are going to happen!” Timothy’s pointed face was white as death, and his large eyes shone very blue.

“Dentists do.” Mr. Sayer’s voice was security personified. “They have them to show off: to make people think that everything’s all right: all the instruments sterilised and all that. You come along back into my surgery with me, young man, and I’ll show you a big man who loves coming to the dentist.”

“Is there one in there?” Timothy’s young throat was working, and he had let go of the handle.

“There is.” Mr. Sayer was oddly entertained. “Just one moment, and I’ll explain to him that you’re coming. Now, no bolting, young man. Got him all right?” He turned to the dishevelled Delia.

“I don’t need for her to have me: I’m all right now.” Timothy, terribly ashamed of his lapse, turned to his sister. “Shut up crying, I’m all right now,” he whispered agitatedly.

“All right.” Delia watched Mr. Sayer’s back as he vanished into the surgery door. If only Timothy would go in there with him it would be all right, she thought, wiping her eyes. But she could not hold him down again; she could realize too terribly what he was feeling now.

In a moment Mr. Sayer was back again. A few words of explanation had been enough for the big man in the chair. He was used to trembling, panic-stricken people.

So Timothy surveyed the plush chair and the swirling whirlpool of water at the left-hand arm of it with sudden placid interest. Mr. Sayer talked as he bent over the large tipped-back head. Talked about all sorts of things as if Timothy wasn’t there. Aeroplanes—had the big man in the chair flown across to Paris this time? “Mmn,” the big man made acquiescing noises like a broken-down motor-horn. Was it true that you took little pieces of cottonwool from a basket on the side of the car and stuffed your ears with them? “Mmn,” more acquiescing grunts from the man in the chair. And then at last, all stopping and probing at an end and the big man sitting up in the chair and turning stiffly to take a great drink from the tumbler in the little ring, and then swilling it generously and expansively round his mouth and blowing it all out into the whirlpool again.

“Ah!” He grinned up at Mr. Sayer, who was contemplating him with pride, and then turned to look at Timothy. And Timothy, seeing the large clean-shaven face turned suddenly to his, stumbled stupidly out of his chair and stood up.

“It’s Mr. Marcus Stoneham,” he said, and he turned pale again.

“Ah, there you are—there’s fame!” said the great tenor, and he swung round to Mr. Sayer and beamed. “And how did you know, young man?” he said, and he climbed slowly and solidly out of the chair.

“I always know when you come to the Palais Hotel. I watch you walking on the promenade,” said Timothy, his eyes fixed on the thick neck. “Once I followed you in the woods and heard you sing.” His eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“Did you though?” Mr. Stoneham was advancing across the carpet. “And why did you do that?” he said, and he took Timothy by the shoulders and stared down into his eyes.

“Because I somehow had to,” said Timothy, and then, frightened and self-conscious again, he wrenched himself away from the detaining grasp of the rather plump white fingers and sniffed fiercely. There were two men staring at him; he suddenly became conscious of Mr. Sayer’s light-brown eyes under their funny bushy, sandy eyebrows.

But Mr. Sayer noted the nervous jerk and spoke cheerfully. “Now then for the look round your mouth, young man,” he said; “let me see if I can see a bird in your throat, like I do in Mr. Stoneham’s.”

“You can’t recognize birds like I can,” interrupted Mr. Stoneham, and his eyes dwelt very kindly on Timothy. There was something in the spontaneous tribute to his art that had deeply touched him. The idea of this young thing stalking him in the woods to hear him sing. A boy, too; if it had been a girl, he would not have been so surprised.

So as Mr. Sayer cheerfully moved the little dental looking-glass round Timothy’s rather large mouth, stretched to its widest limit, the great tenor also peered interestedly into the pink-red cavity. “Now then,” he said, as Mr. Sayer withdrew the glass with a contented grunt, and he struck the tumbler in the little silver ring with an instrument picked up at random.

“Ah . . .” sang Timothy, taken entirely by surprise and sending out a note that rang triumphantly up against the ceiling at which he was staring and then came down again, seeming to hang like a golden flame over the heads of the two men standing very still.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Stoneham, and after a little pause he turned away from the chair and laid the instrument down on the glass slab again. “And now I’ll leave you to it, Sayer,” he said, “and one of these days this young man and I will have a chat. Take his address, before he goes; that’s just in case he doesn’t pay his bill, of course.” And the big man laughed comfortably as he went out of the room without saying any more.

“I shall pay my bill, you know.” Timothy spoke reassuringly after about ten minutes’ quite painless drilling, during which he stared at the ceiling and lived over again his first sight of the great tenor.

“I’m sure you will!” Mr. Sayer was standing mixing a stopping. Romantic, there was something about this last patient of his that appealed to him very strongly. Surely the note that he had sent out from his young throat had been a very wonderful one. Stoneham had evidently thought so, it was obvious by the way he had spoken afterwards. “At least, your parents will.” He was leaning over Timothy again, his left elbow on the plush headrest, his deft right hand busy with the amalgam stopping.

“No, Delia will!” Timothy, freed, was swilling out his mouth. “She earns the money in our family,” he said. Somehow he felt strangely drawn to this man with the queer drawly voice. He was a trustworthy man, you could see that by his eyes. Timothy had hardly ever spoken to either an Englishman or an American since he was quite small. It was joy to be able to talk naturally to someone in your own language, he thought.

“Really? How’s that?” asked Mr. Sayer, more intrigued than ever, and walking over to wash his hands at the gleaming basin fastened into the wall. “You can get down now, young man,” he said pleasantly, twisting a shining silver tap.

“Oh, I don’t know—she mightn’t like me to say, perhaps.” Timothy was suddenly on his guard again. He got quickly down from the high seat of the chair. “Will you let me know how much I shall owe you for this?” he asked.

“I will.” Mr. Sayer was wiping his hands leisurely on a towel that he had taken from a little pile of clean ones. “But meanwhile I shall have to see you again, young man,” he said cheerfully, walking back to his little cupboard again. “And we’ll say Friday, shall we? Will the same time suit you?” Mr. Sayer was looking at Timothy over a red appointment book.

“What time was it to-day?” asked Timothy, whose sensations that day since leaving the Villa Bliss had been more or less of a blur.

“Half-past two,” said Mr. Sayer. “And look here, young man, I’ve got a present for you. I’ve heaps of these—I get them by the score as samples.” Mr. Sayer was diving in a cupboard. Tooth-brushes and tooth-paste in tubes. “Here’s one for you, and a couple of tubes of paste. You’ve got excellent teeth, but a little more brushing won’t do them any harm.” Mr. Sayer was standing with his feet apart surveying Timothy with a twinkle.

“I know; my tooth-brush is worn out.” Timothy, scarlet and ashamed, was stuffing the narrow cardboard box and the two more stumpy boxes into his pocket.

“That so! Well, take one for the sister too, then.” Mr. Sayer had swung round and was diving in the cupboard again. Desperately poor—he came to the conclusion swiftly. And not the first English people either that he had come across in that condition in Biarritz, as he thought again, watching from behind his short muslin blind Delia and her brother walking down the street together.

But Delia, although delighted with the gift of a tooth-brush and tooth-paste, was a little suspicious, as Timothy excitedly poured out an account of what had happened. “I hope he doesn’t think we’re paupers,” she remarked; “dentists never do give things away any more than doctors do. It’ll probably be down on his bill: twice as much as we should have paid at a shop.”

“No, it won’t. He said it was samples,” declared Timothy, up in arms at this aspersion on his new friend. “You don’t know—he’s most frightfully nice, Delia. He’s a friend of Mr. Stoneham’s, too. Oh, I never told you that.” Timothy flushed scarlet; this would please Delia he knew. He had told her about the wonderful meeting with Mr. Stoneham, but not about his asking him, Timothy, to sing a note. “He said, ‘Sing,’ and he hit the tumbler with one of those proby things and I did. I loathed it, but I did,” said Timothy, suddenly feeling cross and self-conscious and wishing that he hadn’t.

“And what did he say?” asked Delia, stopping dead in the road and suddenly, for no reason at all, dragging off her hat.

“He said, ‘What a filthy row!’” said Timothy, and he took up a stone and aimed it at a crow sitting cawing on a stone parapet of one of the luxurious villas that they were passing.

“What a beast,” said Delia, putting on her hat again. But within her her heart was singing. Mr. Stoneham had been pleased, she could tell that from the way Timothy spoke. Oh, if it could only be—Delia quickened her steps. Perhaps things were going to be different—gloriously, marvellously different. Delia also sang as she walked up the little brick path of the Villa Bliss that afternoon.

Chapter IX

But the next day was wet, and as Delia always reacted in some very extraordinary way to the barometer, she was plunged in gloom when she awoke. To begin with, she had left her window wide open, so that her make-shift dressing table and a pair of stockings that she had left hanging over the back of a chair close to it were soaking. This was maddening, and serious into the bargain, because she only had one pair of stockings that were fit to wear. The long hours of walking had taken heavy toll of her footwear, and the green felt slippers were already showing signs of disintegration. “I shall have to have new ones.” Delia stared disgustedly at the thin, rather threadbare soles of them. “And there won’t be any chance of golf to-day either. How I loathe this place when it rains.”

And petit déjeuner did not make things any better. Mrs. Browne took exception to Delia’s bare legs. “My dear child”—Mrs. Browne was doing fussy things to the long loaf—“we are not yet in the condition, I hope, when we must appear barefoot at meals. Where are your shoes and stockings?”

“I left my stockings by the window and they are wet.” Delia, still dejected, spoke without looking at her mother. But with the pressure of a small foot against her knee, the curve came back to the corner of her mouth. Timothy understood how she felt. He always did, that was the blessing of him.

“But, my dear, it is perfectly simple——” And then Mrs. Browne entered upon one of her long, rambly exhortations about being methodical. Neither child paid much attention to it; they were absorbed in eating the hard crusty rolls and drinking the excellently made coffee. And after breakfast Timothy strolled out into the hall and twitched his sister by the sleeve.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said; “you look like a dead rat this morning, and last night you were quite cheerful.”

“I don’t know—it’s the weather. It’s so disgusting. How can anyone play golf? They can’t. Besides, what does it matter to them if they can’t? The Medina’s got central heating—it’s perfectly gorgeous in that lounge there, all palms and pink cushions and plate-glass tops to the tables.”

“Yes, but there are other places than the Medina in Biarritz.” Timothy spoke shrewdly, and shot an oddly mature glance at his sister. “We aren’t the only people who loathe the weather either.”

“No, I know; but we’re stuck in a disgusting house like this.” Delia’s lower lip was suddenly tremulous. She could see the lounge at the Medina. Lots of nice, very clean well-dressed Englishmen, and girls all dressed right. Beautiful jumpers and skirts to match them. Hair shining, and beautifully shingled so that it clung close to their small, neat heads. Shoes, brown, and with crêpe soles, and straps across their plaid stockings. Stockings that cost thirty francs a pair at “Le Bonheur” and more at Old England. And all these girls with a nice man to talk to. And she herself, disgusting and unkempt. A creature of another world, squalid and common. Looked down on by all these grand people; tipped like a porter at one of the hotels. On an equality with Mimi Manaton and her kind. And all the more horrible because she would never be anything else. Always squalid and grovelling, with all these other kind of people looking down on you because they were of another world, and always would be. Delia suddenly felt as if her brain had caught fire. Flaming thoughts of the injustice of everything coursed over her like fever. Mad thoughts of ending it all, so that no one should ever have the chance to look down on her any more. Timothy was suddenly alarmed. Delia looked as he had never seen her look before. Suddenly beautiful, though even he could see that. Eyes shining and twice as large as they generally were.

“What on earth’s the matter with you now?” he said uneasily.

“Nothing; at least——” And Delia had gone flying up to her room. Slamming the door behind her, she flung herself down on the bed. It had got to come to an end, this sort of death of a life. She wasn’t like all these common children that she associated with. She was different—of a different clay. Besides, she was growing up; she was over sixteen—nearly seventeen; she clutched feverishly at the bulging and protesting lumps of feathers in the chintz case. People married at seventeen. José Manaton had married; fearful excitement, all the guests being photographed in the front garden, and the wedding procession walking down the narrow cobbly road to the little Catholic church. And Maria, dressed up in an old black silk coat of her mother’s and an old hat bought from the same accommodating chambermaid at the Medina. People always gave that chambermaid things, she was so good-tempered. And Delia and Timothy had watched very secretly, from behind the fence, and old Maria had known they were there, and had not been able to prevent her own face from twitching with laughter as she passed. She knew that to the English children it would all appear ridiculous, although they themselves were extremely poor. And remembering this, Delia sat up on the bed and gripped at the edges of the severely stuffed mattress. There had been a look on José Manaton’s face that had thrilled her, child as she had been then. A look of trembling exaltation: a look of almost stupefaction as if the thing that had befallen José was almost too good to be true. And then Delia got up and walked to the window, and stood there blindly staring out of it. Supposing that it was she who was going to be married—say the next day. Supposing that she was to expect some heavenly man to come—say that afternoon, and to know that he would take her closely into his arms and say, kissing her, that the next day he was to have her for always. To hear him coming up the path, and, because he was coming, to stand shivering with a sort of frozen rapture, too afraid almost to look at him because she adored him so. To feel his hands on each side of her face so that he could kiss her more easily. To feel his lips—and then Delia flung her hands over her face and suddenly cried out. Why, but she knew who it was, who it would have to be; there wasn’t anyone else. Why, she loved him—this was love. You only trembled and shrank in front of a person you loved. Feeling that they were there when perhaps they weren’t. You saw them—you saw their eyes and the way their mouth went when they smiled. You said over and over again to yourself the things that they said. “Hurry up, Mademoiselle Dahlia,” all said in French frightfully wrongly pronounced. Or “Damn!” said with fearful emphasis, or “Hell!”

Both of these last giving you a strange trickling sensation down your spine. You longed for them to say it to you, so that you were frightened, and in your fear you would fall at their feet and clutch at them till they were sorry and lifted you up and kissed you. And thinking this, Delia turned, and tore her hands down from her face and flung herself again on to the duvet. Why, but she had to have these things—for herself, for her. Not starving and out in the cold, watching other people have them, but her. Delia sat up and drew her small brown hands down her face with a sort of groping gesture. Pressing her small finger-tips into her creamily sunburnt face, she stared over them to where the defaulting stockings hung limp and streaky on the back of a chair. And somehow the sight of these stockings brought her down to earth again as nothing else could have done. They were the stockings of the very poor, made of cotton, and common to the tops of their too pointed toes and their horrible different coloured heels. People who had divine, glorious things happen to them, men like gods falling in love with them, were as different from her—Delia—as those stockings were different from their stockings. It was a different thing; as different as the soup made by her mother was different from that which Maria made. You couldn’t tell quite how it was different, but you knew it was. Utterly, irrevocably different. And then Delia, still lying with her face pressed against the shiny chintz, began to cry. Dreadful tears, unlike any tears that she had ever shed before—the tears of a child suddenly grown to maturity who sees a barren future stretching out in front of it. Nothing to look forward to—nothing to make life even endurable. And Delia cried until Timothy, who had been wandering rather aimlessly round the narrow front garden wondering what had become of her, came up and tapped at her door.

“What on earth are you doing?” he called out in French.

“Nothing.” Delia sat hurriedly up and scrubbed at her face.

But Timothy, who was shrewd for his years, stared frankly at her when admitted. Delia hardly ever cried: something must really be wrong. His fertile, unchildish mind leaped to the right conclusion.

“I suppose you’ve fallen in love with the god,” he said, and he strolled to the window and stared out of it. He suddenly felt wretched and defrauded. Delia belonged to him: she always had done. Now she wouldn’t: the god would come first. Timothy thought of Major Chester with sudden loathing. Walking about on the links as if the place belonged to him; looking down on Delia, his sister, as any man in his position would look down on a caddy.

“Look here, you’ve got to stop caddying,” he said; “it’s degrading, it’s disgusting.” He swung suddenly round.

“I shan’t do anything of the kind.” Delia spoke with a catch in her voice. Stop caddying? Why, caddying was the only thing she lived for. Stop caddying? Why, she would never see him again then. She got abruptly off the bed. “What about all the nice things for tea?” she said, and she tried to say it unkindly. “You like them as much as I do, Timothy. They all go if I stop caddying.”

“Yes, I know, but I don’t care about them as much as I do about you. You’re too good to be mixed up with that lot. I always loathed it. And now you’re going to make a fool of yourself over that Chester man.” Timothy spoke again, and again with a prescience far beyond his years. And also with a fluent command of English that Delia did not know he possessed. What an odd boy he was, she thought, always saying and doing something unexpected. And even in her misery she looked at him curiously.

“How do you know about me and Major Chester?” she asked.

“Because you’re getting to look mooney and cranky,” replied Timothy, thrusting his grubby hands into his shabby pockets. “Always staring out of the windows and imagining it’s going to be wet when it isn’t. Always harking back to that ugly girl with nice clothes who plays golf with him. It shows you’re jealous. Of course, he likes her best, he always will. She’s his sort; you aren’t.”

“She isn’t. She’s common. She doesn’t say her o’s properly; you can always tell.” Delia was glaring, propped up against the end of the bed, clutching the wooden knob of it. “He hardly ever looks at her; you can always tell by that, too. If he liked her he would look at her sideways sometimes. He never does, only straight, and hardly ever that.”

“And how often does he ever look at you?” demanded Timothy, staring at his sister as frankly as she was staring at him. “Never except to curse at you because you haven’t marked the ball down properly. I know. You are a silly fathead, Delia.”

“He doesn’t curse at me, and I’m not silly.” Delia was suddenly trembling and afraid. She and Timothy very rarely quarrelled, and she hated the feeling of it. Besides, she must have an ally. She couldn’t go on with Timothy against her—it would mean misery at home; besides, it might mean something else; if Timothy really got concerned and up against her, he might tell their mother, and that would be the end of everything. “I’m not silly,” she said again.

“You are.” Timothy had turned round to the window again, and was trying to train a large blobby drop to run straighter down the narrow pane.

“I’m not, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll explain it to you. You’re awfully like me, really, although you are a boy. You’ve got something to sort of curl yourself round”—Delia was a little breathless in her eagerness to make herself clear. “That sort of traily part of you that longs for something to happen has got something to catch hold of. It’s your voice. You know it is, Timothy. That’s always there, something sort of breathlessly exciting that you can turn in and look at when you are dull. I haven’t anything—at least, I hadn’t. Now I have, and I couldn’t do without it—I should die. Now I want to be alive: I want to wake up in the mornings, I want the day to last for ever because I am so happy. Timothy, don’t try to spoil it for me.” Delia was wringing her hands. “You don’t know what it means for me. I’m getting old. Mother was married when she was eighteen. Can’t you see?”

“You don’t mean to say that you think the god’s going to marry you?” Timothy swung abruptly round.

“He might.” Delia’s face was working and piteous.

“Coo!” Timothy’s ejaculation was expressive. “My dear girl——” He turned round to the window again, his sensitive boy’s heart suddenly deeply touched. If only Delia knew what she looked like in that ghastly jersey affair, to begin with. And her stockings—very often they were twisted, and all creased round her ankles. Timothy suddenly saw what Major Chester would see. Why, he would never dream of even beginning to think about Delia as anything but a caddy. How fearfully sort of touching. Timothy angrily felt tears rising to his throat. Let her have the fun of it, he thought, as he splayed a wet finger into the corner of the window. It would all come to an end when Major Chester left the Medina, as he very soon would do; the English season was nearly over. And he turned round, awkwardly averting his eyes as he saw Delia’s red, blotchy face.

“Anyhow, don’t let him see that you’re so cracked about him,” he said in a resentful but conciliatory voice. “Men hate that; it puts them off at the very beginning.”

“All right, I won’t. But how do you know?” Delia, hardly believing her ears, spoke with a wild revulsion of feeling. Her caddying was safe—nothing else mattered. “Timothy, how clever you are! How do you know it does?” she said, and she made one more comprehensive tour of her face with her soaking handkerchief.

“Oh, I don’t know. Men always know those things.” Timothy was blithe and self-possessed again. “Ah!” He suddenly blew a long breathy note at the ceiling.

“It’s like a heavenly bird.” Delia forgot where she was, just for the moment. “Timothy, when are you going to see Mr. Stoneham again?”

“I don’t suppose ever.” Timothy was making his way unconcernedly to the door. “I have to go and see that filthy dentist again on Friday,” he remarked; “why on earth did you lug me into it, Delia?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Delia was staring at her brother’s back. All shut up in that little thin frame, that divine voice. But his head was large; Delia stared affectionately at it as it went down the stairs and vanished.

Chapter X

When it begins to rain in Biarritz it generally goes on, and by the time that Delia had had her déjeuner she felt the same desperate feeling beginning to creep over her again. There had been the hope that it would clear up in time for an afternoon round of golf; now that hope was over. Hours yet until it would be time to go to bed—long, unendurable hours, with nothing whatever to do—only to sit with a dead, vacant feeling of despair, wondering whether it would be fine the next day. Impossible to contemplate with calmness, impossible to endure, however you contemplated it. Something must be done to still this dreadful new groping feeling inside her: a dreadful feeling of incompleteness, an awful feeling that if she didn’t hear Major Chester’s voice soon she would begin to scream for him. To scream until he came, somehow. Delia went up to her bedroom and sat down on the bed. Timothy was settled in the little salle à manger with a book. Maria was washing, talking to herself as she stooped over the china sink. Mrs. Browne had gone to lie down, as she always did after déjeuner.

Delia walked to the window and looked out of it. If she looked sideways she could just see the sea. She could see it now, brown and cavernous, and coming in in great crashing waves. She suddenly felt that she would like to be down close to it, feeling it lash and sting her face, feeling the wind tear at her clothes, winding them stripily round her legs so that she would have to make great spreading steps to get free of them. Why not? Delia suddenly made up her mind. Her old mackintosh, her beret, her goloshes over her felt slippers; it would only take a second and nobody would know.

In five minutes’ time she was tearing down the road. The wind caught her at the corner and almost blew her over, but she battled on and was soon under the shelter of the tramway cutting. Once through that, the wind did catch her, but she thrust her hands into the pockets of her mackintosh and clutched it close to her. All the gorgeous beauty of it: the Atlantic spread out in front of her, coming in on to the strip of narrow beach in great green rollers—rollers that curled themselves over hugely and methodically and then broke smashingly, sending out long creeping, clawing fingers over the sand. Delia watched it all with her heart in her throat.

The sea always made her feel like that: sort of mad and exulting, as if she must shout and sing hymns at the top of her voice, somehow joining in with the fury of the elements, becoming one in the glory of everything. And then, as she stood with her beret dragged down almost to her arched eyebrows and the rain pouring down her face, she caught sight of the golf-house. Deserted and forlorn in the deluge, but still the golf-house. And she turned and ran to it as a child will turn and run to its mother, racing down the rough path, by now all little rivulets of water. If only the door of it was open she could see his locker, and if no one was there she could lean her face against it. His angel, precious hand would have touched it!

But the door of the golf-house was firmly shut and locked, and Delia stood under the dripping verandah roof and felt that same queer despair steal over her. Shut out, not even able to put her face where his hand had been. And then her common sense reasserted itself. Of course it was shut, otherwise everything would be soaked. And then a glorious, brilliant idea dawned on her. What a chance to go and hunt for golf-balls! The grass would be beaten down and wet, and they would be easier to find. She would try to find the two new Silver Kings Major Chester had lost the day before.

She set off into the rough, trampling and stamping with her gleaming wet goloshes. For two hours she hunted, utterly forgetful of the weather, because the great idea had come to her that if she found the balls she could take them up to the Medina and give them to him herself. And by the end of the two hours she had found four absolutely new balls and two slightly damaged ones. She straightened herself up at last, soaked to the skin, but glowing and triumphant with rapture. Now she would see him—utter, transcendent joy.

But the weary yet extremely efficient attendant who looked after the lounge was not so sure about this. “I wish to speak to Major Chester”—Delia spoke in fluent French. She had come in at the door that gave on to the back garden of the hotel. The front-door led past into the office, and Mademoiselle Richot would be sitting there, and at the top of the stairs would be the concierge, sitting in his little pen. Delia would never be able to get past even the first of these two. But the lounge attendant was more amenable; besides, he had a crippled wife and always looked sad. She would be able to subjugate him all right. But it was not so easy. Delia, to begin with, had no conception of what she looked like. She was streaming with rain, and her beret, being a cheap one, had begun to run. Therefore, as well as being soaked through, she had a long smudge of dark blue dye trailing down over one eye. “Tcha!”—the lounge attendant made disapproving noises.

“Quickly!” Delia was staring through the big swing-door which was still rocking amiably on its hinges. The lounge was full of people sitting in large circles. They had just finished tea. Gaston, the head-waiter, was surveying the crowd from the top of the marble steps that led into the pink-and-gold salle à manger. A profitable well-bred crowd, Gaston was surveying them with complacency. What with the taxe de luxe and the ten per cent. on the bills, he blew out his chest, and turned to snap his fingers imperiously to an underling.

“Major Chester is perhaps not here”—the lounge attendant was dissimulating. Cautious, he hardly liked to dismiss Delia off-hand. She might be the go-between in some intrigue; one never knew.

“I know he is,” and Delia spoke with a little catch in her breath. She had just caught sight of him sitting alone with two men under a palm, all of them smoking. There were teacups, and a teapot on the table, and a plate with three fluffy cakes still on it. That meant that there had not been a woman at the table with them—heavenly bliss! Delia caught her breath excitedly, and suddenly turned scarlet.

“He is there? Heh!” The lounge attendant was taken aback, but reassured all the same. She knew him by sight, then, this dripping girl with large eyes. “Yes,” he turned and followed Delia’s glance with his own. “He is there. Well, I will summon him, then. But you must not remain in sight of the visitors. If Monsieur Chester sees you he will be highly incensed. Step in here, please.”

The lounge attendant led the way into a little whitewashed pantry, full of brown shoes on trees and bottles of boot polish. All the shoes were thick with mud, and some were stood up on their heels to drain. As the attendant turned to go, Delia shot a quick glance along the row of them. If she saw his, she would drop on her knees and press her lips to the muddy leather of them.

But they were not there; he always wore sambur-leather ones; these were all ordinary shiny shoes. And she tiptoed out to see what would happen when Jean told Major Chester that there was someone to see him. Perhaps he would frown, not knowing the gorgeous surprise that was in store for him. Four absolutely new golf-balls; they would be worth about sixty francs. Worth having: Delia pulled the door almost shut and stole her head very cautiously round the corner of it.

Yes, Jean had inserted himself apologetically in between Major Chester and the man sitting next to him, and was bending his head a little, so that he could speak without being overheard. “For me?” Delia could see Major Chester’s lips make the words. “Tcha!” She could not see Jean’s almost audible exclamation of annoyance. This was not an expected summons, then. Jean was very cross.

“I’ll come along.” Jim Chester was heaving himself out of his cane chair and tapping his pipe out on the heavy brass ash-tray. He said a word to the man nearest to him, and laid his pipe down on the table. Then he got up to follow Jean. But half-way to the end of the lounge an imperious little bell tinkled, and Jean stopped like an automaton. Major Chester stopped too, and then Jean evidently told him where his visitor was to be found, because he came on alone.

At the sight of him coming on alone Delia shrank back into the little bare room and laid a quick hand on her heart. No, she could not bear to see him—to speak to him. To escape—it was her instant passionate thought.

But there was no time. Before she had even the chance to push open the door and slip out of it, and then out of the big one that gave on to the garden, Jim Chester had his hand on the latch of it. And when he came in all he saw was Delia’s wide-open eyes—the eyes of a cornered thing, turned up to him in supplication. Her pencilled eyebrows seemed oddly lifted in the middle of them, giving a look of terrified surprise to the whole face.

“Why, it’s Mademoiselle Dahlia!” He spoke after an instant’s pause, in a voice of jolly friendliness.

“Yes”—Delia forgot that she was speaking English. “I’ve come—to give you something.” She was fumbling in the pocket of her soaking mackintosh.

“Have you? That’s very kind of you.” Half unconsciously, Jim Chester backed a little against the door and shut it with a shove of his broad shoulders. Mystery: until that instant he had thought Delia a little bourgeois French girl. Now he knew her to be English, and well-bred into the bargain.

“I found them—four of them are new.” Delia was pressing the wet, hard golf-balls into his surprised hand.” “Oh”—-she was down on her knees groping behind the row of muddy shoes for the one that had fallen bouncingly—“here it is.” She had got up again, leaving a wet patch where she had knelt.

“But, I say, you’re wet through.” Jim Chester had thrust all the balls into the baggy side pocket of his tweed coat. Somehow he had hardly noticed them. All he saw was Delia’s large greeny-grey eyes, made somehow larger and greener by the smudge of blue dye that streaked down by the side of one of them.

“I know; but I don’t mind that—I knew you’d be pleased.” Delia was speaking with halting breath. He was near to her and alone, so that she could touch him if she wanted to. “I always feel that about you—I want to do things to please you; give you things. I’ll find you some more; I easily can, if I go out early enough.”

“It’s most awfully kind of you.” Jim Chester spoke naturally, “It’s saved me quite a heap of money,” he said, and he suddenly smiled. He was intensely anxious all of a sudden that Delia should not realize that she had given her nationality away. That she was quite unconscious of having done so, he could see. Also, he could see that she was really quite unconscious of what she was doing or saying—only knowing that she was looking at him; and realizing it, Jim Chester suddenly felt a queer twinge of alarm.

“I say,” he began, and then he resolutely thrust his hand into his pocket. This thing must be kept on an ordinary level, he came to the conclusion swiftly. “Thank you very much indeed,” he said, and he quietly drew out his note-case.

Without stopping to think what she was doing, Delia struck it out of his hand. “No—how could you think——?” She had dashed past him, trying to get to the door. She fought with him as he tried to hold her. “Let me go, I tell you—I shall kill——” She was breathless, and speaking in a low, sobbing undertone.

And Jim Chester let her go. It was the only possible thing to do; he realized that as he heard her voice. But as the big outside door swung, and he stooped to retrieve his note-case, he felt oddly and seriously disturbed. Where had she gone, and who was she? He took a quick step to the narrow barred window to try to catch sight of her. Tearing out of the gate, and soaked to the skin into the bargain; of course he ought to have—— What ought he to have done? Major Chester wondered again as he went slowly up to his own room. Never mind about his pipe; he wanted to be alone for a bit. He’d have a bath before dressing for dinner.

Chapter XI

But as he scrubbed himself dry in the beautiful bathroom leading out of his bedroom, he began to feel more perturbed than ever. That child had been soaked through; she had even left a wet mark where she had stood and knelt; she would die of pneumonia. He ought to have—— And then he was pulled up short again. What ought he to have done? A caddy—that was all Dahlia was to him. A little ordinary caddy; paid by the round; nothing to him whatever. And then, as he carefully pulled his dress-tie to its little stubbly bow, he began to think of her quick, refined English speech. And her eyes, large and greeny-grey, carrying in their depths a strange undefeatedness. A wonderful look of supplication; a look of—— Jim Chester made a sudden involuntary exclamation and turned and walked quickly to the wardrobe. He slipped his short dress-jacket off the hanger and shrugged himself into it. Then he walked over to the window. Heaps of time yet; everyone was always a long time after the gong, and he did not feel inclined for a cocktail to-night.

The sea was not quite so restless now, and the big rocks below his window were bare. The revolving fight from the lighthouse had begun to send its big flare round the harbour and out to sea: there it went, one long shaft of light and then another shorter one. It rested and quivered on the wall of his bedroom for an instant and then went on again. What a wonderful thing, and what did people do before there were such things as lighthouses? Jim Chester opened his window and leant out of it. The wind had dropped, and was only blowing gently and reassuringly round the hotel. Had that child got back safely to her home, wherever it was, or had she slipped and fallen down somehow? Would her parents, whoever they were, have the sense to make her change her things and have a hot bath and go to bed, or would she shiver in them all night, or at any rate most of the evening, and wake up in the morning with a temperature, and on the high road to rheumatic fever? And would he—and at that Jim Chester suddenly shut the window and turned round to the room again with his hands thrust deep into his pockets—would he ever see her again? Would she, perhaps, having betrayed her nationality, never come back to the golf-house? Would those funny childish eyes never seek his shyly again? All that passionate worship blown out like a candle; and at that thought Jim Chester suddenly felt angry. How idiotic, how imbecile of him not to have—— And then again, not to have done what?

And the gong, booming and reverberating through the hotel, brought him abruptly to himself again. Another meal! How they gorged and stuffed themselves, these English people, with nothing to do but to amuse themselves and to eat. How disgusting the management must think them: first a huge tea that they didn’t want, and then this. A regiment of people slaving for them, to provide unnecessary food and drink. Major Chester walked out on to the landing and pressed an irritable finger on the electric bell, feeling thoroughly out of tune with himself and the world in general.

But no one would have noticed it as he walked out of the lift, his usual imperturbable well-dressed self. And poor Maude Pritchard saw him come with a stab of rapture more fierce even than usual. How utterly perfect in every way he was, this quiet man of the world. And she turned almost with fury as Mrs. Pritchard gave her a little gentle nudge. “There’s your fancy man, lovie,” she said quietly.

“Don’t be so vulgar, mother!” Maude, beautifully dressed as usual, was sitting under a palm at one of the plate-glass tables, and she turned and spoke in a fierce whisper to her mother. Sometimes she felt that she almost hated her mother. Not exactly hated her for herself, but hated her because she was so different from all these well-bred people who moved about the hotel as if it belonged to them. Nothing would make her mother in the least like them—no amount of exhortation, no amount of telling.

“But isn’t he, dearie?” Mrs. Pritchard was used to Maude’s strictures, so she went on comfortably knitting, two plain and two purl, over and over again, so consoling when you hadn’t to think about what you were doing. And a nice dinner coming along, and then a cup of coffee, and perhaps being able to see her Maude dancing with the Major man.

Mrs. Pritchard loved that; it made all those long years of struggling to do without things, so that her only child should be well-educated; of no account. She did not even lament the fact that it had not been in the least necessary after all, because Mr. Pritchard had left a great deal of money when he died; he had only pretended to be so hard put to it so that they should live as befitted their station. But to see Maude appreciated was meat and drink to Mrs. Pritchard, and unless her daughter was too drastic she was content to keep humbly in the background. She would never be right—she had long since realized that; but she had also realized that if she dressed rather elaborately and kept equally elaborately in the background, she wouldn’t be wrong enough for it to matter.

But now both mother and daughter were hungry, and therefore inclined to be argumentative, and poor Mrs. Pritchard made a gallant struggle to assert herself.

“He is your fancy man, dearie,” she said, with her large mild eyes bent on her knitting.

“He isn’t—there isn’t such a thing,” retorted Maude, speaking almost absently, although indignantly. Fancy man! She was watching Jim Chester stop in front of the notice-board and stand there with one hand in his coat pocket reading. There, that elegant Mrs. Langley had got hold of him; he had turned instantly and taken his hand out of his pocket and was talking to her, his eyes bent on her and his mouth just smiling a little. Just doing exactly what a man ought to do, no free-and-easy lounging about—poor Maude winced a little mentally. The men of her world lounged; they sort of blew themselves out in front with their hands in their trouser pockets and laughed hideously with their mouths open. But this——

“He’s a fine figure in his fine clothes.” Poor Mrs. Pritchard’s mild eyes were following Maude’s even while she knitted. They would make a handsome couple, she ruminated, not daring to say so though, for fear of being sat on. And her Maude would not go to her husband penniless either, and that to the military would be an advantage, thought poor Mrs. Pritchard.

“Oh, come along, mother!” Maude had jerked herself out of her comfortable wicker chair with almost a little cry. It was too awful. And here was Major Chester coming along, down the crimson-carpeted steps that led into the lounge. With Mrs. Langley too; and even Maude knew what Mrs. Langley thought of her mother and her. Her bow of greeting in the mornings was enough to tell anyone that. Just relegating them both to somewhere else, where, it didn’t much matter, as long as it wasn’t where Mrs. Langley was.

But Jim Chester had noticed, with a good deal of pity, the obvious way that the other visitors at the Medina treated the Pritchards. And although Maude especially bored him to tears, he was too innately courteous to allow it to be apparent. “Good evening, Mrs. Pritchard.” He detached himself from Mrs. Langley, stopping a little behind her so that she walked on alone.

“Oh, good evening, Major.” Mrs. Pritchard struggled awkwardly up out of her chair, letting her knitting trail on to the ground. “Oh, thank you; please don’t trouble”—she was hurriedly trying to stoop to anticipate Major Chester’s instant gesture to retrieve it.

“Don’t bother: I’ve got it.” Jim Chester’s well-brushed head was lifted again. “That’s it. Well, what an awful day we’ve had; how have you managed to amuse yourself?” He was standing up and looking down at Maude.

“Oh, I’ve written some letters.” Maude Pritchard was all tremulous with joy. As well as her own personal rapture, at being noticed by the man she adored, there was the added joy of having the other people in the lounge see that, after all, someone could take notice of them. And everyone wanted Major Chester to speak to them; there was Mrs. Langley turning round to see what had happened to him, and going on into the salle à manger alone, quite cross.

“Well done! Exactly what I ought to have done, and haven’t.” Jim Chester’s nice teeth were all showing. The look in Maude’s eyes touched him: he never got used to women’s adoration, although he had had a good deal of it during his thirty-four years of life. But it never staled—they were such pathetic, childish creatures, women, he thought, detaching himself from the Pritchards with a little courteous inclination of his head and going on alone into the dining-room.

During dinner he was absent, and ate without thinking about it. And Colonel Robins, who had had no exercise that day and was therefore cross, remarked on it as he stuck large pieces of cream cheese on to his biscuit and conveyed it with care to his mouth.

“The fact of the matter is, you’re too soft, Chester,” he said, and he wiped his stubbly reddish moustache with deliberation after the last piece of cheese had gone the way of the first. “You mind that girl with the mother doesn’t land you. I’ve seen it done before, and with a cleverer man than you.”

“What?” Jim Chester emerged silently from his thoughts and surveyed his friend through a yellow cloud of mimosa.

“She’ll get you, that girl with the good legs. You’ll be sorry for her, or some such rubbish.”

“Which girl with the good legs? They’ve all got them.” Jim Chester was still looking at his friend and with vast amusement in his eyes. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and tipped his chair back a little. “Come along out of this, Robins,” he said; “you’ve eaten too much. That’s what’s the matter with you: too much food and too little exercise.”

“Nothing of the sort!” The two men were standing in the lounge, and Colonel Robins was beckoning to the weary lounge attendant. “Two coffees, Jean—yes, noir. No, I mean what I say, Jim; you’ll be landed one day. They’ll misunderstand that chivalrous stunt of yours and fall on your neck when you least expect it. And that mother would have you in an instant: mind you, you’re not dealing with people of your own class, Chester.”

“Silly juggins you are.” Jim Chester spoke good-humouredly and laughed as he spoke. Robins was a bit of an ass, though; he thought it again as, with his pipe well alight, he sat back in his chair and surveyed the rapidly filling lounge. The coffee was good, the Medina was uncommonly well run, thought Jim Chester, noting the perfection of detail around him.

“Well, but I mean what I say.” Colonel Robins was drawing rather jerkily on his pipe. “You know, Chester——”

But the rest of his sentence went unfinished. Jim Chester was on his feet and was smiling down over his coffee-cup into Maude’s upturned eyes. “No, I’m not dancing to-night;” he was saying it very pleasantly. “To-morrow night, Miss Pritchard, if you will be kind to me,” and Jim Chester laid his pipe down on the plate-glass top of the table and smiled again. Poor girl! He felt a quick twinge of pity for her as she turned and walked away, all scarlet confusion. But, of course—she ought not; but all the same—he wasn’t going to hear it from Robins. He picked up his pipe again and laid down his coffee-cup.

“I’m going out, Robins,” he said; “if I fug in this superheated lounge all the evening, I shall have a fit. Get Jefferson for bridge; he likes to be asked now and again”—and Jim Chester was gone, steering his way through the groups of chairs and followed by more than one disappointed pair of eyes. How sickening: he was far nicer and danced much better than anyone. Several girls stirred discontentedly in their chairs and stared dejectedly after him as he went.

Chapter XII

Outside, with his Burberry buttoned closely up to his neck and his cap pulled well down over his eyes, Jim Chester felt decidedly better. It had stopped raining, but the wind came in from the Atlantic with a roar. There was a terrific sea on, too; it was still quite light, and Jim Chester, stopping on the edge of the grassy path leading to the lighthouse, stood there to watch. Huge waves, coming crashing in and breaking a little way out, and then lashing themselves curlingly round the projecting cliff. But the tide was going down; it would be calmer down below, and Jim Chester turned to take the cliff path down to the links. He would cut across them and have a good walk along by the edge of the sea and then come back, have a hot bath, and go straight to bed.

But it was very late that night before he got back to the Medina. And how often in later life he reflected that often the minutest thing turned the whole scale of your life. If he had stayed indoors that evening; if Colonel Robins had not irritated him so that he wanted to get away from him. For he came across Delia almost at once. She did not know it was he, and crouched behind a rock she saw what she only supposed could be a Frenchman advancing towards her. And she leapt to her feet and began to run. Tearing across the absolutely deserted sands she flew, terror lending wings to her feet. Maria had always told her never to go down to the sands at night, never to be there alone at any time unless there was someone within hail—someone playing golf, for instance. But here she was alone at half-past nine at night, darkness falling, not a soul—if she screamed even, not a soul.

Jim Chester caught her up, but only after about ten minutes’ hard going. For Delia was much lighter than he was, and her feet did not sink in to the sand as his did.

“Mademoiselle Dahlia!” He was yelling it after her as he ran.

But she could not hear him. And when at last she tripped in the sand and fell at full length with desperate snatching hands, she screamed and struck out at him as he turned her over.

“Come along.” He was speaking as quietly and as reassuringly as he could with his lack of breath.

“Why, I thought——” and then Delia broke down. Clutching at his sleeve, she turned her face as far away from him as she could and the tears rained down it.

“My dear child, why aren’t you in bed long ago?” Jim Chester spoke in the deepest concern. She had been soaked to the skin; she would die. Pneumonia—rheumatic fever——

“I’ve changed my clothes; I wasn’t even cold when I got back. They think I am in bed—my family do. But I couldn’t stay in bed. I had to come out again. I’ve got a sort of tearing pain here.” Delia laid her hand on her heart and sobbed and sobbed, turning her streaming face back to his with an unchildish gesture.

“Come along out of the wind and we’ll talk about it.” Jim Chester got up from his knees and looked around him. There was a cluster of rocks a little way ahead! that would do. They would sit down behind them and shelter, at any rate for a minute or two. He pulled Delia up with a strong, warm hand.

“I shall bother you.” Delia had suddenly begun to shiver.

“No you won’t—not a bit of it. I want to hear all about you now we’ve got so far.” Jim Chester was leading the way. Then he suddenly turned round and began to laugh. “You can run!” he said; “it was like chasing one’s hat, scudding along over the sand just out of one’s reach.”

“Yes, I know: I run awfully fast. Timothy always says that.”

“And who is Timothy?” They had reached the little cluster of rocks and Jim was preparing to sit down. Look here, I’ll give you a piece of my Burberry to sit on, he said, it’s safer on this damp sand. Come close to me like that—that’s it. Now then—comfy?” he levelled his sudden brilliant smile on the girl at his side.

“Yes, very.” Delia’s eyes were suddenly quick and starry under her pencilled eyebrows.

“Good: now then, tell me all about it from the very beginning. To start with, who is Timothy?” Jim Chester suddenly felt that he wanted to know this first.

“My brother.” Delia spoke a little breathlessly. Was this all a dream, she thought, this sitting close under a rock with the man she worshipped? Being spoken to by him as an equal! all alone with him, with the darkness coming down on them?

“Your brother. Yes; and now then, go on. After all, I want to know a lot. I thought you were a little French girl, you see, Mademoiselle Dahlia—my very excellent caddy; and now I find that you are a little English girl, and my equal . . . you see that makes a lot of difference, doesn’t it?”

“How does it?” Delia’s heart suddenly sank.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Jim Chester encircled his knees with his linked hands and stared out to sea. “But that doesn’t matter now. Tell me, if you will, all about yourself. Don’t be afraid of boring me—you won’t: I want to know.”

So Delia poured it all out, and at the end of her eager recital Jim Chester was able fairly accurately to visualize the pathetic poverty of the Villa Bliss—a very sad story. He turned and stared down at the girl by his side.

“So you determined to be the breadwinner,” he said, and his eyes dwelt on her.

“Yes; I couldn’t stand seeing Timothy minding not having things,” said Delia. “You wouldn’t be able to either, if you knew Timothy. He’s like that: he makes you feel like that. And now you see I feel that it was all meant. We shouldn’t have gone to the dentist if I hadn’t earned anything, and he would never have seen Mr. Stoneham.”

“Have you heard anything more from him yet?”

“No, not yet. But it was only yesterday that it happened. It seems like three weeks ago,” said Delia, and her eyes were wide.

“Does it? Why’s that?”

“I don’t know: only it does,” said Delia, breathing a little quickly.

“Well, I’m glad I’ve found out all about you,” said Jim Chester slowly. “Only, of course, it alters things. I mean, I can’t have you lugging my clubs round the links any more.”

“Why not?” Delia’s voice was quick and sharp.

“Why, of course I can’t: I wouldn’t allow it, to begin with. They’re far too heavy for you, too! I always thought that, even when I didn’t know who you were. And now, of course——”

Jim Chester’s silence was expressive.

“But I earn money by it—I must.” There was sick terror in Delia’s voice. Not carry his clubs anymore? Why, then she would not see him any more. “Why did I tell you who I was?” she cried, and she cried it with real anguish in her voice; “you wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t told you, and I shouldn’t have told you if I hadn’t brought you those golf-balls. Forget it. Major Chester, I implore you to.” Delia suddenly struggled up on to her feet, and then fell on her knees in the wet sand, clutching at his hands. She suddenly felt that she was fighting for her life. If she never saw him again to speak to she would die—die in the most awful mental torment that any human being had ever known. “Say that it shan’t make any difference,” she cried, and Jim Chester saw her eyes wide and imploring through the darkness.

“My dear child, it must make a difference.” Jim Chester spoke sensibly and he also started to get up on to his feet. In some obscure way he felt oddly shaken. To begin with, this was all being so very odd. It was practically dark, and there they were alone on the beach, far away from anyone. This child was supposed by her mother to be safely in bed, and here she was ranging about on the sands dressed up in the oddest collection of old clothes. Even Jim Chester could see that they were odd, although he did not, as a rule, take much count of women’s clothes. Then there was passion, unmistakable, in Delia’s blazing eyes—beautiful eyes, set in an equally beautiful little oval face. Jim had always vaguely thought his caddy very good-looking, and now that he saw her without her hat he knew that she was.

“Come along home,” he said, and he said it very definitely and firmly. “It’s time you were in bed. I’ll take you as near as I can without being seen.”

“I will never go home again unless you promise me that I may go on being your caddy,” said Delia, and she said it with a dreadful finality.

“Don’t be a little goose.” Jim Chester laughed nervously. Delia, hatless, was staring up into his face, and he suddenly got an uncontrollable longing to snatch her into his arms and kiss her. She was like a little fierce wild animal standing there in front of him, hurling despair and defiance at him. The delicate oval of her face seemed to glimmer in the half-light, and he stared down at it with something queer and untamed leaping into his own eyes.

“Come along home,” he said again, after a little pause; “it’s perfectly insane the way we are standing here arguing. Hang on to my arm when you get clear of this rock; it’s blowing like the devil outside.”

“Say you’ll still have me.” Delia spoke with a queer note of persistence in her voice, and she stood with her feet a little apart, the heels of them dug down into the sand. Major Chester liked her, something had told her that, although she did not know what it was. Something in his voice—his eyes, had made it clear. Although it was so dark now that she could hardly see his face, she knew that he was looking at her, and looking at her in a different way from what he had ever done before. “Say that you’ll still have me,” she breathed, and as she breathed it she gave her head a little dive forward and laid her face on his hand.

“My dear child!” Jim Chester caught his breath and made a supreme and successful struggle to retain his self-control. It had very nearly gone, though; he had suddenly visualized that little scarlet mouth crushed and trembling under his own. Delia adored him, he could see that, and there was something about the fragrant and innocent youth of her that made a very strong appeal to his senses. He laughed a little shakily as he drew her head up with a gentle finger under her chin. “Have it your own way,” he said, “you little wretch! And now you’re to go home this instant: I’ll take you as far as I can, if you’ll lead the way.”

“I’d rather go alone,” said Delia; and although her voice held a triumphant note in it, it suddenly sounded tired. She felt tired, as if all the strength and spirit had suddenly gone out of her. “You stand here just for about five minutes,” she said. “That gives me time to get up to the tram-lines, and then I’m not afraid. Do you mind?”

“Not a bit; but are you sure?”

But Delia had already gone, charging out into the wind like a little yacht driven before the sea. Jim Chester watched her going for a yard or two, but then she was swallowed up in the darkness, and he turned and dragged his cap a little lower over his eyes and started to walk home himself, but with a very seriously perturbed mind. And twelve o’clock that night still found him staring wakefully at the wall on which the revolving light from the adjacent lighthouse winked and went on. Why couldn’t the beastly thing stop for a minute or two? it was enough to drive anyone—— Jim Chester drove his dark head into his pillow with a muttered curse.

Chapter XIII

Someone else in the Medina was wakeful that night too. Maude Pritchard, after a very hot bath in the beautiful bathroom which separated her room from her mother’s, sat down in her dressing-gown close to the radiator and began to think with a dreadful sort of desperation. For, for the first time in her rather narrow conventional life, Maude was desperately in love. Jim Chester possessed her: the thought of him dwelt with her always: the sound of his voice sent strange rippling sensations of hot and cold from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. She had never felt anything like this before: she had had one or two commonplace love-affairs with young men she had met at hotels, but they had been young men as far removed in quality from Major Chester as she herself was far removed in quality from people like Mrs. Langley. Maude did not mince matters as she sat, a dainty enough figure in her blue satin dressing-gown, close to the white-painted pipes of the radiator. She and her mother were common: common with the sort of hopeless commonness that you can’t get away from. It dogged their steps: it made ridiculous their attempts to associate with people like the people staying at the Medina. The people would not have anything to do with them, but still they went on trying. Maude would try before she came out of the lift to go into the lounge: she would swallow and grit her top teeth on her lower ones and make up her mind that when she walked down the little space between the glass-topped tables she would walk naturally, smiling a little as if at some secret joke, like Mrs. Langley did, and that if anyone spoke to her she would stop quite naturally and say, “Hallo,” and then go on talking. And then when it came to the point she knew that she could do nothing of the kind. She walked hurriedly down the little space and sat down on the first chair that she came to, and tried to look as if she was absorbed in the paper that she might, by a stroke of luck, find lying there. Conscious with a sick certainty of the fact that the well-dressed crowd were inwardly wondering what on earth people of her class were doing at the Medina at all. Conscious too, with a sort of mortified anguish that soon her mother would arrive on the scene, almost more dreadfully wrong than she was herself. And yet, although Maude did not hesitate to snub and quench her mother herself, she hated with a sort of fierce hatred the feeling that these people round her were looking down on her. After all, her mother was good and kind; what did little things like manners matter? They ought not to matter, they did not matter. Maude tried to feel quite sure of this last, as she rose with a hopeless sigh from her seat by the radiator, and after tying her net cap round her rather impudent little face, with its turned-up nose, got dejectedly into her supremely comfortable bed.

And about a mile and a half away from the Medina, Delia, having successfully negotiated the outhouse roof that gave almost on to her window-sill—you only had to make a very wide step to get on to it—slid into her room and began to undress in a condition of mind bordering on exaltation. Something far, far away in her had suddenly woke up to the fact that in some mysterious way she and Major Chester were united in spirit. How she knew it she did not know, but she felt as if something had descended on her and was enveloping her. As the Virgin Mary must have felt after the Angel had left her, thought Delia, struggling into her common little nightdress with its choking collar-band. And to-morrow she would meet him again with this wonderful new understanding between them—too, too heavenly even to be thought about without almost dying with joy, thought Delia again, getting incoherently into bed and dragging the lumpy duvet up to her chin, and thereupon falling asleep instantly.

But things never turn out as one expects them to. And when Maude Pritchard waked with a start at three o’clock in the morning, she waked with a chill prescience of something wrong. With her mother?—she dragged on her dressing-gown, and opening the bathroom door very cautiously, she crept through it, and into the room beyond. It was dark, but as she went, her bare feet kicked up against something lying on the floor.

“Mother!” Maude stumbled gropingly towards the electric light switch and turned on the light.

“Don’t be anxious, dearie.” Mrs. Pritchard thought she was saying that, but in reality she was only making strange staccato noises in her throat. Maude was terrified—mad with fright and pity. She flung herself on the electric bell.

The nice young manager, although dreadfully bothered inwardly, was kindness itself, when after about an interval of ten minutes he arrived, escorted by the agitated night porter. “We must have a doctor before moving her.” He got up from one knee, and spoke in a low tone to Maude, after giving a quick order to the night porter.

“Fetch Major Chester.” Maude was leading the way into her own room with the tears coursing down her face. “He will stay with me until the doctor arrives. I cannot be left alone—I shall go mad.”

“Shall I not send the housekeeper?”—the manager was concerned at this strange order. Mademoiselle was not particularly intimate with Major Chester, he knew that as well as everyone else did. That she would like to be was another matter altogether, and one that the nice manager felt concerned him a little. Clients must not be involved while they were staying under his roof.

But Maude threatened to become hysterical, and the manager, with as good a grace as possible, shrugged his shoulders a little and went quickly out of the room. The hotel must not be roused; that would be worse than anything. He went along the pink-carpeted gallery to Major Chester’s room, No. 33; he tapped quietly on the white-painted door and went in.

“What does she want me for?” Jim Chester had waked at once, and was up on his elbow, clicking on the table lamp at his side.

“I cannot say, monsieur.” The manager looked both bothered and concerned.

“Has Mrs. Pritchard had a stroke?” Jim Chester had begun to get leisurely out of bed. In a way, he was not at all surprised at what had happened. His dreams had been confused and agitating; somehow this all seemed to be part of them. “I suppose you have sent for a doctor,” he said.

“Yes, monsieur.” The manager was by now feeling more bothered than ever. He had begun to realize what it would mean if Mrs. Pritchard were to die. Her room, on the first floor, and in a gallery, would be in full view of the lounge. People could not die in hotels; she must be removed, to die somewhere else.

But the doctor was very definite on that point when, about half an hour later, he arrived. “It is an attack of cerebral haemorrhage,” he said, speaking to Jim Chester, in Maude’s room. “But she must not be moved from her bed where we have just placed her; that would mean instant death, and I would not undertake the responsibility. She must stay where she is, and I will send in a couple of nurses.”

“I see.” Jim Chester, still rolled up in his dressing-gown, passed his brown hand uneasily over his unshaven chin. He too, by now, was feeling perturbed. Maude had practically flung herself into his arms when he had arrived on the scene, escorted by the anxious manager, and Jim, being tender-hearted, had not known quite what to do. Maude could cry in his arms as long as she liked, he thought ruefully, provided she did not do it officially, so to speak.

“Monsieur and mademoiselle are fiancés?” inquired the doctor sympathetically, scribbling meanwhile at lightning speed in his notebook.

“No, certainly not!” said Jim Chester, feeling suddenly queerly alarmed.

“Ah!” The doctor did not for an instant believe this agitated denial. “Well, I will go at once and make arrangements,” he said; “meantime, perfect quiet in the patient’s room, and I will return in an hour or two.”

“I see,” and there Jim Chester was left standing in the middle of Maude’s bedroom, feeling very decidedly disturbed in his mind. He did not at all want to be dragged into this affair. He began to wonder, as he walked back slowly into Mrs. Pritchard’s bedroom, whether he could not plead change of plan and leave the hotel that very day. After all, he was not—— And then his mind swung back again. If he went off suddenly that funny little girl would mind. But this was impossible; he realized it the more as Maude, seeing him enter the room again, ran to him with a little cry.

“Look here, you’d much better have the housekeeper to stay with you until one of the nurses turns up.” Jim Chester suddenly spoke decidedly. Here he was, alone in the dead of night with this girl and her practically moribund mother. And not even properly dressed. The thing was impossible, and might land him Heaven knew where. Robins had hinted at something of the kind, and that with the mother alive and well. But with the mother about to die—for Jim Chester had been gravely concerned at Mrs. Pritchard’s queer grey rigidity—Heaven knew what might not happen.

“You aren’t going away, to leave me alone with her?” Maude’s common little face was all smeared with tears as she stood very close to him, speaking in a terrified whisper.

“No; I shall wait until someone else comes, but I will ring the bell so that they do come,” said Jim firmly, and he walked to the wall and put a decided finger on the ivory bell-push. And as he put it there, to his uncomfortably disturbed imagination it seemed as if the rigid figure on the bed was looking at him—staring at him from under half-closed eyelids. He could have cried out with relief when the stout night watchman appeared at the door again.

“Ask Madame Richot if she will come and remain with Mademoiselle until the nurse arrives.” Jim Chester, speaking in atrocious French, was angrily self-conscious as he stood by Maude’s side. Both of them in dressing-gowns—the hotel would be buzzing with it in the morning.

“I think you might stay with me when I am so frightened.” Maude was still whispering, and was standing dreadfully close to him. Even although her mother was lying apparently lifeless on the bed, she was thrilling with joy at having the man she adored standing so close to her. It was bringing them nearer together, this dreadful thing that had happened. Sometimes when men were very sorry for you——

But with an almost audible gasp of relief Jim Chester saw the ample form of Madame Richot entering the room. And with a little additional muttered word of sympathy he slipped past her and out of the room. Oh, the relief of being able to get away! He almost tore off his dressing-gown and flung himself into bed. To-morrow he would have to adopt a very different attitude about the whole thing, otherwise he really would find himself involved. It was long before he slept, and the garçon had put his petit déjeuner down on the table by the window and gone away before Jim Chester rolled over on to his side and opened his eyes the next morning.

Chapter XIV

But the next morning was worse. Mrs. Pritchard died at eight o’clock, without regaining consciousness, and Colonel Robins expressed himself with vigour when he met Jim Chester coming out of his bedroom at ten o’clock.

“For God’s sake leave the thing alone!” he said angrily. “The girl’s got relations, hasn’t she? They are the proper people to come and see to things at a time like this. Send a couple of telegrams for her, if you want to, but leave it at that. Come along and play golf; old Peters is champing in the lounge.”

“Let him champ!” Jim Chester spoke shortly and with a certain amount of irritation. Part of his irritation was caused by the fact that he knew his friend was right. Practically since eight o’clock that morning Maude had been in his arms in tears. And it had been almost impossible without deliberate brutality to get her out of them. “You liked her and were kind to her,” she had sobbed, and clung to him.

“Yes, I know I did. But, look here—let me——”

But this had been a signal for a fresh outburst; and it was only when Madame Richot stepped in, and insisted on Maude having her bath and going away to her own room, that Jim had been able to get away into his own room and shave and dress and have his petit déjeuner, as he had been longing to do for the last hour. And to hear his own private feelings confirmed by this old friend of his made him feel more cross and irritated. Someone had to stand by the girl, he said impatiently.

“I know; but there are heaps of women burning to do it. You know what women are in an affair of the kind—keen as mustard. They think it’s because they’re sorry for her, dear things, but it only is really that they’re dying to be in at the death, so to speak, help to get the mourning, and all that. But the effect’s the same. Turn the girl over to them and get out of it, Chester. There’s Mrs. Langley in the lounge, dying to be of use; she’s just told me so.”

“Mrs. Langley!” Jim Chester thrust his hands deep into his pockets and frowned. How he would love to take his friend’s advice! He wanted to get down to the links. Delia would be expecting him, and her greeny-grey eyes would be starry under her lifted eyebrows. And then his frown turned to a scowl. “Mrs. Langley!” he said. “She deliberately ignores the wretched woman when she’s alive, and then wants to fall on the daughter’s neck when she’s dead. Miss Pritchard won’t have any of that, and I don’t blame her.”

“Oh, my God!” Colonel Robins, thoroughly exasperated, turned impatiently on his heel. “Very well, then I’ll tell Peters that you’re not coming,” he said, and Colonel Robins went fussily along the corridor and down the shallow marble stairs, leaving Jim staring after him—staring with a sort of heavy obstinacy dawning in his eyes.

Robins irritated him; all these well-bred conventional people in this hotel irritated him. It was the same ghastly social red-tape that you met everywhere. What the hell did it matter who anybody was, provided they behaved decently? Poor simple old Mrs. Pritchard had been made miserable by these people; that had been what had ranged him along by her side in the first instance. He had seen the mother and daughter come into the lounge, almost trembling with the hope that someone would take some notice of them. And time after time he had seen them ignored, until at last he had stepped into the breach and made it easy for Maude to scrape acquaintance with him.

But now, of course, it was going a bit too far. And by five o’clock that evening he was even more sure that it was. Maude could do nothing without him; she could not even eat.

“Do come and sit at my table; it will be so awful facing all those people alone.” Her common little face was stained with much crying.

“Well, don’t go down; have some food up in your room—they’ll do any mortal thing that you like.” Jim’s face was a mixture of concern and extreme kindness. The very idea of facing the packed salle à manger with the recently bereaved Maude was almost more than he could contemplate with equanimity. And yet, in a way it would serve them all damned right. They had ignored the girl and her mother, and more or less run after him. Let them all see now that he did not care a snap of the fingers for their stupid social prejudices.

So he did it. But he was very glad when the meal was over. The Pritchards’ table was one of the most conspicuous, right in the middle of the crowded room. And Maude made the most of her opportunity. The best-looking man in the room had ranged himself on her side. Genuinely grieved at the death of her mother, she was; but rapturously delighted at the turn events had taken she also was, and she showed it.

And one or two people were really concerned about it. Kind Mrs. Kemp took Colonel Robins aside when the two had left the salle à manger and walked straight through the lounge and out into the lift with him. She and her husband were home on leave from India and returning to it in the autumn. She beckoned Colonel Robins over to their table for coffee, and pulled up her chair a little closer to his as she spoke.

“Colonel, don’t let that nice Jim Chester get involved with that girl,” she said. “We’re all deeply sorry for her, and will do any mortal thing we can, but she’s got her eye on him, you can see. Get him away. I’ll look after the girl until her relations arrive.”

“I don’t believe they are arriving,” Colonel Robins was fuming fussily. “You know the fearful obstinacy of the man. He’s got some idea in his head that while Mrs. Pritchard was alive she was badly snubbed. And so now she is dead he’s going to partisan the girl. And he’s not going to stop doing it for anything we may say. In fact, he’ll do it more, if I know Jim Chester.”

Mrs. Kemp was silent. It was a fact that Mrs. Pritchard had been ignored in the hotel. But then you did not come to a hotel to make friends. You simply slid into friendship with people of your own kind, if you wanted to and if they seemed to want to, too. The Pritchards were simply of another world. They thought in another language—almost spoke in another language. It would be nothing short of a disaster if Jim Chester got himself involved in any way. Mrs. Kemp knew his people—charming, all of them. Only a father and a couple of sisters left now, but still, people that had to be reckoned with. And the father would leave a good deal of money when he died. Mrs. Kemp happened to know that too. Also, Jim was thought very highly of in his battery, a battery of Field Artillery. A common wife would be worse than a disaster—it would be a tragedy.

So she also resolved to speak to Jim. And she very soon got the opportunity. The lounge was practically deserted when, in about half an hour’s time, he strolled into it. He looked bothered, Mrs. Kemp thought, and she looked up from her knitting and beckoned to him with a pleasant smile. And he returned it, briefly and brilliantly. He was very fond of Mrs. Kemp. More than once her husband had been Commissioner in the district in which his battery was stationed. He came straight across to her, tall and powerful in his tweeds.

“You dear! how nice!” He pulled up a wicker chair and sat down in it and smiled at her again.

“Impertinent man! Don’t call me ‘dear’ in that familiar way.” Mrs. Kemp’s white head was bent again over her knitting. Jim Chester had an irresistible way with women; her eyes were full of laughter.

“Darling, then!” Jim Chester’s eyes were dancing. Oh, the relief of having got successfully away from Maude. She was settled now until dinner-time, and he would be able to get down to the links.

“Worse and worse!” Mrs. Kemp raised her head. “Jim, you’re a fiend where women are concerned,” she said; “you know it as well as I do. And being a very old friend of yours, I’m going to give you a word of advice. Be careful about that little girl upstairs. She’s not of your jât, Jim, and before you know where you are, you’ll find yourself involved, if you are not careful. Some relations will turn up from somewhere, and she’ll tell them that you have been very kind to her, or something, and then fall into your arms in front of them, and you’ll have a terrific work to shake yourself clear of the whole thing. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.” Mrs. Kemp had flushed a little in her eagerness, and she dropped her face to her knitting again.

Jim Chester was silent. This old friend of his was right, and he knew it as well as she did. Robins only put his back up; Mrs. Kemp spoke sensibly and without prejudice. “Yes, I know,” he said, and he stared past Mrs. Kemp to where a little group of people stood chattering and laughing round the concierge’s little pen. “But you know it’s jolly awkward, now. I can’t quite see myself why it’s so awkward, but it is. She seems to lean on me for everything—positively can’t move without me!” He suddenly smiled, with a tinge of amusement in his eyes.

But Mrs. Kemp was not amused. She was very seriously concerned. She had seen this sort of thing happen before. And it generally happened to a man of Jim Chester’s type—a man who had a vast knowledge of women and yet, when obviously the wrong woman came along, was somehow landed. Through his own innate courtesy and chivalry as a rule. Mrs. Kemp was pretty sure that this was generally the cause of it. But it should not happen to the nice man sitting beside her now, if she could do anything to avoid it doing so, and she laid down her knitting and spoke with decision.

“Leave Miss Pritchard to me, Jim,” she said. “I’ll undertake her, at any rate until the funeral is over. By then some relation will arrive on the scene or she herself will go away. It’s not suitable that she should cling to you like this. It’s outrageous: the whole hotel is talking about it.” Mrs. Kemp suddenly flushed and began to look angry.

“George will be pleased! You dear, how sweet you look when you’re cross!” Jim’s eyes were dancing with pleasure. Then he would be able to see Delia again. He would buzz off directly he had had his lunch, and dodge old Robins and his crowd. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” he said; and as he spoke he stooped to retrieve the ball of pink wool that in her perturbation Mrs. Kemp had let fall.

“Mind! No, of course I don’t. Nor will George, when I explain it to him. But don’t say I look sweet when I’m cross. Jim, because you know I don’t. Where women are concerned you are perfectly hopeless.” Mrs. Kemp held out a beautifully manicured hand and took the ball of wool away from the man sitting beside her.

“And where men are concerned, so are you.” Jim’s retort was instant and accompanied by a wide, good-humoured smile. Mrs. Kemp was a dear; she always put things right. Now he would go up and change, so as to be quite ready directly the gong sounded. “Are you positive you don’t mind?” he said, and as he spoke he heaved himself out of his chair and stood up.

“Positive. But if you get caught on the way up I shall mind. In fact, I shall mind so much that I shall wash my hands of you and your affairs for ever and ever,” said Mrs. Kemp, and she spoke with a note of seriousness underlying the laughter that shone in her eyes.

“Trust me,” said Jim Chester. “I can be fearfully discreet if I’ve got to be. I shall slip up by the back staircase; it has a perfectly charming way of coming out quite close to my bedroom. Good-bye, my very dear friend,” and with one of his brilliant smiles Jim had gone.

And Mrs. Kemp followed him with her eyes. “No wonder the girl wants him,” she thought as she bent her eyes again on her knitting. “Who wouldn’t?” And Mrs. Kemp sighed. Jim Chester had the extraordinary and unusual faculty of making every other man seem dull. Even the most delightful and accommodating husband was dull when placed in immediate juxtaposition with him. Mrs. Kemp had seen it happen more than once, and therefore she was not going to allow it to happen to her; she made the decision swiftly. She was getting old; she was not going to allow that feeling that she wished she wasn’t to take possession of her. It was fatal to all happiness or common sense. Now to get hold of the girl. Mrs. Kemp started to put away her work preparatory to going upstairs to find her.

Chapter XV

But when found, Maude showed her teeth. Minutely and courteously, certainly, but they appeared, and Mrs. Kemp came away from the interview feeling flattened and more than a little cross. Maude Pritchard did not want the sympathy of anyone in the hotel now that her mother was dead. When she was alive she would have liked it; now the time was past and she preferred to be left alone.

“She means to get Jim!” Mr. Kemp was reading the paper in their private sitting-room, and he crossed and uncrossed his funny stockinged legs underneath it. He then proceeded to double it up, and, folding it cracklingly, he stared over it at his wife.

“She shan’t have him.” Mrs. Kemp spoke with heat. She felt that she intensely disliked the common little miss in the upstairs bedroom. Maude had been almost rude: not quite, but near enough to it to be very unpleasant.

“She’ll get him. Like poor old Hervey. By the way, I see they’ve made the decree absolute. And he has the boy. What a mercy! He absolutely worshipped that kid. But what a hell that woman has made that man’s life. Upon my soul!——” Mr. Kemp stared solemnly at his wife and then began to unfold the paper again.

“Yes; but I’m not going to allow it to happen to Jim.” Mrs. Kemp crossed to the window and pulled the curtain of it aside. It was a glorious day, and the Atlantic was as blue as the Mediterranean had been blue the last time she and her husband had come through it. She would go along to the Point and sit down just below the lighthouse. She felt ruffled, perturbed, and the heavenly air and view would put her right.

And that was exactly what Jim Chester felt they would do for him, as, a hurried and solitary déjeuner over, he went down the narrow stony path to the links in great strides. He would play a round quite alone; that would mean that he would have Delia to himself, and although he did not even confess it to himself, that was what, with an unquenchable longing, he wanted at the moment. She was such a sweet little kid, such a little, soft thing.

And luck was with him. Disappointed of seeing him in the morning, Delia had flown home earlier than usual (mercifully, she had had to caddy for a woman who had only played the nine holes), bolted a hurried déjeuner and flown back again. And now she sat waiting for him, straining her eyes in the direction of the Medina, every fibre of her alert, every atom of her a-quiver with desire and longing for him. Jim Chester watched her for quite a long time before she saw him. He had come down the path from the back; she was expecting him to come from the path that led down from the tram-lines. And now they were there together quite alone. No one was back yet from the twelve-thirty déjeuner. Even all the caddies were chatting in groups in the narrow street of Crepuscule. Not till nearly two o’clock would they straggle back to the golf-house.

“Hallo!” Jim Chester spoke very quietly, and as he spoke he still kept his eyes on hers. But as she turned he wished that he hadn’t. It was hardly fair. There was such a passion and worship in the depths of the glance that she flung round to him.

“Hallo!” Delia suddenly stood up. “I thought you weren’t coming any more,” she said, and she walked towards him, almost unsteadily.

“Did you? And why did you think that?” Almost unconsciously Jim had whipped off his felt hat, but now he put it on again and dragged it rather low over his eyes as he watched her from under the brim of it.

“I don’t know. I thought that perhaps—after last night——” Delia’s grey eyes were drawn up to and held by the blue ones looking down into hers. What was this extraordinary feeling, she wondered—the feeling of being quite, quite alone with him, with everything around them that was solid and tangible being suddenly made of no substance or account at all. A sound— surely it was a sound—as if they were in the middle of a great flock of birds, suddenly whirring and beating close up against them with their wings, making them part of that great limitless flight—their souls, not their bodies.

“And why shouldn’t I have come back after last night?” Jim was still holding her eyes with his.

“I don’t know, but somehow I felt.” Delia’s gaze was steady and riveted. And then it slipped from his eyes to his lips. Those steady, slightly curved lips: surely one side of his mouth was a little higher than the other? And then her fierce, sudden, searing desire communicated itself to him, and he swung round abruptly.

“Come along in here,” he said, and he stood back to let her pass into the golf-house first. And once inside, and a quick comprehensive glance having assured him of their solitude, he took a swift step forward. “You little sweet!” he said, and he caught her close into his arms.

“Oh!” Delia’s soft mouth had opened a little on her sobbing breath, and Jim felt her little square teeth under his cool muscular lips. “Shut your mouth, darling,” he said, and he said it almost with a laugh through his passion. It was like kissing a little surprised baby, he thought, suddenly blind and deaf again in the consciousness of the wildness of the obediently and abruptly closed lips under his.

“Stop now—I can’t——” Delia was suddenly pushing against him with both hands, wildly, and almost with terror. “Why, you make me——” The tears began to course down her face, and she backed against the wall away from him. “Why, you make me—but it isn’t that. I love it, only—— Tell me, why do I feel like this?” She suddenly ran to him with both her hands outstretched.

And the sight of her like that recalled Jim Chester to himself. How utterly, how completely a cad he was. Why, this child, in his pay as a caddy—— Every decent instinct ought to have made him—— He caught her hands against his coat. “Why, I am a brute,” he said. “Mademoiselle Dahlia, forgive me.”

“Why, but I loved it!” Delia was suddenly conscious of a lessening of the feeling of exaltation. The flock of birds—they were still circling around them, but with the beating of wings going farther and farther away. And things began to stand out: she could see the lockers, and the notice-board, with papers pinned on it with drawing-pins. One of the notices was crooked; one of the drawing-pins had come out and the corner of the notice was turned up.

“Yes; but I had no business——” Jim broke off as he began suddenly to realize how very much he hoped that when they both walked out of the golf-house, as they must do in another second or two, they would not walk straight into anyone. Mercifully it was early. Delia had no business in the golf-house at all; the caddies were only allowed in their own shed. If she was seen with him there, the very worst interpretation would be put on it. “Go outside and wait for me there,” he said, and, suddenly conscious that he was still holding her little hands close to his coat, he dropped them and gave her a little push. “I won’t be a second,” he said; “I’ll just get my clubs. You go on to the first tee.”

Delia went, obediently and mechanically. Everything around her was still more or less of a blur. But through her maze of feeling she also knew that for her to be found with Major Chester in the golf-house would be a mistake. You had to be careful when you were a caddy. Maria, ever watchful where her two charges were concerned, had impressed that on her.

She got to the first tee absolutely unobserved. She assured herself of that as she waited for him to join her. And as she waited she hurriedly adjusted her thoughts, helped to a level judgment by the sting of the wind on her face. Major Chester had kissed her, in a sense against his own will. By now he was probably wishing that he hadn’t done it. Something in her had drawn him to her almost without wanting to be drawn. Something flaming had communicated itself to him like lightning racing along a wire—like the spark leaping between two points, flame spanning something that should never have been spanned.

And here her common sense, coupled with her intense feeling of immense inferiority to the man she adored, came to her rescue. She waited for him at the first tee perfectly in command of herself again. And when he came, she stood very still to have the heavy golf-bag slung on to her shoulders.

“No, I really cannot.” Jim stopped dead as he began to open out the strap.

“Yes, you can. You simply must.” Delia’s eyes were upturned. “Don’t you see it is the only hope for me?” she said. “If I don’t see you like this I shall never see you at all. It makes you want me, to know that I try awfully hard when I am your caddy. Please put the strap round me. I love the feeling of it, because it’s heavy. I should like to die under the weight of it and know that you had killed me.”

“Delia, don’t!” Jim Chester caught in his breath with a little gasp. Why had he kissed the child? It had been hideous—infamous of him. He fumbled hurriedly with the strap, settling it round her shoulders. “Come along,” he said; “they’re coming down from the hotel; let’s get on, or I shall be dragged into a foursome, and that would quite finish me.”

Delia, hurriedly and on her knees, pinched up the little mound of sand, and then darted back to get behind Jim Chester as he drove. He drove cleanly and well, sending the little ball sailing along ahead of him, skimming low to the ground and falling abruptly in the middle of the fairway.

“Can you see it?” Delia was running to keep up, clutching the end of the heavy bag to prevent it bumping.

“Of course I can: what do you take me for?” Jim had recovered his usual equilibrium and spoke with a sudden laugh in his eyes. A feeling of well-being flooded all over him. He was out in the open air with this jolly little girl beside him. Such a darling, funny little creature in her odd get-up. “I say, I shall really have to buy you some decent clothes,” he said, standing close to her, dragging an iron from among the crowded club-heads.

“Why, are they wrong?” Delia’s delicate little face was troubled as she started to tramp on again—behind him a little, as all the caddies did. Somehow, to walk behind him gave her a delicious feeling of humility. As a slave would walk, so she walked. If he turned round and kicked her, she would cling to his foot as she stumbled and fell, and die with her lips on the sole of it.

“Dreadfully wrong, and worn-out into the bargain. At the end of this round I shall give you three hundred francs, and you are to go this evening and buy yourself a new beret and clothes to go with it. Can you get them for that?” Jim was talking to her with his head a little turned. No one at a distance could see that he was talking to his caddy. He suddenly felt a feeling of delicious adventure creep over him. She was such a little darling—so utterly unspoilt!

“Of course I can: it’s miles too much. But ought you to—ought I?” Delia was again running to keep up. After all, clothes helped. For all that money she could get a neat blue pleated skirt and a new blazer, and a pair of decent stockings and some shoes. But how could she hide it from Timothy and Maria that she had had some money given her. They would wonder where it came from and be fearfully suspicious and angry, especially Maria. “I don’t think I dare take it,” she said hurriedly, as he stopped again to pull out a club. “Maria would find out, and wonder. And Timothy might, too. After all, where could I get three hundred francs from except from someone like you? And why should you give it to me? They would want to know that, too.”

Of course they would. Jim Chester saw the sense of this as he smiled down into her eyes. Delia’s eyes were like little dark pools, deep, with a dancing light in them. “We’ll find another way,” he said. “I know a way, but I won’t tell you yet. You wait; I’ve got a great scheme.”

And somehow the way he spoke gave Delia an immense rapture in her soul. He spoke as if she belonged to him. As if he had a right to give her clothes. Oh, what absolute rapture this was being, she thought, running on ahead of him with her green slippers twinkling in the sunlight. She really was like a slave—a petted, rapturous little slave, whom her master really loved and therefore wanted to kiss. “Here it is!” she called, and she stood triumphantly with her meagre skirt blowing round her thin knees. “I’ve found it, all in this thick grass, too.”

“Clever little thing!” Jim had come up abreast of her, and he spoke with his eyes on her face. It literally shone—with a sort of inner light, as if the lamp of Delia’s soul was too strong for her gentle flesh. That it should not be for him to quench that light, thought Jim Chester. “There’s no doubt you’re a top-hole caddy!” he said. Jim spoke with enthusiasm, and with something else in his voice too—something that Delia vaguely sensed and responded to with a quick fluttering of her eyelids.

“I’m glad you think so.” She spoke quickly and with her eyes turned away from his. She could not look at him: it was too much—too, too utterly heavenly.

Chapter XVI

Maude Pritchard was quite pleased at the idea of extending a little gentle patronage to Mademoiselle Dahlia, as Major Chester would quite ridiculously insist on calling his caddy. Besides, it helped to draw her a little nearer to him, and she was glad of that. Mrs. Kemp had done her work well, and had taken Maude very definitely and firmly under her wing. “I have heaps of things that would do for her,” she said, and she smiled with her old little coquettish toss of her head. “Going into mourning has done that. I will do her up a parcel and give it to her some time.”

“Perhaps you had better let me do that.” Jim Chester was smiling good-humouredly. Things were going very well with him; Biarritz really was a topping place: golf every day, sometimes twice; and Mrs. Kemp being a perfect brick about Maude, keeping her well out of his way. And now, in a couple of days or so her own relations were coming, and she was going back to London. And then he would not have a cloud on his horizon. Perfect weather: a topping golf course: a superbly run hotel, and nothing to do except enjoy himself. Really, what more could any man want? He smiled, showing all his nice teeth. “Do me up a bundle of things, and I’ll pass it on to her one day,” he said.

“Oh, very well;” but Maude’s pert face clouded a little. This was not quite what she wanted, she thought. She did not care for Delia. Once since her mother’s death she had played a round of golf with Major Chester, and he had seemed to her quite ridiculously solicitous as to the shabby little creature’s welfare, actually asking her in atrocious French if she was tired; and when she replied in equally excellent French that she was not, beaming at her, almost as he would have beamed at an equal. “I think one ought to be very careful about these women caddies,” she said, and she said it rather acidly. “They are apt to presume, especially when they are caddying for gentlemen.”

“Do you think so?” Jim Chester was looking at Maude with his keen, kindly eyes a little amused. How much happier she would be when she was back in her Upper Tooting or Surbiton, or wherever it was, he thought. A poor little, rather underbred girl, set down in the midst of people who would have none of her. One could not help being sorry for her, however bored one might be.

“Very well, I will look out a few things, but I really cannot see why you should burden yourself with a parcel.” Maude was still feeling a little aggrieved, although the people at the Medina had really been very nice to her since her mother had died. The funeral had been well attended, a simple little service at the English church. Mrs. Pritchard had been smuggled out of the hotel on the day after her death, the back staircase proving of immense use. At any cost the visitors at the Medina must not be reminded of what would eventually happen to them. The manager had made that enormously clear to the doctor in attendance, with many wavings of his hands.

So Mrs. Pritchard had gone unobtrusively out of the grand hotel, as unobtrusively as she would have liked to have lived in it, if only it had not been for her Maude. And Maude shed a few very genuine tears as she leant on Mr. Kemp’s arm and looked down into the open grave.

“I wish I had been nicer to her.” Late that evening in Mrs. Kemp’s private sitting-room she sobbed out more of her grief. And Mrs. Kemp listened very kindly. She herself had not had an easy day. Her husband had fiercely rebelled at having had practically to take the place of the chief mourner. “Hang it all, I really cannot see——” he had fumed, and crossed and uncrossed his furry Harris-tweeded legs.

“My dear boy, if it isn’t you, it will have to be Jim. And that will be the end for him. Can’t you see it?” Mrs. Kemp was standing looking very nice and trim in her suitable country clothes.

“No, I can’t. Damn the man, why must he drag us into his affairs! Besides, I haven’t got a black coat. Ah, that settles it!” An enormous content overspread Mr. Kemp’s good-tempered face.

“Yes, you have, dear; I packed it myself. One never knows in this life—a wedding, an unexpected funeral. And, you see, I was right. Now then, do it with a good grace, George. And in a couple of days we shall be free of the girl. She tells me that she has a brother coming at the end of the week; well, then, that settles her so far as we are concerned. And then Jim will be safe.”

“Ridiculous!” But although Mr. Kemp fumed inwardly, outwardly he behaved as an English gentleman always does behave when he is called upon to do so. And that was why Jim Chester was content with the world and himself. The Kemps had been bricks, and he would never forget it. The funeral was well over, and he had not been made conspicuous at it. And now he would have a chance of seeing Delia unofficially, so to speak. If Maude would give him the clothes that evening after tea, he would take them down to her. He said so, smiling pleasantly at the girl standing very close to his elbow.

“So soon? I don’t know that I can get them ready to-day.” Maude’s smile was not so pleasant as it had been. Patronage was all right. But if it gave Jim Chester an excuse to see his caddy, she did not want to have anything to do with it. Maude was not in any sense finely tuned. But even she had seemed to vibrate to something unusual in the atmosphere as she and Jim Chester and two girl caddies had walked round the links the day before.

“Please yourself!” and with a curt inclination of his head Jim Chester had walked away. He was suddenly sick of Maude. Her open adoration bored him to extinction. He wanted to see Delia again—to see her wide-open grey eyes. And to have given her a lot of nice clothes would have been fun. He suddenly got wild ideas of going out and buying them all by himself. One of these nice smart French assistants would help him.

But it was not necessary. At five o’clock that evening, when he was writing a letter in his room, there was a sharp knock on his door. And when he called out the usual “Entrez” Maude walked in, carrying a fairly large parcel.

“Here they are!” Maude’s pert face was red. She had been crying, thought Jim kindly, moved to compassion, although he was annoyed at her coming to his room. She shouldn’t do it, he thought with a feeling of irritation. Why didn’t she know that?

“Oh, thanks; it’s awfully kind of you!” Jim had taken the parcel and was looking down at Maude. She had a neat head, he reflected, wondering vaguely what Delia would look like if she had her hair cut properly. Could he see that she did, he wondered—send her to one of these smart shops with which Biarritz was bristling, perhaps?

“No, it isn’t; I would do anything for you!” To Jim’s unconcealed dismay Maude began to cry again. Why should he be pursued like this? he thought, cursing inwardly and diving his hands deep into his pockets.

“You never seem either to look at me or speak to me now!” Maude was staring upwards through a mist of tears. Unlike Delia, Maude looked nice when she cried, and she was quite aware of it.

“Good heavens, I was talking to you only this morning; what more can I do?” Jim, goaded, spoke almost roughly. And then his eyes, wrenched from her with sudden alarm, flung over her head to the door. Hell! here was somebody coming in.

There was, and Mr. Kemp paused at the threshold. “Going to play golf, Jim?” he asked, and he stood a little back to let Maude pass him. “My dear Jim,” he said, as Maude scurried by, red and confused, “what on earth are you thinking about to let that girl come into your room? You’ll be landed, my boy, and don’t you blame anyone else for it but yourself, either.”

“Thanks, Kemp; would you mind minding your own business?” Jim Chester suddenly spoke with his eyes bright and hard. Really, people took too much upon themselves, he thought, watching his old friend as he hesitated and then flushed a little under his tan.

“Sorry, Jim,” he said, “but you know my wife and I are really fond of you. Be careful, there’s a good chap.”

“I say, I’m disgustingly rude!” Jim took an impulsive step across the floor and stood close to his friend. “I’m foully rude,” he said; “forget it, there’s a good fellow.”

“It’s forgotten.” George Kemp was laughing a little awkwardly. “Well, are you going to play golf, Jim? Old Peters is waiting in the lounge.”

“No, not this evening. I’m taking some belated garments to the dhobi.” Jim spoke with his eyes on the parcel that lay conspicuously on the bed. “A couple of dress shirts: this place takes rather a heavy toll of them.”

“I see.” But although Mr. Kemp spoke quite naturally, he knew that Jim for some reason or other was juggling with the truth. And for some reason or other it worried him as he walked down the narrow marble stairs to join the man who was waiting for him. But then he dismissed it as he walked to the links. Jim was not a young man fresh from the ’Varsity. He had had, Heaven knew, enough experience of women to keep him out of serious mischief now. Mr. Kemp laughed at his own fears as he breathed in the keen wind sweeping in from the Atlantic.

But he would not have laughed so lightheartedly if he had seen Jim Chester after he had left the room. Jim obviously had an appointment; he shot a swift glance at the watch on his wrist, and as he glanced he laughed a little, as if at some secret joke. And then he picked up the parcel lying on the bed and walked swiftly out of the room—out by the back stairs, in case anyone stopped him; it would be too awful to be late by even a moment or two.

Chapter XVII

Jim’s appointment had been made two days before. It was made at the end of a long round of golf, when to his keen eyes Delia had appeared pale and jaded. “I say, let’s go out somewhere one evening.” He spoke impulsively, standing close to Delia’s shoulder as she stooped to pick his ball out of the last hole.

“Where?” All the blood rushed to Delia’s head, and she remained stooping.

“Oh, I don’t know—anywhere. Would you like it?” For some reason Jim was passionately anxious to see Delia’s eyes. Would they be shining like stars? he wondered. They were. She raised them to him as she slowly straightened herself.

“You and me all alone together?” she said slowly.

“Yes.”

There was a little silence. Jim was watching Delia’s profile from under the brim of his hat. What was going on in her mind? he wondered. Nothing showed on her face—only the faintest trembling of her soft lower lip.

“I should like it,” she said, and she said it unemotionally. Timothy had told her that: not to let a man see that she worshipped him. But inwardly her whole being was convulsed. To have him all to herself—for perhaps two hours. To be able to touch him, talk to him, without always having to mind that she spoke French; that was, unless she was miles and miles away from everybody else, which she never was. “When?” she said slowly.

“The day after to-morrow.” Jim’s eyes were quietly satisfied. He knew women very well, and he could see that under Delia’s apparent calm there was a very tempest of feeling raging. “I’ll meet you on the sands,” he said, “just past the first tramway stop, through the trees.”

“Very well,” and that had been the end so far as arrangement had been.

But it was not by any means the end so far as Delia was concerned. Timothy wanted to know where she was going. She never went out before supper. “And what have you got there?” he said, and he pointed to a bulging American-cloth bag that she was carrying.

“Clothes that I am going to give to that old woman who lives down along the sands past the second tram terminus,” said Delia, and she said it with an almost frenzied disregard of the truth. She did not care what she said, so long as she got safely out of the house without being stopped. The bag was stuffed with the most lovely cakes and pastries, and about six perfectly made sausage-rolls. He had not said anything about food, but of course he must have meant it. You couldn’t go out anywhere at six and not eat. And Delia had bought them that afternoon in almost a convulsion of delight. The very thought of his taking one of them in his fingers—Delia had watched the lady with the silver tongs, picking them out of the shop window, hardly knowing whether she was standing on her head or her heels.

And now Timothy might be going to stop it all: She repeated the lie, glaring at him. And as she glared she wondered. This was what happened to you, then, she thought dully, when you loved anyone as she loved Major Chester. Nobody mattered, least of all your own family, because they had a certain dreadful amount of control over you. You had to get even with them somehow; never mind how you did it. You had to get them out of the way; never mind how you did that either.

“You aren’t,” and with that Timothy had walked away, with his hands in his shabby pockets. But his heart was very sore, and his eyes, under his dancing eyebrows, were inclined to be wet. Delia had utterly forgotten about him; he came no longer first with her. She had even forgotten all about his second appointment with the dentist. Timothy had been relieved at that, because he had loathed the idea of going. But still, it was horrid to think of her having forgotten it. And dejectedly he roamed about the garden after surreptitiously watching her tearing out of the front gate. She was after that Chester man, not a doubt about it. But their mother mustn’t know; and Timothy, staunchly loyal always, sat quietly eating and regaling his mother with an account of Delia’s philanthropy. But his heart was aching all the same, and his large head sat sadly on his thin shoulders.

Meanwhile, the slight delay had made Delia late, and she arrived breathless at their meeting-place. Supposing he had thought she was not coming and had gone. She ran through the tall, thin pine trunks, clutching at the worn handles of the bag. She would die if he was not there—she would literally die. Her feet sank noiselessly into the heaps of brown pine-needles, as she kicked them up in little showers round her. If he was not there she would die, she really would.

But he was, standing very still with his hands in his pockets, staring out to sea. You could just see the sea through the trees; they grew very thickly where they stood. They looked almost grey, the trees, standing slender and ghostly in the half-light. They looked almost ethereal in their slenderness, almost as if they were on tiptoe for a flight. You could look up through them to the sky, and almost feel that they belonged to the sky. Sort of part of a great mysterious whole in which everything that really mattered wasn’t earthly at all. Solid things, everyday things, fell away.

And Jim, turning abruptly at the sound of rustling footsteps, saw Delia standing there and forgot everything else but her face. It was pale, and she was just standing there looking at him. And he took a quick step forward and caught her against his rough coat.

“Sweet!” he had her strained to his heart. “Sweet!” his mouth left hers lingeringly.

“Oh!” Delia’s sobbing interjection came on an indrawn breath. She was looking up at him through the twilight. “I should like you to kill me, I love you so,” she said, and her trembling hands stole up and linked themselves together behind his neck.

“Kill you? Don’t you like me to kiss you, then?” Jim’s lips were close up against Delia’s lips. He could feel them trembling under his.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well then! don’t talk about killing.” Jim was kissing Delia with a fierce persistence. Almost as if someone was trying to stop him and he was determined not to be stopped. After all, she was only a child; his brain worked quickly. She adored him, but she would soon forget him. Delia was not by any means the first young girl who had adored him. But there was something about her that drove him—— He suddenly let her go, almost violently.

“Why, what?” Delia stood where he had left her, shorn of his arms, bereft. “Don’t you want me any more then?” she cried. “Yes, you are to! you do! Take me in your arms again, Major Chester.”

“You know—I have no business.” Jim spoke on rather a heavy breath. What on earth was he doing? he wondered. He had always supposed himself to be fairly decent so far as women were concerned. But this—but Delia—drove him——

“I know you didn’t mean anything.” Delia was standing clutching her hands together. Her brain was working as quickly as his. He was beginning to be conscience-stricken, beginning to feel that he was doing wrong in kissing her, when perhaps he didn’t mean anything serious by it. But he mustn’t feel that, he mustn’t feel anything except that he wanted her. That was all she wanted, to be wanted by him. Never mind how—never mind even for how long, so long as it was now. “Don’t let me go suddenly, like that.” She breathed the words, still looking at him.

“But, you know, I oughtn’t to.” Jim had caught her to his heart again, and was looking down at the scarlet line of her mouth. “You’re delicious, you’re heavenly”—he suddenly dragged off his hat and threw it into the trees.

“For you—only for you, because I adore you so.” Delia’s soft throat was uplifted.

“Do you? You little angel!” Jim was still watching her mouth. “I’m a brute, I’m a fiend,” he said, and he said it with a quiet laugh. “But, oh, my God——” He bent his head again.

“Will you always want to kiss me?” Delia had struggled a little apart and was pressing one hard little brown hand against his face. Beloved prickly face, she sensed the scrub of his chin with a fierce inrush of joy.

“Yes, while you’re a good little girl and find my golf-balls properly.” Jim’s eyes were laughing, but they were also wandering, and he suddenly laughed aloud. “Heavens! What’s in the smart bag?” he said.

“Food. For you and me.” Delia suddenly let her arms fall down by her sides. “I shall die, I’m so hungry,” she said suddenly.

“Are you?”

Food! Jim was taken aback for a moment or two. He had not contemplated more than an hour and a half of this delicious dallying with Delia. But now the idea of an impromptu picnic appealed to him. “Good!” he said. “I’m hungry too. We’ll find a very choice place and settle down in it. It’ll be a fearful relief to miss that gorge at the Medina for once.”

“Do you gorge?” Delia was leading the way a little farther into the woods. She had seen a place that would do, and had marked it down as she ran, where the trees went in a little circle, with moss in the middle of them.

“Sometimes.” Jim Chester was noting the extreme shabbiness of Delia’s back view. But her ankles were very slender and she walked with a queer lightness—almost as if her feet did not touch the ground, he thought, wondering how she gave that impression. Different clothes would make a huge difference in her. He suddenly remembered the parcel. “My hat!”—he stopped dead and swung round.

“What?” Delia also stopped on the instant and turned round. There, now he was going to say that he could not stay; that something made him have to get back. “No, no! not that, Lord!” Delia’s inward cry of despair was profound.

“Why, I brought a parcel with me. I must have left it. Ah, there it is!” Jim started to walk a little faster. “Hooray!” He had picked it up and held it under one arm. “It’s clothes, fearfully smart—for you.”

“Whose clothes?” Delia’s eyes, that had begun to shine again, clouded a little.

“That girl’s that I play golf with sometimes; she’s had to go into mourning.” Jim concluded that it was better to be frank. “She suggested that you might like some of them, as you were just about the right size,” he said.

“Oh!” Delia had stopped under the slender trees and was eyeing the parcel with some hostility. “It makes it seem rather as if I was a beggar,” she said slowly.

“Not a bit. Women always hand their old clothes over to each other,” said Jim readily. This was a set-back. Delia’s mouth had taken on an odd line.

“Do they?”

“Yes.” Jim had his eyes on Delia’s mouth again.

“Do you want me to have them?”

“Yes, I do. I should like to see you dressed in them.”

“Now?” Delia’s eyes were raised starily.

“Yes.” Jim spoke without thinking. In the depths of this dense wood, who would see? He could help her to change—hold the skirt while she stepped out of her old one with her dancing, shabby little feet; catch hold of her and kiss her darling little round shoulder while she fought with him, frightened.

“How could I, here?” Delia stared round. “I could, though, over there, where it’s very thick,” she said excitedly. “You stay here and watch, and look after the bag, will you?”

“I will.” Jim’s eyes were steady. What an extraordinary cad he was becoming, he thought soberly, as Delia retreated and vanished into a thick clump of undergrowth. To contemplate—— He stood staring back through the trees to where the sea could be seen faintly glimmering. He must get away from Biarritz, he thought suddenly, before he made a complete fool of himself, or worse. After all, Delia was only a child and he knew nothing whatever about her antecedents. The whole thing——

And then he forgot again as he heard a soft whistle and turned quickly round. Maude, having made up her mind to do the thing, had done the thing well. Delia was dressed very simply but very beautifully in soft beige colour. A lovely little three-piece suit of stockinette, white crêpe de Chine blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a bow of spotted silk to match. A soft felt hat, all in the same tone, and a gay pair of fawn stockings. And to crown all, a pair of square-toed crocodile-leather shoes upon her feet.

“By Jove!” and with that quiet exclamation Jim fell abruptly silent. Nothing could have brought more home to him the acute caddishness of his behaviour than this complete metamorphosis of his caddy. It was as if he had been staying, say, with the Kemps, only they hadn’t had any children, and had taken out and wantonly made love to their youngest daughter, a child not yet out of the schoolroom. It must certainly never happen again.

“Do you like it?” Delia had reached him and was looking up into his face. Something had altered Major Chester, she knew it at once, and her heart sank.

“Yes, awfully.” Jim reached out and took the very badly done up parcel that Delia carried from her hand. “Now then,” he said, “lead the way to this special place of yours and we’ll have our meal.”

“Very well.” Delia, damped and feeling an odd inward gloom, turned to lead the way. “Here,” she said, stopping after about five minutes’ walking and looking up at him.

“And very nice, too.” Jim stopped and laid the parcel and the queerly distorted bag down on the moss. “What’s inside it?” he asked.

“These.” Delia, suddenly nervous and apprehensive, began to take the things out. Fancy if they had all got stuck to the paper bags and looked ghastly and unappetizing, she thought miserably. He would be craving for the frightfully nice dinner that they always gave you at the Medina.

But Jim was enjoying himself. Somehow it was a relief that Delia had suddenly put herself out of the region of promiscuous love-making. He had not been able to do it with an entirely clear conscience, and for that reason something in it had jarred on him. Also, he was not only attracted to Delia by his senses. Something else—he suddenly turned and looked at her.

“Something has altered you.” Delia had stooped arranging the things on the moss and was watching him from over the top of them.

“No, it hasn’t. Now, look here.” Jim stood up. “You sit on the indiarubber bag,” he said, “and I sit on the parcel of old clothes. Otherwise we both die from rheumatic fever within the week, and it’s a horrid way to die.”

“It isn’t indiarubber.” Delia’s face brightened suddenly.

“Never mind, it’s waterproof, which is all that matters. Now then—I say, how frightfully nice!” Jim’s excellent teeth were meeting in a sausage-roll.

“Oh, joy! you like them. I was so fearfully afraid.” Delia was all smiles again. She sat, in her new clothes, looking exactly like an extremely pretty girl of his own class out at a picnic. Her delicate little profile, shaded by the soft furry felt hat, took on a new delicacy. In fact, she was an extremely pretty girl of his own class at a picnic, he thought rather ruefully. The whole situation had altered. She must never be his caddy again, that was quite certain. And he must never make love to her again, that also was quite certain. Why he had ever done so he did not know. It had been something outside himself; something surely emanating from her, that had caused him to snatch her into his arms in a way that he had had no business to do. He only devoutly hoped that he had not done her any real harm.

“I love seeing you sitting there, eating like that; I feel as if you were my child.” Delia’s little pale face was wreathed in smiles. “Have another.” She held out the cardboard box with the sausage-rolls in it.

“Thank you. I shall make a perfect pig of myself over these things; I never tasted anything so good in my life. You will have to smack your child before you have done with him.” Jim was laughing over his second sausage-roll, out of which he had taken a large bite. It was a rebel to him that Delia had, as it were, emerged from her tempest of feeling. Why did he worry? She was only a child.

“You can’t smack people you worship.” Delia spoke after a little pause. “I want to come round and sit close to you,” she said.

“Far better stay where you are,” said Jim, picking a crumb carefully off his coat.

“It spoils it for me; I get that feeling inside that I must touch you,” said Delia, and her eyes clouded.

“Fight against it,” said Jim, and he tried to smile naturally. But he couldn’t. He felt suddenly wretched. He felt like a man feels who has started a trail and sees the flame running along it and knows that he can’t do anything. Why had he ever taken any notice of Delia beyond being decent to her because she was his caddy and a girl? Why had he?

“Let me,” said Delia quietly.

“Oh, my dear child!” Jim was blindly feeling out for another sausage-roll. “Come along then,” he said, almost roughly.

“Ah!” Delia had struggled up from her seat on the American-cloth bag and was bringing it round with her. “Ah!” She had sat down close by his side and was smiling broadly. “Kiss my head,” she said, and she suddenly dragged off her hat.

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Jim, and this time he did laugh out loud. Delia’s frank and open love-making made everything easier. He smiled down at her. “Don’t be forward,” he said.

“Forward? How?” Delia’s smile abruptly died. “Don’t you want to, then?” she asked.

“Want to!” Jim suddenly sensed the feeling of the dark silky hair under his mouth. “Yes,” he said recklessly, and he bent and laid his lips lingeringly on her head.

“Ah——” Delia let her shoulders droop against him. “Now my neck,” she said, and she let her head fall a little forward.

“My dear child!” But Jim’s lips had felt their way round her neck to the little hollow of her throat—“where you swallow heaps of sausage-roll that’s frightfully bad for you,” he said, and he kissed it again and again.

“What about you?” Delia was laughing up into his eyes. This was being heaven, she thought; just utter, complete heaven—the feeling that he liked her, as well as her worshipping him. “You’ve eaten two and I’ve only eaten one,” she said, and she caught up his hand from where it lay on the moss. “Put it round me,” she said.

“No,” Jim was suddenly firm. He was conscious of the blood beginning to drum in his ears. “Sit up,” he said, “and finish this extremely choice meal. Otherwise I shall eat up everything that is left and you will go home hungry.”

Home! Ah! Delia was suddenly recalled to herself, and she sat up abruptly. “In a way, I hated to have to tell Timothy a lie,” she said; “but what could I do. One’s family is like that—it is so fearfully difficult to put them off.”

“Tell me what happened.” And as Jim Chester listened he got a fairly accurate idea of what Timothy’s opinion of the whole thing was, and he began to want to see Delia’s brother. And he also began to want to see her mother. He began to feel that if he could work the thing tactfully he might be able to do a great deal for this English family. He might even send Delia to school—to one of those places in Lausanne where they took girls of this age. His imagination fired to the idea. A couple of years at a really good finishing school would do worlds for this little wild, untutored thing who adored him. And when he came home again—— “How would you like to go to school?” he said suddenly.

“School? Why, I’ve finished it,” exclaimed Delia.

“Finished it! You little rabbit!” Jim laughed aloud. “You haven’t even the elements of an education,” he said, and he pinched her chin good-temperedly.

“Have one of these things with rum in it, they’re heavenly,” said Delia, and she smiled winkingly down on the second cardboard box. If he thought that, he couldn’t really take very much pleasure in her company. “Here,” she was holding the box out to him.

“Thanks; yes, they are good.” Jim was watching Delia’s face. It had clouded. She sat in her new clothes looking sad and forlorn. He suddenly felt that he must have a really comprehensive talk with this child and put the whole thing on another footing. Now, before it got too late; it would keep light for another hour or so, and she must get home before it was dark. Suddenly he felt that it was enormously important that she should get home before it was dark. The very idea of her wandering about alone was utterly wrong.

“Look here,” he said; “I want to have a great talk with you. We’ve both stopped eating, and I’ll light a pipe, if I may. That’s it”—he was blowing the smoke out in great puffs and flicking the dead match into the undergrowth. “Now then, listen to me; you’ve got to stop being my caddy; I don’t like it.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because I don’t think it suitable. You’re not of that class. You know you aren’t. Look at you sitting there dressed in those clothes; you’re as well bred as I am.”

“But I have to do something to earn some money.” Delia’s face was suddenly drawn. She began to reach out for arguments. He was going to stop what kept her alive. She would die.

“Not if I do what I have just thought of. I have got a gorgeous idea: I shall send you to school. To one of those places in Switzerland where they teach you how to behave.” Jim’s nice teeth were gripping the stem of his pipe and he was smiling.

“It would cost a fearful lot of money; you have to have masses of clothes for that sort of a place.” Delia’s brain was whirling. Major Chester send her to school!

“Well, I’m not quite a pauper, although I nearly am,” said Jim, and he laughed out loud. “But you see that’s the sort of idea I have in my head. Of course, it would want working out—I should have to see your mother and all that. But meanwhile the idea of your being a caddy makes me feel quite sick. You do see that, don’t you?”

“Yes, but——” and then Delia faltered and fell silent. After all, how could she explain to Major Chester that the little extra money she earned made all the difference to their life. To their food. Timothy’s butter. . . . Ah! Timothy: how could she leave him? She flung round impulsively and said so.

“Yes, but you told me that you thought Marcus Stoneham was going to take him up.” Jim was pressing the tobacco down in the bowl of his pipe with a little bit of stick that he had picked up from the moss. “What’s happened about that, by the way?—you never told me.”

“Why, I forgot about it. And about his second appointment with the dentist.” Delia’s face was suddenly full of an appalled dismay. “It was last Friday, and he never reminded me.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Jim smiled widely. “What boy would? Well, you see there’s that on the tapis for Timothy, so that does away with the fear of his being left alone. So you see, Mademoiselle Dahlia, there’s nothing for it! You’ll have to go to school. To be turned out a real smart young lady, dancing the Charleston and I don’t know what else!” Jim paused and smiled again.

“Yes, but——” Delia stood up. “I should never see you again,” she said, and she dropped her head on her hands with a gesture of rare desolation.

“Yes, you would.” For some reason or other Jim also got on to his feet. “You don’t suppose that I’m going to spend a lot of money on having a little savage turned into a respectable human being and not come and see how she’s getting on, do you?” he said, and although he laughed, there was a queer moisture at the back of his eyes. He suddenly felt awfully happy. This was making it all right about their odd friendship. He would go and see Mrs. Browne, and talk things over with her. Then something could be fixed up. “And meanwhile”—he suddenly took hold of Delia’s little hard hands—“no more caddying,” he said gently, “and till we fix up something about school, you’re going to be a sensible little girl, and let me give you what you would earn if you were being my caddy.”

“How can I take money from you like that?” Delia spoke in a heavy whisper. “I can’t; it would be too shameful.” She was staring up at him from under the brim of her soft hat.

“No, it wouldn’t be, not a bit. Not if you look at it in the right way. Think of it this way: that I have stopped you from being a caddy. If I hadn’t been here you would have gone on with it, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but——”

“There aren’t any ‘huts’,” said Jim. “And now, as I may not see you for the next day or two, I’ll give you some money. Not a word to anyone; it’s just a secret between you and me.” He began to get out his note-case.

“I feel——” Delia still had her eyes fixed on his.

“You haven’t anything to feel.” Jim was pressing a little bundle of notes into her hand. “Just think that it gives me pleasure to do it, and that will make you feel perfectly all right. And now, my child, it’s time you went home. How are you going to explain the change of clothes, by the way?”

“I shall manage to do that all right,” said Delia, and she said it hurriedly, dismissing it as a matter of no importance. “All I want to know is——”

“Yes,” said Jim.

“When I shall see you again,” said Delia, her throat working.

“In a day or two,” said Jim tenderly; “probably I shall come and see your mother. Don’t you worry about it. Dahlia; I shall manage it all right. And now, my child, you must go. Hang on to those notes, and don’t drop them as well as the parcel. Good-night, my dear child.”

“Only that?” Delia’s eyes were like the eyes of a disappointed spaniel.

“What else?”

“You know.” Delia only breathed the words.

“Well——” But the temptation was too acute. He stooped and kissed the trembling mouth. “I’ve no business to do it,” he said; “but I’ve done it, so it’s no use saying that now. Go home, there’s a little sweet; and don’t worry about anything. I’ll come along and see your mother in the course of a day or two; I’ll manage it all right. Good-night, my child.”

“Good-night.” Delia was standing, small and shadowy, in the dim light. She had the unwieldy parcel clutched under one arm and the notes in her small hand. “I’ll get home this way, out at the back,” she said. “Oh, Major Chester, come and see me soon.”

“I will,” said Jim; and he watched her small figure turn and begin to run with a little smile playing round his lips. What an extraordinary business it all was, he thought, as he began to wend his own way back to the hotel. But how queerly, oddly lighthearted he felt. He decided not to go back into the lounge that night, but to go straight up to his room, settle in there, and write a letter or two, not get mixed up again with that chattering crowd: he could not stand it at any price.

Chapter XVIII

Mr. Marcus Stoneham was not the sort of man to let the grass grow under his feet. He would never have been where he was in his profession if he had been. So a week after his first meeting with Timothy he went to see Mr. Hamish Sayer again. “Nothing like having your teeth thoroughly seen to while you are about it,” as he said, grinning contentedly at the ceiling while Mr. Sayer leaned over him, peering into his mouth.

“You’ve had them seen to; there’s positively nothing left to be done,” said Mr. Sayer with his pleasant twang. “I could take a radio of your mouth and tell you that they all want to come out, but that’s not my way,” he laughed good-temperedly.

“No, thank goodness.” Mr. Stoneham shut his mouth with a snap and sat up in the velvet chair. “Well, then, let’s to business,” he said briskly. “Where’s that boy I saw here last week?”

“Never seen him since.” Mr. Sayer was walking to the shining basin let into the wall. “He ought to have been here last Friday, but he never turned up. A pity; I took a fancy to the lad.” Mr. Sayer had taken a towel from the top of a little pile of clean ones and was drying his hands on it.

“Never turned up! Then you’ve got to see that he does.” Mr. Stoneham was heaving himself out of the velvet chair. “Sayer, my lad, unless I’m very much mistaken, that boy has got a fortune in his throat. You’re not going to let him slip for the want of a twenty-five centime stamp, are you?”

“But what’s the use of it?” Mr. Sayer was snapping down the lid of a white enamelled box into which he had flung the crumpled towel. “They’re obviously as poor as rats. You’d raise the boy’s hopes, and all for nothing. Besides, his voice will break in a couple of years. Then all your money’s gone west, if you are thinking of parting with any.”

“Clever fellow!” Mr. Stoneham’s fat, rather pale face was creased with an indulgent smile. “Get hold of the boy for me, will you, Sayer? there’s a good chap! And as for my money going west, I’ll keep a little in reserve for your bill, my lad. That’s to say, if you will do this for me. Tell the boy that you want to finish his little job of work, and directly you get him here slip out and phone me. Then if I possibly can, I’ll come round. He’s a shy bird and will have to be caught unawares.”

A couple of days later, Timothy, sitting solemnly on the low wall that fringed the front garden of the Villa Bliss, had a letter handed to him by the old postman. It was almost the first letter he had ever had in his life. He eyed the minute handwriting on the envelope with alarm. What did it mean? What had he done wrong? He slipped it into his pocket and strolled carelessly away out of the gate and down the road a little. He would open it where he could not be seen from the house.

When he had read it he put it back into his pocket again. Mr. Sayer wanted to see him again, to complete the job that he had begun the week before. Timothy ran his tongue nervously round his mouth. What a filthy bore!—it might really hurt this time. But after a little mature thought he decided to go—that afternoon, if possible, because putting things off always made them worse. Also, it was an excuse to get out of the house. Things were very miserable at home now, because Delia was so dreadful. She had been dreadful ever since that night when she had come home late, dressed in different clothes. Timothy had crept very late out of his room to greet her; he had felt uncomfortable ever since she had left the house, because he had rather seemed to be prying on her. So to make up he had deluded Mrs. Browne with a graphic and entirely imaginary account of what she was doing, and had crept out to tell Delia this, and to amuse her with a description of how successful it had been.

But she had flung round on him when she had heard his door. And as he stood in his very shrunk pyjamas, with his eyes staring in astonishment—for until Delia had turned round he had not known it was she—she had positively scowled at him—a dreadful look. Timothy, his sensitive boy’s heart stricken to the core, had slunk back into his room and got into bed, too wretched even to think of what Delia’s change of clothes might mean. She obviously loathed the sight of him now; that was enough for him. There were tears in his eyes as he turned on his side and went almost immediately to sleep. So he decided to go to Mr. Hamish Sayer’s without saying anything to Delia. But there was no need for him to have bothered to keep it from her. She would not have minded; in fact, she would have been rather relieved to have something to divert her mind. For since the evening among the pine-trees she had lived in a condition of nerves bordering on frenzy.

Timothy turned up at the dentist’s at about a quarter past two. Mr. Sayer would see him, said the white-capped nurse. Would he kindly step into the waiting-room and interest himself with the papers until he was ready for him?

He would. Timothy felt rather grand as he walked into the room with the parquet floor and picked up the Sphere. He had tidied himself up for this visit, and his hair lay in damp streaks over his dancing eyebrows. His teeth shone; Mr. Sayer’s timely gift of tooth-brush and tooth-paste had worked wonders. The dead feeling at his heart caused by Delia’s neglect seemed to lighten a little. That was worst just before he waked in the mornings; he knew there was something horrible to remember almost before he was awake enough to remember it. But here was something to divert him: he sat down at the table and leaned his elbows among a sea of papers.

As he sat and read, Mr. Sayer rang up the Palais. Mr. Marcus Stoneham had a private connection to his suite of rooms, said the polite concierge; Mr. Sayer would be on to him in a moment.

A couple of moments brought the deep, mellifluous voice booming over the telephone. “Yes. Ah, it’s you, Sayer. Got the boy there? Right, I’ll come along.” And then a sharp ring as Mr. Marcus Stoneham rang off.

Mr. Sayer felt a little awestruck as he opened the door of his surgery and strolled across the narrow hall to the waiting-room. There must be something unusual about Timothy Browne, or Marcus Stoneham wouldn’t concern himself about him. People fell over themselves even to get near the great man, and here he was turning out of his hotel of his own accord, and that immediately after lunch. And to see a rather untidy boy of twelve. Mr. Sayer greeted Timothy with a sort of queer diffidence. Perhaps he was even then holding a potential Marcus Stoneham by the hand!

He had just got to the stage of mixing an amalgam stopping when he saw the big Rolls Royce crawling past the window. Mr. Sayer had fine net blinds to his surgery windows, and you could see through them, although people could not see you. The thought of that had diverted Timothy as he sat screwed up rather high in the velvet chair. You ought to be able to aim things at them as they passed, he thought. And then came the sharp metallic ring of the electric bell. Somebody else, thought Timothy, with a queer feeling of elation that it was not he this time who was experiencing all that terror of the unknown.

“Mr. Marcus Stoneham to see you, sir,” said the white-capped nurse, suddenly opening the door and thrusting in her head and then removing it again.

“Very well; say that I shall be ready in five minutes,” said Mr. Sayer, and he turned round from the little glass slab with the minute portion of stopping impaled on the end of the shining probe.

“He came last time I was here.” Timothy spoke after an elaborate rinsing of his mouth. It amused him to blow the water out into the swirling whirlpool and to see it sucked down the shining escape of it. Also to see the little tabloid of disinfectant sending up gassy bubbles as it dissolved in the tumbler. He had demolished two tumblers of water on purpose to see it do it twice.

“That’s right.” Mr. Sayer was washing his hands. Endless washing, thought Timothy pityingly, getting down out of the chair.

“I should like to see him again,” said Timothy, thrusting his hands into his pockets and beginning to stroll about the room. Somehow the thought of returning to his home became suddenly unendurable. Quite two hours until tea, and then an awful stiff sort of meal, with Delia staring vacantly and Mrs Browne making rather a sucking noise as she drank her coffee. It sounded so loud if there was nobody talking.

“You shall,” said Mr. Sayer unexpectedly. And he walked to the door and opened it, and almost as soon as he had opened it Mr. Marcus Stoneham walked out of the waiting-room and stood largely and capaciously in front of Timothy. “Well, who would have thought that I should see you so soon again?” he beamed.

“No, sir.” Somehow Timothy could think of nothing to say but that. He stood, looking very small, between the two men.

“Well, Sayer, I’ve come to take you out for a drive in the car.” Mr. Stoneham was smacking large expensive gloves against one bare hand and staring over Timothy’s head. “Come along and get your hat; the air will do you no end of good.”

“My dear man!” Mr. Sayer laughed indulgently. “Not one moment have I till seven o’clock this evening,” he said, and he waved one freckled hand towards his red appointment book.

“Dear, dear! These professional torturers!” Mr. Stoneham’s rather thick lips parted in a grim smile directed at Timothy. “Well, what about you, young man? Like to come for a drive?”

Timothy’s heart gave a great leap. A drive in that gorgeous car; he had seen it steal up to the door. And then he flushed painfully red. His clothes! Never had he so felt the mortification of his poverty until that moment. He tried to brazen it out.

“I’m almost afraid,” he began, and then he stopped dead.

“What? Got something else to do?” Marcus Stoneham was watching Timothy’s face curiously. It was the sensitive face of the true artist, he thought. The face of a boy who would want an unconscionable amount of shoving before he at last realized that he was worth while. “Busy?” he questioned jovially.

“No, not exactly busy,” said Timothy painfully. “Too filthily untidy,” he burst out suddenly, snatching nervously at his hands.

“Why, why, that doesn’t matter!” Marcus Stoneham was a little taken aback. Then his plastic face creased up into sudden smiles. “That’s soon remedied,” he said. “We’ll go for a shopping expedition, young man. Don’t talk about not being smart; you wait till you see yourself in half an hour or so. Ta, ta, Sayer!” and Mr. Stoneham literally swept Timothy out into the hall. From there into the big car was only a step or two, and Timothy, more dead than alive, found himself creeping down the main thoroughfare of Biarritz staring out from the padded glory of a Rolls Royce. And a very beautiful one too, for Marcus Stoneham was a very wealthy man and liked to do himself well.

“Enjoying yourself?” Marcus Stoneham felt an odd satisfaction in the silent ecstasy of the thin little boy by his side. Too thin, he reflected, when Timothy stood displayed in his extremely disreputable shirt ten minutes later.

“Take the young gentleman into the fitting-room and put him on all new clothes,” he said abruptly. Timothy’s sensitive face was flushing and he was trying to drag his frayed cuffs over his thin wrists. “We shall want three of everything except the suits, and we shall want two of those. Send out for shoes! we haven’t the time to hunt about in different shops!” Mr. Stoneham was walking about and taking things off stands and leaving them lying about, not taking the faintest notice of the three assistants, who were hanging on his every word. He evidently knew this shop very well: perhaps he bought his own clothes here, and that was what made them all so grovelling, thought Timothy, walking like someone in a dream into the tiny fitting-room, and seeing himself looking exactly like a beggar in the long looking-glass.

But it was not at all like a beggar that he walked out of it a quarter of an hour later. The manager of the shop was an Englishman and knew exactly what Timothy ought to wear to look what he was—a young English gentleman. And even Marcus Stoneham gasped as the boy came across the floor of the luxurious shop. Dressed in a grey flannel suit with miniature trousers neatly turned up over a pair of square-toed shoes, Timothy was exactly like a very charming schoolboy unusually well groomed. And his dancing eyes were more dancing than usual as he stood stammering in front of the great tenor; he was trying to convey his overwhelming thanks.

“Don’t bother about that!” Marcus Stoneham was thoroughly enjoying himself. Not as a rule at all a generous or unselfish man, this unusual departure from his usual mode of living was affording him very real pleasure. Timothy touched something in his soul that had never been touched before. The fragile forlornness of the boy made a strange appeal to him. And Marcus Stoneham could never forget his first spontaneous tribute to his own great gift. Timothy had crept after him like a little following animal to hear him sing in the woods. That would always remain in the great tenor’s memory.

“Good! Now that’s done and we can go home.” Mr. Stoneham had paid the bill with a brief drawing of an enormous amount of notes from a flat note-case. “Now tell the man the address to send the rest of the clothes to, and we’ll be off. Good-day, good-day!” and Mr. Stoneham was out of the shop again, leading Timothy by the arm.

“I say, I don’t know how——” Timothy, looking very clean and attractive, was twisting himself sideways on the cushioned seat and staring up at the great tenor. To his alarm he felt his eyes filling with tears. It was so perfectly topping—to be decently dressed for once. Suddenly Timothy realized how he had always inwardly loathed being so poverty-stricken. It wasn’t as if he was really that sort of a boy either.

“That’s all right.” Marcus Stoneham was patting the little brown hand on the seat beside him. “And now you’re coming along back to the hotel with me, young man, and I’ve got a lot of topping things to show you in my room, too.”

“Have you?” And Timothy, like a boy in a dream, sat staring out of the bevelled-glass window in a happy trance. Things really were happening to him and to Delia. Both going out looking like beggars and both coming back properly dressed. And then the big car swept up to the door of the Palais, and the next thing was, after a collection of very obsequious officials hovering round them, a white and gilt lift making a noise like a tram going up the hill behind the Medina, only not so loud.

“I say!”—and Timothy was standing staring round the luxurious sitting-room. Marcus Stoneham had a suite on the first floor, and it was a very beautiful one. The big bow-window gave on to a wide verandah overlooking the sea.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Marcus Stoneham was walking about the room, dropping his hat and gloves into different chairs. “Ah, here’s Mason, good! Give him your hat, my boy; he’ll take care of it for you. Mason, we’ll have tea in exactly a quarter of an hour, a large tea with a great many cakes. See?”

“Yes, sir.” Mason, pale and mournful, stood in front of Timothy holding out his hand for his hat. Timothy, very red, removed it hurriedly.

“Good.” Marcus Stoneham was still walking about the room. “Mr. Currie in, Mason?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” To Timothy’s intrigued gaze the man-servant looked exactly like a tortoise with his thin head swinging in a socket.

“Ask him to come here, please.” Mr. Stoneham spoke decidedly, and then sat heavily down in an easy-chair. “Look here,” he said, and he spoke to Timothy as if he was speaking to someone of his own age. “I want you to do something for me. I want you to sing. You wonder why I’ve brought you here: that’s why. That wasn’t why I gave you the clothes. I gave you those because I wanted to. But I want to hear you sing. I want it very much, because I believe you can.”

“No, I can’t,” said Timothy, and he said it almost angrily. His unusual little face flushed heavily.

“Yes, you can; and being an artist, you must do it graciously,” said Mr. Stoneham quietly. “Our voices don’t belong to us, if we’ve got them; they belong to other people. See? To God, if you’re a religious person and like to call it that. I don’t; I prefer to call it something else. But anyhow, your voice isn’t your own. You’ve got the use of it while you’re alive, and that’s the end of it. And if you hand it back rusty from disuse when you’ve got to hand back everything that you were started out with, you’ll get it in the neck. That I am perfectly sure of”; and Mr. Stoneham got up and began to walk about the room.

“It gives me a most fearful feeling if I think I’ve got to sing to anybody,” said Timothy.

“So it does to everybody at first. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do.” Mr. Stoneham was still walking about the room. “Thanks, Currie, yes; just get out one of Coleridge Taylor’s things.” This to a young man who had apparently come noiselessly into the room by another door, and who, on hearing this briefly given order, went out of it again. “I’ll sing to you myself first. Come along in here; there’s only one chair and you shall have it.”

“Here” was a large room, also overlooking the sea, and entirely empty except for a grand piano, music-stool, and one deep easy-chair. Mr. Currie was already sitting at the piano, running long flexible, fingers over the keyboard of it, and causing it to keep up a little satisfied crooning of its own. But when Mr. Stoneham and Timothy appeared he broke into another melody, divine and haunting, and as he played he stared out of the window.

“That’s it. Now, you run along and sit down there.” Mr. Stoneham was pushing Timothy along, and meanwhile walking himself towards the piano. Once there, he put an impatient finger inside his low collar and dragged at it a little, and then turning with a brooding melancholy in his eyes towards the window, he also stared out of it.

Timothy’s next sensation was that of a fierce resolution and raging determination that these two men should not see him crying. He had been sitting very straight up in the deep chair until that moment, but now he got awkwardly out of it and walked away to the window, groping meanwhile for his handkerchief.

But Marcus Stoneham saw his emotion, and he was pleased. But all the same he touched Mr. Currie very quietly on the shoulder. It was of no use to harrow up the boy’s feelings too much. And Mr. Currie, instantly comprehending, trailed off into a delicious fantasy of delicate chords; and the glorious voice dropped into silence.

“Like it?” Mr. Stoneham walked across the polished floor and laid his hand gently on Timothy’s shoulder.

“Yes.” Timothy could say no more, and he said that with a snort.

“I am glad. Tears are nothing to be ashamed of, my boy; they betray the soul of the true artist. Now then, let me hear what you can do.” Mr. Stoneham was twisting Timothy round and impelling him gently towards the piano.

“I couldn’t, with you in the room.” Timothy was trying to wrench himself free of the detaining hand.

“Yes, you could. You must. My time is valuable, I cannot waste it.” Mr. Stoneham suddenly spoke sternly.

“All right, I will, then.” The words came in a rush. Timothy was suddenly frightened. Something within him told him that this was the chance of his life. “Neglected, all the rest of life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” The chaplain at Kotagiri, even if he had done nothing else, had done something when he preached that sermon to those fidgeting little English children in that beautiful hill-station.

“What do you know?” Mr. Currie was looking up with a confidential smile. Mr. Stoneham had gone into the next room. Pretending that he had gone and really being there all the time, thought Timothy, shrewd for his years.

“Jerusalem,” said Timothy, trying to control the trembling of his lower lip.

“Good! So do I.” Mr. Currie broke into triumphant chords. “Now, look here: don’t make him lose his temper,” he said confidentially over his crashing and agile hands. “He does it sometimes, and then it’s all up with everybody. Just blow your chest out like a bellows and give tongue for all you are worth. He doesn’t care if it’s bad or good; all he wants to do is to hear you sing. Now then—when I strike the first chord again. I’ll play loud, so that no one can hear you. That’s always a consoling thought.”

“Righto!” Timothy took a long breath and wrenched his hands together behind him. His nervousness dropped from him. His soul was away somewhere, singing joyously all by itself. Mr. Currie played divinely; not for nothing had Mr. Stoneham singled him out from among thirty or more tremulously eager applicants for his post of accompanist.

“Bring me my bow of burning gold”—by this time Timothy had quite forgotten about everything but the wonderful feeling of exhilaration produced by Mr. Currie’s accompaniment. It supported him: it seemed to carry him along with it and encourage him to further efforts. He would do what Marcus Stoneham did—send his voice up to the ceiling and hear it come down again; make it drop with a plop—-like a stone dropped into a pail of water.

And this he did with so much success that Marcus Stoneham, who had been standing behind the door with his head a little bent, raised it and walked straight into the room where Timothy was singing. The boy was as unconscious of his surroundings as a man under an anaesthetic, Marcus Stoneham could tell that. He stood staring out at the sea while Timothy’s notes showered round him like jewelled drops out of the rose of a watering-can.

“Bravo!” He swung round and stared at Timothy, who had stopped singing and was only conscious that he had finished, and that Mr. Currie was thundering out the most gorgeous and soul-satisfying chords.

“Was it all right?” Timothy’s dancing eyes were losing their drugged look and were fixed eagerly on the great tenor.

“Perfectly all right.” Marcus Stoneham’s voice was a little gruff. He had had so many sickening disappointments in his life, and this promised not to be one of them. “And now for tea,” he said; “I am sure Mr. Currie needs it after all that playing.”

“Do you think I shall ever be able to sing?” asked Timothy anxiously. Mr. Currie had gone, after giving Timothy a pleasant smile and after rubbing his brown hands on a very smart silk handkerchief.

“You can sing now,” said Mr. Stoneham briefly and unexpectedly. Because he hardly ever praised, he almost always cursed. “But you’ll have to work like the devil to get anything out of it,” he said bluntly.

“I will, then.” Timothy was again speechless.

“And I’ll help you.” Mr. Stoneham was leading the way into the beautiful sitting-room again. “But we’ll talk about that later,” he said. “Now all we have to do is to eat. Like the look of this lot?” Mr. Stoneham was smiling good-temperedly at two plates heaped with cakes and pastries.

“Rather,” said Timothy enthusiastically.

“Fall to, then,” responded Mr. Stoneham, his mobile lips twisting themselves into a very expansive smile. “And I’ll help you, my boy,” he added hopefully.

Chapter XIX

Once satisfied that Timothy was going to be worth his while, Marcus Stoneham regularly gave his mind to it. The first thing was a letter to Mrs. Browne, asking if he might have the pleasure of calling on that lady, whom he had not, up to the present moment, had the pleasure of meeting. The letter came while they were having petit déjeuner one day.

“But who is Mr. Marcus Stoneham, dear?” Mrs. Browne was staring rather helplessly at the florid signature. “Oh, Delia, how washed-out you look, dear! I can’t think what is the matter with you.”

“I’m all right, mother. Oh, Timothy, has he heard you sing, then?” Delia’s pale face flushed scarlet. It just showed how far she had drifted from her brother that he had not told her anything about it. He had come in excited from his drive with Mr. Stoneham, and had expatiated on his beneficence in giving him a lot of new clothes, but of the matter that must have lain closest to his heart he had said nothing.

And for the first time for at least a week Delia thought of somebody else beside herself. Generally her thoughts were in a tormented frenzy as to what was happening to Major Chester. For since that picnic in the woods, almost a week ago, she had heard nothing from him. Nor had she seen him, because she dared not go down to the links for fear of being made to caddy for somebody. Jacques Poiret thought she was ill; she had made old Maria go and tell him that she was.

“Yes, he has.” Timothy felt a sort of inward triumph. Delia didn’t care about him, so he would show her that he didn’t care about her. “Yes; he heard me the other day—after the drive,” he said casually.

“Oh, what did he say?” Delia’s flushed face had gone pale again.

“He said that he wanted to come and see mother. And he’s coming. When is he coming, mother?”

“This afternoon,” said Mrs. Browne, her eyes on the rough-edged sheet of notepaper.

“I say, what a hurry he’s in!” Timothy, having finished his breakfast, sent his chair back with a shove. He suddenly felt tremendously important. How had he existed before all this happened? He got up and strolled with an air of detachment towards the door. Delia would have to manage without him now. He had got something else beside her, as she had something else beside him.

“Did you know anything about all this, Delia?” Left alone, Mrs. Browne glanced rather more helplessly than usual at her daughter. The whole thing made her feel vague and floundering—like a landed fish, she thought, searching for similes. Or, no—more like when you are in a very fast lift and you feel as if your inside had been left behind. Mrs. Browne also suddenly got a feeling of resentment. It was not right that your children should settle everything without consulting you at all, she thought.

“No, mother,” and with that Delia also went out of the room, in search of Timothy. Suddenly the feeling of desolation in her heart became unbearable. If he was interested in something, it wouldn’t matter to him so much that she was. They might get friends again. Life without Timothy was a sickening thing, however much she worshipped someone else.

“Tell me what’s happened.” Delia found Timothy sitting on the low wall at the bottom of the garden.

“You don’t care.”

“Yes, I do—fearfully I care.” Delia’s chest was heaving.

“No, you don’t. You only care about that donkey with long eyelashes. You think he’s going to marry you. He isn’t! he’ll marry that girl who gives you her cast-off clothes. I saw him in an automobile with her yesterday.”

“You didn’t!”

“Yes, I did, at about eleven o’clock in the morning. You know, when Maria asked me to go for some more milk. Well, they were coming down the road from Bayonne. Tearing; that beastly nativy-looking man was driving the car.”

“What was Major Chester doing?” Delia’s voice suddenly sounded odd. She heard it odd herself—sort of weak, as if it was coming from a distance.

“Sitting glaring out of the window with his arms folded,” said Timothy, swinging round to stare at his sister. Yes, she must really be in love with him, he concluded. She was all bluey round her top lip.

“Oh!” and Delia suddenly felt the blood beginning to circle round her heart again. It had all gone at first, like when you stick a spade into the wet sand. “Tell me about you,” she said, and she ran her tongue round her dry lips.

“Well, it was like this,” said Timothy, and feeling a vague compassion for Delia, he entered into an elaborate description of what had happened the day before.

And Delia forced herself to listen, beating down, with a supreme effort of will, the sickening terror that had suddenly fastened on her. In an automobile with Miss Pritchard so early in the morning. Where had they been then? But, then, if he cared at all for her he would not have been sitting staring out of the window, and with his arms folded. They would have been round her, as they would have been round her, Delia, if she had been in the car with him. “Oh!” she suddenly cried out.

“What’s the matter?” asked Timothy, stopping and looking out inquiringly from under his long fringe.

“Nothing.”

“You squeaked like a rat. You are getting funny.”

“No, I’m not. Go on.”

“Well, and so now he’s coming to see mother. And the next thing’ll be that I shall be gone—to England, I expect, or Vienna, or somewhere. By the way, mother ought to get some things for tea. We can’t have that muddly meal we generally have. We ought to have some nice pastries.” Timothy suddenly looked anxious.

“I’ll see to that.” Delia still spoke staring in front of her. “If you go away and I’m left, I shall go raving mad,” she said. Her heart seemed to be literally fading away inside her. All hope was suddenly gone. Major Chester had promised to come and see her mother, and he had not come. Therefore the future was black—utterly, irremediably black.

“No, you won’t,” and Timothy moved along the wall and took her sister’s cold hand in his own. “You’ll write to me,” he said, “and when I’m famous you’ll come and sit in the front row and clap, even when I’ve broken down.”

“Rather,” said Delia, and she sat with the tears welling up in her grey eyes and then rolling openly down her small brown face. Utter, hopeless and complete despair. Oh to die now! She searched quietly for her handkerchief.

“Don’t!” Timothy spoke in deep distress. This was about the second time only that he had seen Delia cry at all. “Is it because I’ve been so disgusting lately?” he inquired tremulously.

“No! it’s because I have,” said Delia, and having found her handkerchief she blew her nose fiercely with it.

“No, you haven’t; I have.” Timothy also spoke fiercely. But although he spoke fiercely, he realized with a queer pang that it didn’t really matter to him nearly as much as it would have done once that Delia was wretched. Why was that? Because he had got something else wonderful to fill-up the whole of his life. But Delia had got hers first and sort of left him out in the cold. Timothy derived a vague apologetic satisfaction from that, so he gave his sister’s hand a final squeeze and then got off the wall.

“You’ll see to the cakes, then,” he said, and he looked uncomfortably at the almost audible desolation of Delia’s blue-print back.

“Yes, I will,” said Delia, and she spoke still staring in front of her.

Chapter XX

Once having made up his mind, Mr. Marcus Stoneham overrode all Mrs. Browne’s tremulous objections with a large, expansive geniality. “It is nothing,” he said, when in response to his remark that he wished to be responsible for the whole of Timothy’s education and subsequent musical training Mrs. Browne began a feeble twittering remonstrance.

“Nothing! It will cost a great deal of money,” exclaimed Mrs. Browne, looking in a faint rebellion at the large pale face regarding her with amusement.

“I can afford it, madame,” said Mr. Stoneham with complacency. “Moreover, the boy will eventually be able to repay me, if he be so inclined. I do not often make a mistake, and I feel quite sure that I have not made a mistake about him.”

“Oh dear! But where do you propose that he should go to school?”

“In Vienna. For many things I should say that it would be desirable that he should go to an English public school. But we must consider the voice first. In Vienna, in the establishment at which I should propose to enter him, the voice will receive the very closest attention. It is not desirable that at his age he should yell himself hoarse upon the football field. He will play games—the games in this particular establishment are under the care of an English public-school man. But they will be games played in moderation, not exalted into a fetish, as is the habit in schools in England and America.”

“Oh!”—and with that small exclamation Mrs. Browne relapsed into a rather rebellious acquiescence.

And Mr. Stoneham took his leave with a stirring of surprised amusement. English people were extraordinary, he thought, leaning back in the big Rolls Royce as it crept rather disgustedly up the narrow street. To have the whole of the future of your son undertaken by somebody else. Surely that was a matter for congratulation rather than for dismay. But Mrs. Browne had taken it rather as a grievance. Strange lady! And strange little daughter, with the small pointed face that would one day be a very beautiful face. Mr. Stoneham got home in a condition of musing rather unusual with him. And that night he dictated a great many letters to his secretary, walking heavily about the room and bursting out into a low melodious humming when he failed for a word. Timothy would have to go soon, and Currie should see to the getting of his clothes. Currie had been to a school of the same kind in Dresden, an excellent school, too, but since the War not in the first rank. Vienna was the place for the boy now. Mr. Stoneham went to bed a little earlier than usual that night and slept less fitfully than usual. Timothy was going to fill the place in his life that he always thought his son would have done. But he had had no son! the woman that he had wanted to marry had wanted to marry somebody else. So, as Marcus Stoneham never did things by halves, that had been the end of that!

But Mrs. Browne could not settle down to this new idea about Timothy. “How does Mr. Stoneham know he can sing?” she asked Delia that evening, pulling a dilapidated sock of her son’s fretfully over her hand.

“He has heard him,” said Delia, staring out of the window. The mimosa-tree was beginning to die off, and the lawn underneath it was speckled with the little golden balls of it.

“When?”

“When he took him to the hotel, I expect.”

“Timothy ought to have sung to me before he sang to a stranger,” said Mrs. Browne querulously.

“Children always do things for their parents last,” said Delia to herself, but being kind, she did not say it out loud.

“Oughtn’t he?”

“Yes, I expect he ought,” replied Delia truthfully.

“I have never understood either of you,” said Mrs. Browne, and she said it as if it had been somebody else’s fault, not her own.

“No.” Delia was wondering if the postman had gone by.

He might write: oh, he might! A letter just to say why he had not been.

“Of course, in a way it is a fine thing for Timothy to have all his training paid for by somebody else,” mused Mrs. Browne. “Delia, would you thread this needle for me, dear? With the grey wool, dear, not the brown.”

“Yes, I should think it was.” Delia got up and wearily did as she was asked. And her weariness was so apparent that Mrs. Browne remarked on it.

“Aren’t you well, dear?” Mrs. Browne was polishing her pince-nez on the hem of her artificial silk jumper.

“Yes, quite, thank you, mother.” Delia had sat down by the window again.

“You used to go tearing off somewhere directly after breakfast,” said Mrs. Browne reflectively, “and it used to seem to keep you occupied and happy. Why have you given it up?”

Delia suddenly felt inclined to scream. Why had she? Oh, God, she would go mad! She suddenly stood up, a resolution dawning in her heart. She would write to him. It couldn’t matter. He wasn’t like other men, thinking her forward and horrible. “I got tired of it,” she said, and she started to walk to the door. “Do you mind if I go up to my room now, mother? I’ve got something that I want to do.”

“No, dear; go, if you’re busy. I will darn in the kitchen. Maria is so tremendously interested about Timothy; she thinks it a wonderful thing for him. I should have thought that she would be more distressed at the idea of parting with him.” Mrs. Browne was drifting across the room with all the stockings and the mending for them clutched up close to her chest.

“Probably she sees how splendid it will be for Timothy.” But again Delia did not say this aloud. You couldn’t say things like that to your mother, although she surely must see that that was the only answer to a remark of that kind. She went upstairs quickly, first bolting into the little salle à manger to get the pen. There was only one in the house; nobody ever wrote letters in the Villa Bliss.

And, the pen retrieved, the next thing was the notepaper. Ah, but that was easy! Maria had given her a box of pink notepaper the Christmas before. Pink notepaper with envelopes to match. Delia walked to her painted chest of drawers and got the shiny box out of a drawer of it. Fancy, this was the first piece that had ever been used. She dragged it out from under the envelopes and pulled out a sheet. And then she took the lid of the box to write on and sat down on the bed.

Chapter XXI

Jim Chester got Delia’s letter the next evening, when he was just beginning to change for dinner. The hall-boy brought it up, and it lay pink and square on the salver, the large writing on it almost completely covering the envelope. Jim, standing tall and powerful in his blue striped shirt, held it for a moment in his hand before tearing the envelope across. Who on earth could be writing to him on notepaper like that? And then, of course, he realized that it must be Delia, and he walked quickly across the room and sat down at his writing-table, switching on the electric table-lamp as he did so.

Dear Major Chester,

(the writing inside the envelope was as large as the writing outside it)

You haven’t been, and I wondered if there was anything the matter. It is so awful now that I don’t see you every day. A sort of fearful tearing, homesick feeling, as if I must see you or die. I don’t want to be a bother, but aren’t you coming to see mother? I don’t expect you to really, but if you could just write me a letter to say. Just only a very short letter, so that I could feel that you were still there. When I begin to think, I feel that you are perhaps dead. Although Timothy saw you in a car yesterday, only I feel that it couldn’t be you, because Miss Pritchard was there. But Timothy says he is sure it was. I want you so frightfully: don’t mind my saying that, but I am sure you won’t. You understand everything.

Your own
Dahlia.

Having read the letter, Jim folded the pink sheet of it and put it back into the envelope. And then he sat for a moment or two staring at the white circle of light on his writing-table. And then he pulled off the top of his Swan pen and, drawing a block of notepaper towards him, began to write.

My dear Mademoiselle Dahlia

(Jim’s handwriting was as clear and definite as Dahlia’s was childish),

It was a great pleasure for me to get a letter from you, and I am glad you told me straight out that you wanted me. I like that. I am coming to see your mother, but it can’t be for a day or two. But I shall come; don’t worry.

Yours very sincerely,
Jim Chester.

Having written this, Jim shut it up in an envelope, glanced again at Delia’s letter to be sure that the address was right, and then walked across the room and rang the bell. And when the page-boy had gone off with the letter and the seventy-five centimes for the stamp, he walked back again and sat down at the table, and then he dropped his head into his hands with a groan. Why, oh why had he been such a damned unmitigated fool? Not that he was exactly involved; but the ghastly smirch of it. Jim Chester was not by any means a prig, but the remembrance of the last two days stuck in his mind and festered there.

As a matter of fact, it had not been his fault. Maude was desperate. The days were going on and she was no nearer her goal than she had been at the beginning. So three days before she had evolved a plan that she and Major Chester should hire an automobile and go out for the whole day. They could go to Pau and Lourdes, and perhaps through Eaux Bonnes to Argèles.

“Not possible; it would take too long.” Jim had been very definite when Maude suggested it. He had smiled kindly though, and Maude, seeing the smile, had persisted.

“No, it wouldn’t. The concierge says that you can do it easily in a day.” Maude was dressed for dinner and looked very nice. Black suited her and gave her no opportunity for sticking on odd bunches of flowers. You couldn’t stick on flowers when you were in mourning, thought Maude regretfully, putting them all away.

“It would cost too much.” Jim was still smiling, and was standing towering over Maude. Thank the Lord, this girl was going, he was thinking mildly. She had a brother coming to fetch her in three days’ time.

“No, it wouldn’t. And I have heaps of money to spend.” Maude flung out this bait in a fever of anxiety. “I like to pay for it, and we will have all our meals at hotels. I know men hate sitting about on grass eating.”

“Oh, I don’t know that they do.” A little tender smile hovered suddenly on Jim’s well-cut mouth. What a little sweet she had looked in her new clothes, and with that anxious gleam in her round grey eyes.

“They do generally,” and then Maude had faltered, and her eyes had filled with tears. “Oh, do come!” she said, and she said it humbly and in rather a frightened voice.

And that had touched Jim. But being a man of the world, he had made up his mind very definitely that he would not go out for the whole day alone with Maude. One never knew—the bally car might break down and there they would be absolutely landed. “Well, look here, what about taking the Kemps with us?” he said.

“Oh!”

“Yes; but they’re awfully nice. They make any excursion fun. I’ll ask them, shall I? Then I’ll come with pleasure. I’ll ask her to-night, and then, if it’s fine, we might go to-morrow. What about that?” Jim’s nice teeth were showing in a pleasant smile.

So Maude had to give in. But when she got up to her room that night, she sat for some time with rather an evil look on her pink mouth. He did not want to be involved with her. He did not want to marry her. But he should, he should! But how—oh, how could she make him? Maude sat for quite a long time that night thinking. And when she at last got into bed she had thought. But it was a fearful way and involved much risk. And probably it would not come off in the end. The Kemps were what was making it all so difficult: if she had been alone with him, it would have been comparatively easy. But perhaps they would not come.

Chapter XXII

But Mrs. Kemp never hesitated for a moment. “Of course we must go, George.” She was talking through the door, through which her husband could be seen struggling with a dress tie.

“Curse the woman; why can’t she leave him alone? Damn Jim and his love-affairs; he’s always mixed up in something of the kind!” Mr. Kemp was in a thoroughly bad temper. He dragged at his tie, thereby making one of the ends of it too long, and then tore it off and flung it on the ground.

“Darling, let me do it for you.” Mrs. Kemp’s nice eyes were all alight with laughter.

“You are a fool, Kitty.” Mr. Kemp had his clever chin turned upwards as his wife’s pretty hands dealt dexterously with the offending tie. “You can’t be happy unless you’re mixed up in a thing of this kind. Leave the man alone and let him get tied up with that common little bitch if he wants to.”

“Darling, don’t be so vulgar!” Mrs. Kemp was walking back into her own room. But she kissed her husband tenderly before she went. And he, in response, had caught her hand swiftly to his lips. The Kemps were devoted to one another, and always would be.

“Vulgar1 I don’t know about that. How else would you describe her?” Mr. Kemp was talking partly to himself. But he had already mentally renounced the game of golf arranged for the following day. If Kitty was so set on going for this blasted excursion, of course he would have to go too. And there were certainly points in going so far at somebody else’s expense. Automobiles in Biarritz were ruinous, and the Kemps were only on half-pay.

So the party that met in the hall on the following morning were cheerful. Only Maude looked a little queer. And the concierge was cross; Maude had hired an automobile from the town, not one of the usual ones that the hotel always engaged for their guests.

“He is a villain.” The concierge spoke in French to Mr. Kemp, who spoke the language like a native.

“A villain! Yes, I think he looks like it!” Mr. Kemp, standing a little apart, was surveying the motor-driver. He sat in his seat making no attempt to get out of it. But the car was a beautiful one, large and luxurious.

“Can he drive? That’s the point. My wife is a little nervous.” Mr. Kemp was still talking to the concierge, and had strolled a little aside with him.

“Drive, yes, monsieur, like the devil and with an unusual skill. But he takes risks. Ah, they are hair-raising!” The concierge flung out his hands and raised his shoulders graphically.

“Then I will sit beside him and see that he doesn’t.” Mr. Kemp was strolling back towards the car. He suddenly seemed to assume command of the expedition. “Lunch and everything all packed in? Good! then we’ll get along. You get inside, darling, and Miss Pritchard and Jim with you. I’ll sit outside for a bit, and then Jim can take my place.” Mr. Kemp swung himself into the front seat. After the first stop he would tell old Jim what the concierge had said, and then between them they could keep the Dago in hand. For the motor-driver had the sallow face and glancing eyes of the Greek. A low type of Armenian Jew, decided Mr. Kemp, glancing at him sideways as he slid out of the large gates of the Medina.

But he drove superbly. As they flew along the beautiful roads, steering their way inland, Mr. Kemp lost all his trepidation. From time to time he glanced back into the car to smile and nod to his wife. She and Maude were sitting together and Jim was on the small seat. But he was making himself agreeable. Only Maude looked queer. “A bit blue about the gills,” thought Mr. Kemp, turning back again to feast his eyes on the slender uplifted dimness of a pine forest through which they were passing. “And that probably because she knows she hasn’t managed to land him. One up to Kitty for coming on this expedition.”

Lunch was eaten on a little sheltered stretch of grass just outside Pau. And here the heavenly wonder of the Pyrenees spread itself out in front of them. Glorious snow-capped mountains, stabbing the blue sky with their jagged peaks. The party sat and ate and gazed. Maude was glad that she had decided on a picnic lunch. It made it all more friendly, and she would have been nervous in a hotel. She would have done it wrong or something. The bluey look round her mouth faded a little.

“Do have some more.” Maude was all hospitality, pressing the extremely appetizing food on her three guests.

“No, thanks; I’ve done excellently.” Jim was smiling and sprawling happily on the turf. “Better give the rest to the man at the wheel,” he said to Maude quietly. People of the Pritchard class were notoriously careless of the welfare of their dependents. Jim had often noticed it, especially on his numerous voyages to the East.

“Oh, you tell him.” Maude glanced nervously away from the motor-driver, who was strolling up and down by the car. “But are you sure you won’t have any more?” She glanced at Mr. Kemp and his wife.

“No more, thanks.” Mr. Kemp was feeling happily for his pipe.

“But don’t give it him all, Jim,” he said in a low voice, as he stretched out one long leg and groped for the matches. “One never knows on these expeditions. A little food in reserve is no ill store.”

“Righto!” Jim, with a collection of food, was strolling long-legged over the grass. The motor-driver had almost the face of a native, he thought. An evil, almost menacing look, and it affected Jim strangely. He lighted his pipe and thought seriously for a minute as he did it. They had better not be out too late with a man of that type. A lot of his nasty compatriots might hop up from behind a rock and strip them of everything they possessed. It had been done before in that part of the world. “Well, shall we be getting along?” He spoke cheerfully.

“Yes, let’s.” Mrs. Kemp was eager to get on. She was drinking in the glory of the mountains with avidity. They were to go up as far as Eaux Bonnes and have tea there; they would be almost at the foot of the Pyrenees then—too beautiful!

So on they went. And the road to Eaux Bonnes began to mount. Jim was sitting on the front seat this time, and he began to admire the driving of the Dago. He skimmed round corners with an eel-like precision. A lumbering diligence came tearing round a corner ahead of them, almost on the wrong side of the road, and the Dago missed it only by inches. A clumsier man would have been into it, and it would have been a nasty death for all of them. For here the right-hand side of the road looked sheer down on to a rushing torrent. Jim began to dislike the drive. Like all men who drive a car themselves, he loathed being driven by somebody else.

“Are we nearly at Eaux Bonnes?” he said in French to the driver.

“Not yet, monsieur.” The man at the wheel was staring ahead of him. “La, la!”—he made a short guttural exclamation as another car came rapidly round the corner on the wrong side.

“I say!” It was Mr. Kemp this time, leaning forward in the car and tapping on the glass of it. “She doesn’t like it.” He formed the words with his lips, and glanced over his shoulder at his wife.

“Oh!” Jim turned and spoke a word or two to the driver. He frowned.

“We cannot turn on this road, monsieur,” he said, “nor can we easily turn back. Reassure monsieur and madame; I have made this journey many and many a time.”

“He says it’s perfectly all right.” Jim was turning and shouting through the glass. “Soon there,” he nodded and smiled encouragingly.

So on they went. And after about another twenty minutes’ steep ascent the car slid gently into Eaux Bonnes, a tiny little mountain village consisting of a little open space flanked with tall hotels. Jim was thankful to be there. He had not liked the drive any more than Mrs. Kemp had. He heaved himself out of his seat and got down to open the door.

“Here we are,” he said cheerfully.

“Oh, isn’t it heavenly!” Mrs. Kemp had quite forgotten her nervousness. “It was so idiotic of me to mind that road,” she said; “he drives beautifully. Oh, Miss Pritchard, what a too beautiful place!”

“Yes, isn’t it lovely?” But Maude spoke with a sort of constraint. “This isn’t by any means the most beautiful part of the drive,” she said; “Argèles, where we go on to next, is much more beautiful.”

“Where we go on to next!” Mrs. Kemp echoed the words with a sort of dismay. “Oh, Miss Pritchard, I don’t think I can stand any more of that sort of a road,” she said, and she laughed pleasantly. “This surely is beautiful enough for anyone. And what about the time?—we have to get back, you know.”

“Yes; but it’s only just two now. We have heaps of time.” Maude’s face was a little more flushed than usual. “It seems such a pity to come so far and then to miss the best of it,” she said.

“Well, it does.” Mrs. Kemp sighed. “But I myself honestly can’t stand any more,” she said. “You three go on. How far is it, and how long will it take you? Ask the driver. I’ll stay here and have tea, and you can pick me up on your way back. The hotel looks delightfully comfortable. And madame will look after me, will you not, madame?” Mrs. Kemp spoke pleasantly to the bustling proprietress of the hotel, who had emerged smiling from the front-door.

“Mais oui, madame.” Madame Foulard was all smiles and hospitality. “Entrez, entrez!” She was leading the way into the narrow hall, spotlessly clean with its scrubbed boards.

“I say, Jim, I hardly like to leave my wife here all alone.” Mr. Kemp strolled aside with Jim and spoke in an undertone. “You go on with Miss Pritchard; it’s only a matter of half an hour or so, it appears. It seems a little too bad to disappoint the girl when she’s paying for the whole caboodle, don’t you think so?”

“Well, perhaps it does, rather.” But Jim Chester’s eyes were wandering. This was an enchanted spot, he was thinking. Fancy bringing Delia here and seeing her joy. His thoughts ran on. Why not, one day? He turned with an effort to the man by his side.

“Yes, you two go on and come back here in time for an early tea.” Mr. Kemp was already beginning to feel for his pipe. “I’ll stroll about and just keep an eye on Kitty. Sometimes she feels the height. I think it was that in the car, really; I have never known her nervous, I must say. Where’s Miss Pritchard?”

“Talking to the Dago. No; paying him, by all that’s holy! Heavens, she mustn’t do that! We shall never get home.” Jim was staring at Maude as she stood some way off with her scarlet bag in her neatly gloved hands. He had inwardly marvelled at the bag when they set out. It looked so very unexpected against the mourning coat and skirt.

“I say, you aren’t paying him, are you?” he said, strolling over to her. “Don’t for Heaven’s sake do that; we shall never get back again.”

“Oh no!” Maude was nervously fumbling with the tortoiseshell catch of the bag. “I was only giving him something for his tea,” she said.

“Oh, that’s all right. Well——” Jim smiled pleasantly.

“You’re keen to go on to Argèles, I gather,” he said. “How long will it take? Ask the Dago—he’ll know.”

“The what?”

“The man at the wheel, the cut-throat.” Jim was smiling widely. Somehow the idea of Delia in this heavenly little mountain village had gone to his head. To see her joy; to set out with her on a glorious morning and go straight up into that pine forest that hung over the little hamlet like a swarm of bees!

“Oh!”

Jim glanced curiously at Maude after she had given vent to this little exclamation. He was not a conceited man, but even he was rather overwhelmed at the desperate fashion in which Maude was taking her infatuation for him. The girl is positively blue in the face, he thought, thinking it rather uncomfortably as he walked over and had a little confabulation with the driver.

“He says it will take three-quarters of an hour to go there and back,” said Jim, and he came back, talking as he came. “So I’ll go and tell Kemp, and then we’ll start off.” Somehow he felt it was the least he could do for Maude to let her have three-quarters of an hour alone with him. After all, she was going away in a couple of days. And nothing could happen in three-quarters of an hour in broad daylight. At least, nothing that he could not manage, he thought with a grim smile.

Chapter XXIII

But things do not always turn out as we expect them to. And the drive up to Argèles was no exception to the rule. Maude sat absolutely still, staring out of the window of the car. No attempt to involve him in anything approaching lovemaking. Jim felt a vague compunction, and tried to make himself agreeable.

“I say, it’s beautiful!” He was gazing out of the window on his side with a very real appreciation in his eyes. The road wound all along by the side of a torrent. It roared far below them, almost entirely hidden in trees. Only now and then a white turmoil emerged from the trees and then flung itself down hundreds of feet below in its mad hurry for the plains. The air was full of the aromatic scent of pines. Jim wrinkled his nose appreciatively and snuffed it all up. It reminded him of Kashmir, he thought, or a gorgeous early cold-weather morning in Lahore. The bluey film of wood smoke hanging over the little detached brick kitchen. His old bearer, Wali Mohammed, with his head all muffled up, directing the bringing over of the kerosine oil tin full of boiling hot water for his bath . . .

“Yes.” But Maude still sat in silence. And Jim, whose thoughts were very far away too, also sat in silence. And the car went grinding on, up and up. “Where the hell are we going to?” thought Jim, brought suddenly to his senses by a rasping change of gear.

“I say, what’s wrong?” He was suddenly out of the car and standing by the Dago. The car had stopped and the sallow face of the driver was peering into the bonnet. He held the metal hood of it in one thin yellow hand.

“Nothing.” The man spoke in French, and laconically at that. He shut it down again. “All is well,” he said, and he prepared to get back into his seat.

“But is it?” Jim looked round at the wild waste of mountain and forest through which they were passing and spoke a little uneasily. If anything happened to the car they were absolutely done. Not a chalet in sight—nothing. “How far on is Argèles?” he asked.

“We are almost there, monsieur,” replied the driver, and he spoke with respect. “Get in, and another quarter of an hour will bring us to the hotel.”

So Jim got in. There was nothing else to be done, he thought ruefully, as he slammed the door behind him and sat down again, but somehow he was suddenly vastly uneasy. Maude’s silence affected him strangely. Why had she lugged him all the way up here if she hadn’t wanted him to make love to her? He folded his arms, as the great car ground its way upwards. Argèles must be at the very edge of beyond, he thought, rejoicing in spite of himself at the entrancing beauty around him.

And it was—at the very edge of beyond. It stood on a little narrow shelf of rock facing the snows. One solitary wooden hotel the only habitation to be seen. Jim was vaguely surprised. He had thought that Argèles was rather a big place. He twisted the handle of the door. “Apparently we have got here,” he said. “Come along, let’s get out and have a look round. It’s gorgeously beautiful, that’s one thing.”

“Oh, it is beautiful!” Maude lost a little of her constraint. She held Jim’s hand timidly as she got out. They stood and gazed over the huge abyss that divided them from the snows. They were right in the heart of the Pyrenees, that was obvious. “It is beautiful,” she said again, and she caught her breath with a little sob. Maude had staked her all on this day’s excursion and it was turning out as she had hoped it would.

“Will monsieur and mademoiselle go for a little walk while I just carefully adjust the back-wheel brakes?” The Dago was standing just behind them and was speaking with deference. Maude’s instant compliance with his wish for a little cash in advance had pleased him, and relaxed his usual sallow taciturnity.

“Adjust the back-wheel brakes!” Jim swung round. So that had been what was wrong, had it? How horrid! They would look rather foolish on the road if the brakes went wrong!

“Oh, I expect he’ll be able to put them all right.” Maude had also turned.

“Well, I hope he will!” All Jim’s unfeigned joy in the scenery had died a natural death. He thought, with a queer childish feeling of longing, of the Kemps far below them. He craved for the security of them. He suddenly hated the yellow-faced driver. He felt sorry for Maude. How frightened she would be, poor girl, if anything went wrong and they could not get back. But they would have to get back. He spoke in hurried and stilted French to the man, who still stood looking at him.

“I will do my best, monsieur!” and then the tall thin driver turned and went away to the car, and wrenching open the bonnet, he stared into the recesses of it and then knelt down to open the tool-box.

“I thought Argèles was a much bigger place than this.” Jim had made no attempt to follow the driver’s suggestion of going for a walk, and was still staring over the vast abyss that separated them from the snows. Far, far below them were dotted little chalets with sloping roofs. Every now and then the faint jangle of a cow-bell came wavering up to them.

“Yes! I don’t think this is Argèles.” Maude spoke hesitatingly. “Argèles is higher up, I believe,” she said.

“Higher up! Good Lord; then I hope we’re not going on to it,” said Jim frankly. “What on earth is this, then?”

“I believe it’s Frapont. I’ll ask at the hotel, if you like. Oh yes, there is somebody! I’ll ask her.” Maude turned and started to walk towards the hotel. A fat little Frenchwoman had come out of the green-painted door and was staring at them.

“Yes, she says it’s Frapont. And she says that we can’t go on to Argèles, that the road is blocked by a huge tree across it. They have had fearful rain-storms here.”

“Thank the Lord for that!” Jim was so relieved that he very nearly said it aloud. But he refrained, and only smiled a little grimly. “I’ll find out exactly how long our friend is going to take to put the brakes right,” he said, “and then we’ll go for a walk and come back. What do you think of that?”

“I think it would be nice,” said Maude. And she said it with something of the sensation of the criminal when he is told that he may choose his last breakfast. Very soon after this Major Chester would find out that she had got him up here alone on purpose. And then what would he do? What would he say? Maude felt a queer empty feeling inside her as she wondered.

The walk was a brief one. Jim was absent-minded, and he wanted to get back and find out how the repair to the car was getting on. But when he rejoined Maude after a brief colloquy with the driver, his face was as black as thunder. “He says that it’s not safe for us to go down that hill with the brakes in the condition they are,” he said. “The man’s talking through his hat. He’s got to go.”

“But perhaps we shall be killed,” said Maude, paling. She had not reckoned on this. Perhaps the brakes were really wrong. How could she find out?

“I don’t care if we are.” There were little blue shadows at the roots of Jim’s nose. Somehow, he suddenly felt that the whole thing was a plant. Something in the expression of the motor-driver had aroused all his fury. He had been insolent—short in his speech. Jim’s mind worked rapidly. Could he lay out the Dago and drive the car down to Eaux Bonnes himself? But then he thought of Maude: he had no right to risk her life. Because, if the brakes really were wrong they were certain to come to grief. A horrid death, suddenly feeling the car bolting for the edge and unable perhaps to stop it. And then a scratching, scrambling brushing of branches and trees and a spinning, crashing plunge to death, perhaps many thousand feet below. “Find out from the man what’s the matter with the blasted thing,” he said, and he said it roughly and without a tinge of his usual courtesy.

“He says that the brakes really are wrong.” By now Maude was sick with fright. She came back a little paler than she had gone. Somehow, she had not realized that Jim would so desperately resent being left alone with her. But now, if he was so enraged, what was the use of it? He would get away somehow and probably leave her there, alone in that tiny little hamlet with that awful driver and the woman at the hotel, who was probably in league with him. What would be the good of turning up at the Medina the next morning with Major Chester? He would instantly explain that it had not been his fault, and the mere fact of just having been away with him for one night would be of no use. Besides, the Kemps would be there too. Maude suddenly began to cry. The whole thing had been ridiculous. Why had she ever started on it?

“Then I shall walk down.” Jim had begun to pace about. “Have they a telephone in this God-forsaken hole?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, he started off for the hotel.

He was back in about ten minutes. Madame had been very polite but very regretful. They were as a rule on the telephone, she had explained, but a severe thunderstorm two days before had damaged the line both to Eaux Bonnes and to Argèles. But—and madame had smoothed her apron and spoken with true French hospitality. She and her husband could make both monsieur and madame comfortable for the night, and by the morning, if their own car was not fit for the road, probably the obstruction on the road to Argèles would have been removed and an automobile could be obtained from there. Meanwhile, could she not provide coffee and toasts for monsieur and madame?

“Yes, do, if you will.” Jim spoke shortly. But on one point his mind was at rest. He could very easily leave Maude in the care of a nice woman like that and get away himself. He went back to tell her.

“No. I shall die of fright.” Maude, who had wiped away her tears, began to cry again.

“No, you won’t.” Jim spoke kindly. The very idea of being able to get out of what threatened to be a very nasty predicament had cheered him up enormously. He was very much a man of the world, and he knew that with Maude he was not dealing with a woman of his own class. She would have unpleasant relatives. They would know that he had been away with her for a night, and require him to make “an honest woman” of her, or whatever they called it in their vernacular. He was not going to run the remotest risk of it. “No, you won’t,” he said again. “Come along in and have some coffee and toasts, as they call them in France. I never can think what toasts are, but now we’re going to find out.”

But Maude cried all through tea-time. Jim was surprised to find out how indifferent he could be to a woman’s tears. He ate almost cheerfully. And when he had finished he went away to find madame and explain the situation to her. He himself was going to walk down to Eaux Bonnes and leave mademoiselle in madame’s kindly care, he explained. By the morning the car would be fit to convey mademoiselle back to Biarritz. Meanwhile, he would wish to pay for the coffee and for mademoiselle’s lodging for the night, and also for the chauffeur’s.

“Mais, monsieur!”—and here madame became voluble and excited. “Jean, the old shepherd has just arrived from a little hamlet down below and there was a thunderstorm fit to kill raging there. He is wet to the skin.” Madame described his condition with much gesticulation. “My husband has put him to bed in the barn and given him a horse-blanket until his own clothes are dry,” she said. A special calorifer had been lighted. Madame was all for dragging Jim to the kitchen so that he might see with his own eyes the condition of Jean’s clothes.

But Jim good-temperedly put aside madame’s excited remonstrances. He was accustomed to thunderstorms, he said. He paid with pleasure her extremely moderate charges and went back to find Maude.

“The old lady will lend you clothes for the night,” he said. “Now, for God’s sake stop crying. You’re perfectly all right here, or I wouldn’t leave you. The car will be all right by the morning! he’s hard at it now.” Jim purposely did not say anything about the thunderstorm raging down below. It was almost too insulting even for Maude, he reflected, to appear willing to risk anything rather than spend a night under the same roof with her!

“I shall be murdered, staying here alone.” By now Maude was almost hysterical.

“No, you won’t. Madame’s an old dear.” Jim was staring out of the window. Far below, just over the spiky tops of the pines, a thready streak of lightning quivered and vanished.

“I shall,” and Maude got up and began to pace about the room. “You are doing it on purpose because you know that I got you up here on purpose,” she sobbed, and she sobbed it out with great gasping, catching breaths.

“You what?”

“I got you up here on purpose. I loved you so that I had to. I thought that if we were away for the night you would have to propose to me. It was in a book I read once.” Maude by now was almost unconscious of what she was saying. The tears were streaming out of her wide-open eyes.

Jim stood very still. Poor brute! his first thought was one of compassion. And then his eyebrows met over his straight nose. So that beastly Dago was in it, was he? He had a swift wonder as to what it had cost. And then another swift spasm of wonder at Maude’s extraordinary stroke of luck. Because no one could have calculated that the Kemps would have fallen out at the critical moment.

“I say, that was pretty ghastly of you!” he remarked quietly.

“Yes, I know. But people are ghastly when they love anyone as much as I love you,” and Maude suddenly gave a great groan and fell at his feet, clutching at his thin ankles.

“Oh, my sainted aunt!” Jim swallowed his half-amused despair and stooped to pick her up. “Get up,” he said, “and try to cheer up. I’m not half as valuable as you think I am.” He held her, half laughing, by her hands.

“Oh——” Maude relapsed again into gasping sobs. And Jim, feeling a fiend, but inwardly entirely callous, left her there, where she was, crying and choking. And he went out of the narrow green-painted door of the hotel almost at a run. Anything to get out of it! his one passionate desire was that of escape.

But before he had gone more than a hundred feet or so he heard running footsteps behind him. “Monsieur, for one thousand francs I will get you down to Eaux Bonnes to-night.” It was the Dago, with a look of cunning on his sallow face.

“Go to hell!” and at the look on Jim Chester’s face even the Dago was afraid. He turned and began to run back to the hotel with long, loping steps.

Jim went down the rough winding road in long, springing strides. He did not care an atom about Maude; she might howl herself to death, for all he cared. All he wanted was to get himself out of the beastly situation in which, like a fool, he had landed himself. If he could only get to Eaux Bonnes in time, he and the Kemps could get another car and easily reach Biarritz that night. He hurried, looking anxiously back at the sky as he did so. It certainly was infernally black, and there—there was another of those quivering forked flashes of lightning. He would have to hurry to get ahead of them.

Chapter XXIV

But even if Jim Chester had got down to Eaux Bonnes that evening he would not have found the Kemps. It had all happened very soon after the big car had gone creeping away up the steep road that started to ascend practically outside the very front-door of the Hôtel Fleuri. Madame Kemp wished to speak to monsieur her husband. A nice rosy chambermaid brought the message.

“Hallo, what’s wrong?” Mr. Kemp was indoors again, facing his wife, who sat looking very pale in a low wicker chair. “What’s the matter, Kitty, old girl?”

“Nothing. At least, I don’t know. Perhaps there is. I suddenly feel as if I can’t breathe. Horrid! Is it very hot, George?”

“No,” and Mr. Kemp bent tenderly over his wife. “Why, you’re cold,” he said. “Sit still, my darling, and I’ll get you some brandy or something.”

“Oh no! don’t fuss.” But Mr. Kemp had gone. And in a minute or two he was back with half an inch of yellow liquid at the bottom of a glass. And after Mrs. Kemp had drunk it and the colour was beginning to steal back into her pale lips, he went in search of the nice proprietress of the hotel. A doctor; he must have one at once. Mr. Kemp was pale with anxiety.

“A doctor!” The proprietress was concerned. “Monsieur, the hotel is barely open,” she said. “This is not the season for Eaux Bonnes—February; we are but emerging from the snows!”

“Damn!” Acute anxiety furrowed Mr. Kemp’s usually good-tempered face. “One must be found,” he said. “Madame is ill! she is faint. Something must be done.”

“But, monsieur——” And then the pretty chambermaid stepped forward. “There is a doctor staying at the Casino Hotel,” she said, speaking a little apologetically; “that is, if he has not already gone. Shall I inquire, madame?”

“I will,” and Mr. Kemp had gone, tearing up the funny cobbly street. He had been staring absently at the Casino Hotel when his wife had sent for him; it had its name in large gilt letters on the verandah. He plunged excitedly into the front-door of it.

“Is there a doctor staying here?” Mr. Kemp was standing in the hall, shouting in excellent French. Like all men who are anxious, he had lost his head a little. Kitty had never before looked as she was looking now. To hell with this insane excursion! Why the devil had he ever entertained the idea of it?

“A doctor, monsieur?” The pleasant proprietress of the Casino Hotel had emerged from the little office at the back, and even in the midst of his anxiety Mr. Kemp vaguely wondered why Frenchwomen always looked so much nicer than English women. That is to say, when they are running hotels. They looked so competent, and their hair was neat and smooth, and not dyed some strange yellow colour.

“Yes; my wife is ill at the Fleuri. I think it’s her heart.” Mr. Kemp’s face was shiny. He had rushed up the road and was a little breathless.

“I am indeed distressed.” Madame Thélin looked a little disturbed. There was a doctor staying at the hotel, a very great one indeed, a Sir Somebody Somebody—Madame could not pronounce his name. But he was just going away, and would not wish to be interrupted in his preparations. The car was already being got ready in the courtyard at the back.

“Well, is there one here?” Poor Mr. Kemp was dragging his handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his face.

“Well, monsieur——” And then, as Madame Thélin was beginning to agitatedly mark time, the great doctor himself looked out of the little salon, where he had been writing labels. He had heard Mr. Kemp’s first question and had written harder and tried not to hear any more. But the real distress in Mr. Kemp’s voice brought him out.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and he heaved himself up to his great height and looked over his tortoiseshell spectacles at Mr. Kemp. “I am a doctor. But I am just off,” he added in parenthesis.

“It’s my wife.” Mr. Kemp could have cried with relief. “She’s lower down, at the Fleuri,” he said. “Says she can’t breathe.” Mr. Kemp was trying to keep up with the doctor, who had swept out of the front-door and was striding down the road to the hotel.

“Heart.” It took Sir Guy Cadell about one minute to diagnose what was wrong with Mrs. Kemp. “You did perfectly right to give her brandy. There’s nothing organically wrong, of course; at least, I should be very much surprised if there was. Get her down on to the flat at once; this is too high for her.”

“Oh God! we’ve sent the car away!” Mr. Kemp could have cried.

“You can come in mine—that is to say, if you’re ready. I must catch the night train to Paris: I’ve got to be in London to-morrow morning. I’ll drop you in Pau.” The doctor swept out of the hall, where he had been talking to Mr. Kemp in a slightly lowered voice, and dashed up the road again.

“George; but those two!” Mrs. Kemp almost gasped the words as her husband told her what had been arranged. But inwardly she was in a very passion of relief. This feeling of inability really to draw a long satisfying breath was awful.

“They’ll be all right.” Mr. Kemp spoke soothingly. “They’ll be down in an hour or so, and we’ll leave a message for them. I’ll tell madame,” and Mr. Kemp almost ran out of the room.

And twenty minutes later the party of three steered slowly out of the little hamlet and started on the steep downward descent to the plains. With a swift professional glance, Sir Guy had satisfied himself that there was nothing really seriously wrong with Mrs. Kemp, and the two men were talking to one another almost like old friends. Both knew the East; the drive to Pau promised to be a very pleasant one.

And meanwhile Jim had begun to realize that he had been a fool to start out from Frapont in such a hurry. The lightning that had been flickering only in the distance had begun to flicker a good deal nearer. And every now and then there was a distant crash of thunder. Not a booming, but a sort of crackling sound, as if the skies had been torn across. It would take him quite two hours to walk to Eaux Bonnes, and it was already beginning to get dark.

But in less than half an hour it was quite dark. And then broke over Jim’s head the most awful storm that he had ever been out in, or rather had ever experienced. The thunder crashed and crackled round his head and then came echoing back from the jagged peaks that stood up round him. Wet to the skin, he struggled on. The narrow road became a torrent; the water came pouring down the hill on his left-hand side in little jumping, cheerful streams, splashed across the road, and fell a thousand feet or so into the torrent below. The lightning flashed jaggedly all round him; there was a vague mist through which it showed more plainly.

“Gad! it means to get me.” Jim pressed his hands over his ears to shut out the uproar. The wind was tearing through the pine-trees above his head, making a weird whistling sound. It really did seem as if the elements were making a dead-set at him. He felt stupid and dazed, as if it was somebody else struggling through the storm—as if he were not there at all, and was watching somebody else fight to get the better of something that was eventually going to get him down.

And after about an hour of it he was done. He would have to go back; he eventually realized it as he turned stumblingly back and started to climb again. The first violence of the storm had abated a little, but it was still pouring with rain—rain that was cold and furious, and threatened to turn to snow. And turn to snow it did; and by the time Jim reached the little hotel at Frapont again he was walking on feet that he could not feel at all. He burst open the door of it, letting in a wild cloud of snow and wind, and then, with just enough strength to shut it, sat stupidly down on the little wooden bench that ran along the side of the wall.

“Mon Dieu!” But madame, who was out of the kitchen in a moment, was always one for action, and she shouted to her husband. “Take him into the scullery,” she said; “the fire is lighted under the copper. I will push you in the tin tub. He is frozen. Give him the clothes of the Englishman who has just gone; they have returned clean from the wash. But first he must bathe, and meanwhile I will prepare the hot drink.”

“I say, it’s most awfully good of you.” Jim had got back his breath and his senses, and was standing, wrapped in a large blanket, staring at his host, who was busily preparing the impromptu bath. Was he going to give it to him? he wondered. He glanced round the scullery in amusement. Rows and rows of beautifully shining aluminium saucepans on spotlessly clean shelves. “I was a fool to try to walk down to Eaux Bonnes,” he said.

“You were unwise, monsieur.” Monsieur le propriétaire was stout and rubicund, and stooped with a certain amount of difficulty.

“I say, let me do that!” Jim walked forward. He was conscious of an extraordinary feeling of well-being. Had he thought that he was going to be struck by lightning, or had he had a horrid sort of feeling that he was somehow going to die on the road? Anyhow, he was back under cover again and frightfully glad to be there.

“Mais non, monsieur”—and then monsieur, all smiles and jolly rolls of fat, had finished his preparations and had vanished.

And Jim shed his blanket and stepped, tall and powerful, into the tin tub. It was a squash, but the water was very hot. He sluiced it over himself with a tin mug that monsieur had conveniently placed on the flags beside him. Gad! it was jolly, after that ghastly walk. It reminded him of a bath in India after a long day’s shooting. Only the temperature was rather different.

“Mademoiselle is safely settled in bed.” Jim was back in the kitchen again, dressed in the flannel pyjamas of someone who had evidently left his clothes behind to be sent to the wash, and still rolled up in the enveloping blanket.

“Gad!” Jim was conscious that he had entirely forgotten about Maude. “I say, am I to sit here, and to drink this?” He took the steaming tumbler from the cordial fat hand and smiled.

“Mais oui, monsieur!”

And then Jim sat down very close to the open fire and took long, appreciative sips of the very potent drink. Monsieur understood how to mix drinks, and an hour and a half later Jim went upstairs feeling extremely pleased with himself and the world in general. He could even think affectionately of Maude. Poor little girl—it was damned hard on her, the whole thing. He smiled at madame as she ushered him into a spotless little room on the first floor, and madame went downstairs rather cross with her good-tempered husband.

“You have put too much absinthe in the cordial; he is not entirely himself. She will find him, the little cat, and there will be trouble.” Madame was doing fussy things to the fire, and pushing large unburnt pieces of coal on one side of it.

“All the better; they will keep one another warm.” Monsieur was laughing and knocking out his pipe. He stooped, crumpling up his capacious stomach into large rolls of fat.

“Villain!” Madame was still cross. She did not like Maude. She had howled and taken no notice of madame. She had screamed hysterically and rushed to the window to look after Jim’s retreating figure. And madame had summed up the situation at once. It had not been the first time that it had happened in that hotel either. And always the man had been the nicer of the two. And it was the doing of that long-faced Jew, now snoring in the room over the dairy. He earned his living by it, getting innocent men into compromising situations from which they could not extricate themselves. She only hoped that by now Maude was soundly asleep and had not heard Jim come in.

But she had. Maude was not asleep at all. To begin with, she was too frightened. To her all foreigners were potential murderers. And she was terrified at what she had done. She was going to be the one to come badly out of this affair. They would arrive back at the Medina having been away for a night, and Jim’s explanations would be instantly accepted by the people in the hotel, who were all his friends. So at the sound of the slamming of the front-door she had leapt out of bed and rushed to look down over the wooden banisters. And she had heard madame’s excited exclamations and seen Jim’s tall figure, covered with snow and walking shakily. And then there had been a long interval, only broken by shrill talking and shutting and opening of doors. And then had been footsteps on the stairs and Jim’s low laugh and his pleasant “Good-night” in French. And then the quiet closing of a door just below hers.

It did not take Maude long to make up her mind. For, as well as being desperately in love with Jim, she was at the end of her tether. This life at the Medina had given her an insight into a life very different from the one she had already led. She wanted to form part of it. She wanted to be one of that jolly crowd of people who all knew each other and laughed at the same sort of things. And in another day or two her brother Bert was coming to take her home to Surbiton, where he lived with a common wife and two horrid common children. Until their mother’s affairs were settled she would have to make her home with them. And when the affairs were settled she would be mixed up with the same sort of common people. Maude sat up on her beautiful box-spring mattress and switched on the electric light. It was not to be endured for a moment, she thought. But till now she had always been what is commonly known as a good girl. And she was frightened. Supposing Major Chester flung her out of his room and cursed at her. Men did, if you made fierce advances to them and they didn’t like you. If they did like you, it was all right. Maude knew enough of the world to know that.

Chapter XXV

And if monsieur had not been quite so lavish with the absinthe, Jim probably would have flung Maude out of his room. Not with curses, perhaps; men, if they are gentlemen, don’t curse at women, especially if they very openly show that they are in love with them. But he would have been polite and very definite, and perhaps have softened his very decided refusal with a kiss. Anyhow, he would have refused, and then everything would have been all right.

But the strong drink had gone to his head. Gone to his head enough, that is to say, to make him feel kindly disposed and indulgent towards everybody. And when after a fairly long sleep, for Maude had not dared to leave her room until the hotel had sunk into very decided stillness, he awoke and found her in his room, he was not dismayed at all, only vaguely surprised.

“I say, you know, you oughtn’t to be in here!” He had sat up and switched on his light at the sound of the door closing.

“I know!” And Maude, who was terrified out of her senses, began to cry. She had not known what to put on, to begin with, as madame had only lent her a very fierce and uncompromising nightgown made of calico. Someone she had read about in a book who had placed herself in somewhat of the same situation had shed all her clothes and stood there with only a red rose stuck in behind one ear. But Maude had not felt that she could quite bring herself to do that to start with. Besides, she had not a rose.

“What’s the matter?” Jim, being very much of a man, was intrigued. He sat up in bed and held out one hand. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Come over here and tell me all about it. What the devil have you got on?”—he twitched at the stiff collar of the nightdress.

“I know; isn’t it frightful?” Maude had brought her little delicately scented handkerchief down with her, and she pressed it to her nose. “Madame gave it to me,” she said.

“Have one of the blankets.” Jim began dragging at the bedclothes and eventually freed one. “There!” He leant out of the bed and wrapped it round her.

“Oh, I am so utterly wretched.” Maude began to cry.

“Are you?—why? “ Jim had a pleasant voice and it was particularly pleasant now. He lay back on the pillows and stared at Maude. Somehow, Maude in tears was less common than Maude cheerful, he thought.

“Why, because I got you up here on false pretences, and you might have died going down that road. And because you despise me for it,” Maude sobbed, but she sobbed with caution. She had taken a dislike to madame, and she felt that if that good lady knew that she was in Major Chester’s room she would have no compunction in coming and dragging her out of it. So she sobbed as quietly as she could.

“No, I don’t. I’ve never despised any woman so far as I can remember. I must say I think it was rather a deadly thing to do, because I’ve never given you any cause to think that I cared for you, have I now?” said Jim frankly. “But as for despising you, I don’t. So get that out of your head at once.”

“You despise me now, for coming into your room.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do; I can see it in your eye.”

“Then why don’t you go away?” It was the obvious thing to say, but somehow Jim did not say it. Somehow it rather amused him to have Maude in his room. There was a certain piquancy in the situation that appealed to him. But he did not want Maude to become serious. That would be a very different thing altogether. By now he was wide awake and a good deal clearer in his head. But his finer senses were still slightly dulled. He laughed quietly.

“If you see scorn in my eye, you see something that isn’t there,” he said, and he sat up a little higher in bed and leaned on his elbow. “But come now, tell me what you are crying for.”

“Because I adore you,” said Maude, and she slipped off the side of the bed and knelt on the floor. She caught hold of his free hand and mumbled her lips hysterically in the palm of it.

This was more serious, and Jim’s eyes suddenly looked a little steely between his long lashes. He took his hand away, kindly but very definitely.

“Look here, do go back to bed,” he said abruptly; “you’ll be fearfully sorry for this in the morning. I absolutely understand how you feel, but, believe me, it’s absolutely useless. I care for somebody else, if you want to know.” And Jim suddenly sat straight up in bed. He did; he had not known it until that moment. But he did—it came over him in a flood. Delia, his darling little sweet, his little love. What would she do if she could see him now? “I say, do go away,” he said, and he suddenly kicked back the bedclothes and got out on to the floor.

“You care for somebody else?” A latent demon suddenly gleamed at the back of Maude’s eyes. She stood up, still clutching at his hands.

“Yes.”

“Who is it?” Maude had let the blanket drop from round her.

“I can’t tell you that. But it’s a fact. Now you see why I hate this. Do go back to bed. Here, take the blanket with you.” Jim stooped to pick it up.

“It’s that little French caddy of yours.” Maude’s eyes were fiery. “Oh! I shall die—I shall die!” Maude suddenly flung herself at full length on the bed.

Jim groaned. What on earth was he to do? He was sorry for the girl, in a way. After all, she had mistaken his entirely platonic advances for something else. But he had given her no cause to do so.

“I say, do go,” he said, and he stood looking down on her with a vast discomfort in his eyes.

“If I say that I will give you——” Maude suddenly sat up and caught hold of his hand again. “It won’t mean anything to you, I know,” she cried, “but it will mean a great deal to me. Oh! do take me in your arms just once. Do—oh do!” And Maude fell on her knees again.

“I say, don’t!” Jim Chester was a man of a good deal of experience, but this frank surrender of quite a young girl took him absolutely by surprise. And it roused all that was best in him. “I say, don’t,” he said, and he said it almost tenderly.

Maude sensed the change in his voice, and she dragged her hand away. “Oh!” she cried, “I must—you shall love me,” and she wrenched at the buttons of the nightdress so that they came undone. And the ugly garment dropped off her, and she stood there very young, and very flushed and frightened, gleaming silkily under the electric light. And Jim averted his eyes and also flushed heavily.

“I say, I do wish you wouldn’t,” he said, and the domination in his voice had all changed to pleading. For Jim Chester knew his vulnerable point, and Maude was striking very hard at it. She was young, and her curves were the soft, firm curves of youth. He started to pick up the garment she had kicked away from her feet.

“No, don’t. I want you to love me!” But by now Maude was badly frightened. She darted for the blanket and snatched it up close to her. And then she flung herself down on the bed. And as she cried and buried her face in the bunchy duvet her mind, even through her fear, was working swiftly. This was her last chance; desperate with longing and passion though she was, she had the sense to see that. His very chivalry was her protection. She would get him somehow. That little grey-eyed creature that she had given her old clothes to should not have him. Maude twisted herself over on the bed, still clutching the blanket close to her. “Kiss me,” she breathed, and her mouth, all pink and moist with longing, was lifted up to him.

“I say, don’t!” But Jim had come nearer to the bed and was standing towering over it. His inclinations were all for yielding to Maude’s importunities. After all, why not? His eyes were hard.

“Only just kiss me, then.” Maude only breathed the words.

“Yes, but, you know——” And then some force outside

himself seemed to give Jim a gentle shove. He sat down on the side of the bed and laid a brown hand on her bare arm. “My dear child, you’d regret it bitterly by to-morrow,” he said.

“No, I shouldn’t.” Maude’s pert little face was all stained with tears. “After all, if any one has done what I have just done,” she sobbed, “they don’t mind anything else.” And in that moment Maude was genuine. And her commonness dropped away from her, and Jim was touched.

“My dear child, I only think it most awfully sweet of you to have let me see you with nothing on,” he said, “and I think you look most awfully nice, too. But all I say is that I don’t think that you have the remotest idea what you are doing. You’re carried away by your feelings, as all women are when they think they love someone. But, you see, it’s no use. I don’t care for you in that way. Besides——”

“I don’t care what way it is.” Maude flung her arms upwards and caught Jim round his brown neck. She drew his face down to hers. “Kiss me,” she breathed.

“I say——” All Jim’s compassion was gone in an instant.

Obviously the potential harlot; then why not? “You little devil,” he said, “I’ve half a mind to take you at your word.”

“I want you to!” Maude was drawing her breath in gasps.

“Yes, but——” And then Jim suddenly fell on his knees and buried his mouth in her neck. “You little devil!” he said again, and the words came smothered this time.

And monsieur, who slept underneath, heard the quick pad of bare feet, and leaned over to touch his wife on her fat shoulder. “What did I tell you?” he said; “they are together.”

“And it was your fault, too.” Madame spoke angrily and in a grumbling voice. She also had been listening, unknown to her husband. “You were too generous with the absinthe,” she said. “You are a fool. She will get him now. And she will make his life a misery. I do not like her.”

“Perhaps she will not,” said monsieur, who, being fat, always took a kindly view of things.

“She will,” said madame, who always felt cross and out of it when she was in bed without her false teeth. She had liked the look of Jim; he had the easy swinging gait of the conqueror: like the man whom she had once loved and hoped to marry, and who had married somebody else. Madame turned resentfully over on to her side and suddenly stuffed her fingers into her ears.

Chapter XXVI

So that was why Jim Chester felt miserable when he got Delia’s letter. But being a man, he did not waste time in lamenting over what was over and done with. Maude had gone; he had seen her off himself in company with a rather boisterous and decidedly common brother, who had come to fetch her. And so that not very savoury incident was at an end. At least, Jim devoutly hoped it was; somewhere inside him a little twinge of anxiety suddenly made itself felt. Up to that moment he had not even troubled to think that anything might. But then he dismissed the thought. And the whole thing had excited very little comment in the hotel. The Kemps had also returned the next day, after spending the night away. They had spent it in Pau; Sir Guy Cadell had advised a night’s rest for Mrs. Kemp before setting out on the long drive to Biarritz. And they had found friends at the France Hotel, and had borrowed night-clothes and a razor for Mr. Kemp, and so all had been well. Jim had not managed to find a razor for himself, and the memory of that long drive with an unshaven chin rankled even now. Mercifully, Maude had sat huddled and very silent in one corner of the car, so he had not been called upon to kiss her. That, under the circumstances, would have finished him, thought Jim grimly. And now she had gone and he could devote himself to Delia again. His heart sent out a sudden paean of joy. He went down to dinner looking and feeling more cheerful than he had done for weeks. To-morrow he would go and see Mrs. Browne. He had practically thought it all out.

And the next afternoon found him walking down the narrow road to the Villa Bliss. It was a queer road, he thought, looking at the shabby houses on both sides of it. It reminded him vaguely of a road in an Indian hill-station. Funny tumbledown houses, with bright-coloured verandahs and coloured shutters turned back flat against the walls.

Mrs. Browne was at home. Maria came to the door, and when she saw the Englishman in his striped blue flannel suit her wrinkled face lit up. A suitor for her little Delia, she thought. Her old heart kindled. It was bound to come, and the child had a beautiful little face. And in the new clothes that she had miraculously bought for a few francs—what a transformation! Things were all on the mend for the beloved inhabitants of the Villa Bliss, thought the old Frenchwoman, ushering Jim into the sun-flooded little salon and beaming all over her wrinkled face. First, Monsieur Timothy, and now her little Delia. Maria went to find her mistress in a fierce state of excitement.

But Mrs. Browne was frightened. An Englishman! Someone had come to tell her that her pension was to stop. Someone had stepped in to say that Marcus Stoneham was an impostor, and that Timothy Mrs. Browne went into the salon with her delicate hands trembling.

But one glance at Jim put her fears to rest. This was the sort of man that she had been accustomed to meet in India. She greeted him with composure. And Jim at once saw the type of woman that he had to deal with. Mrs. Browne was absolutely a lady. That would make it all very much more easy.

He took about half an hour to explain it to her. And he explained it to her absolutely thoroughly. It was wonderful to him how he seemed suddenly to understand Mrs. Browne. She did not know about Delia having been a caddy, so he told her all that, and he told it so that Mrs. Browne was only left with a feeling of tremulous wonder that she possessed such a child. But when he had finished, having made it very clear that he wished to be entirely responsible for the next eighteen months or so of Delia’s fife, outfit, school and everything, she looked at him.

“Why do you do this, Major Chester?” she asked.

And Jim got up and walked away to the window. “Because I love her,” he said, and then he turned round and came back.

“Does she know?” asked Mrs. Browne. And if her children had seen their mother then they would not have recognized her. All the futility and feebleness was gone. Fancy having a man like this in love with you! Mrs. Browne was thinking it with a sort of frenzy.

“No, I don’t think she does.” Jim came and sat down in a chair in front of Mrs. Browne. He sat with his lean hands linked together between his knees. “She would not understand it,” he said; “she is too young.”

“No; she isn’t a bit too young.” Mrs. Browne suddenly spoke eagerly. Fancy, she had not felt eager for ages, she thought wonderingly. “I am sure she knows. Lately she has been very strange. She hardly eats anything. Her face is like a little pale triangle—it has no colour in it.”

“Really!” Jim got up again. You can’t exactly tell a girl’s mother that her daughter is pale because she is eating her heart out for you, he thought. And as he thought it he suddenly felt wretched again. Why hadn’t he played the game all through this affair? He turned round again and looked at Mrs. Browne. “Don’t tell her,” he said; “far better not. Let her go to school just thinking that I want to send her there because I take an interest in her. Then let her find it out when she leaves, and when I come home from India again.”

“You think that you may change your mind?” Mrs. Browne looked up quickly.

“No; I know I shan’t. But she might,” Jim laughed a little, quietly.

“How could she possibly?” Mrs. Browne’s thin face flushed suddenly.

“I say, you are good to me.” Jim suddenly, to his dismay, felt a swift sensation of tears. How very awful! He blew his nose hurriedly. “Where is Delia?” he asked, and he asked it just for something to say. In reality, he felt that he did not want to see her just yet. This interview with Mrs. Browne had oddly disturbed him. The poverty of it all—the tragedy underlying it all.

“She is out. Mr. Marcus Stoneham is taking them,” and then Mrs. Browne suddenly poured it all out. Had Major Chester heard about Timothy’s wonderful good fortune? How that he also was to go to school—to some wonderful musical school in Vienna. And how Mr. Marcus Stoneham had made himself responsible for the whole of Timothy’s musical education. It was too wonderful. And now Delia—and Mrs. Browne fell tearfully silent.

“Well, then, we’ll consider it settled about Delia, shall we?” Jim, who had been listening to Mrs. Browne with kindly comprehension, got up to go. “And I will ask friends of mine about the best school for her. The rest will be easy. I shall just put money to your credit in Lloyds here—I expect you bank with Lloyds; I do. And the people in the school will tell you what clothes she will want, and you will get them, won’t you? And then all that remains is for her to be shipped off to wherever it is, and let’s hope she will turn out a credit to both of us!” Jim was smiling pleasantly. Somehow, the whole thing was making him wretched. He had stolen a march on this gentle, rather ineffectual woman by making love to her daughter. And yet he knew that he would do it again if he got the chance. In fact, he felt a sort of hungry feeling to see Delia then. He wanted to watch her face change when she saw him—that sort of rippling light that seemed to start at her little white chin and tremble up to the roots of her hair.

“I don’t seem able to thank you properly—it is all too wonderful.” Mrs. Browne was standing up. She, too, felt that she was not being quite genuine, and it made her wretched. She was glad, in a way, that both her children were to go away; she did not understand them. She wished that Major Chester would think that Delia was old enough to marry now. Then she would be left peacefully with her old Maria.

“Don’t try; the obligation is all on my side.” Jim was taking Mrs. Browne’s small soft hand in his. “Good-bye, and I’ll either come and tell you about the school or write.”

And then Jim was gone, walking down the narrow path to the gate and replacing his soft felt hat on his well-brushed head. He was glad that was over; it hadn’t been easy to do, but it had gone off better than he had expected. And now the next thing was to get the Kemps to put him into touch with a good school. Probably Mrs. Kemp would do the whole thing for him. Jim walked home feeling a huge weight off his mind.

Chapter XXVII

Mrs. Browne did not quite play the game with Jim over the telling of Delia. She told her all about Major Chester’s visit after supper that night. But she added what she was not meant to add, and that was that Major Chester was doing it because he was in love with her.

“What?” Delia was sitting by the window, staring out of it. Timothy was pretending to play golf, putting with the handle of an old walking-stick.

“He is in love with you, dear.” Mrs. Browne’s faded face was also turned towards the pale evening light. It streamed in on it, making it look more faded than usual. Although it was a little flushed, Mrs. Browne was really excited over this last strange happening to one of her children.

“He isn’t.” Somehow Delia could say nothing but this. To her it suddenly sounded almost indecent that her mother could give utterance to such words. In love—and with her; she suddenly sank her head in her hands.

“He is. He said so.” Mrs. Browne was conscious of a feeling of antagonism. She looked at Delia’s bowed head almost with a feeling of jealousy. Such a wonderful man—and her obstinate, almost hostile, little daughter.

“He didn’t mean that.” Delia’s voice came stifled. Her heart was giving great dreadful gasping jerks. Her mother would hear them. She struggled to control herself.

“Well, all I can say is that he said it.” Mrs. Browne was by now thoroughly put out. She had anticipated a touching little scene with Delia—her daughter running to her side and burying her face in her lap. “Mother, mother!” A nice, gentle daughter. Not a stiff, uncompromising—— Mrs. Browne got up. “I have a word to say to Maria,” she said. “I am sorry that I repeated what Major Chester really told me in confidence. I hope that you will keep it to yourself.” And with this, Mrs. Browne went out of the room.

And Delia, left alone, just went on sitting by the window with her head in her hands. Coherent thought didn’t seem possible just then. Only just a feeling—a feeling of immense dazzling rapture; a feeling as if—— And then Delia began to cry: great choking sobs that seemed to come welling up from some part of her that had never been properly awake before, and which, in waking, had been broken up in tears.

Timothy found her about half an hour later. He had gathered that there had been something rather unusual going on. Mrs. Browne’s jerkiness at supper had showed it. And the rather self-conscious way in which she had said, “Timothy, I want to speak to your sister; run away, dear,” had made it very obvious. He came in nervously, with his hands in his pockets, trying to appear as usual. But his dancing eyes were timid under his straight fringe.

“What on earth’s the matter with you?” He heaved his back rather defiantly from against the door, shutting it behind him.

“Nothing; at least Timothy, come in; I want to tell you.” Delia turned slowly round from the window, against the pale square of which her little figure showed black. “I’m going away to school,” she said; “Major Chester is going to send me.”

“What on earth for?” Timothy twisted his fingers nervously in his pockets. But his tender heart was immensely relieved. That had been the one blot on his own wonderful future, the thought of Delia left there alone. “What on earth for?” he repeated.

“He says that he loves me.” Delia said the dazzling words with a sort of studied indifference. She heard herself saying them, miles and miles away.

“I don’t suppose he does for a minute.” Timothy’s reply was dogged. He was suddenly jealous. Delia had always belonged to him. At least, she had until lately, and now that stupid

“I don’t suppose he does,” he repeated. “He’s stuffed mother up with that to make her not offended at his offering to pay for you. He had to say something, and that was the most likely thing.”

“Do you really think it was that?” Delia was standing very still.

“Well, I expect it was.” But Timothy by now was beginning to relent. He had a very tender heart, and the sight of Delia standing there had touched it. She looked so helpless—so defenceless. “Perhaps it wasn’t,” he said grudgingly. “But, anyhow, I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you. Men are like that: they get fits of thinking they like a person and then it goes off.”

“Do they?” But by now Delia was not listening. A strange abysmal quiet had descended on her soul. Again she thought vaguely that this was how Mary must have felt when she knew that she was going to be the mother of Jesus Christ. It was true that Jim Chester loved her; she felt the knowledge running through her veins like a little thready streak of fire. Somehow she had always known it. Oh, to see him now! to feel his hands on each side of her upturned face. “I’m going out”—she said it suddenly.

“Don’t go rushing up to the hotel and falling on his neck in front of people.” Timothy suddenly felt very brotherly and responsible. Delia looked so funny all of a sudden, as if there was a lamp inside her head, making all her skin transparent. What a queer girl she was! He turned rather shyly away to the door.

“All right, I won’t.” Delia had turned away again to the window. Her hands were hanging straight down at her sides and her profile showed pale and delicate in the evening light. Timothy suddenly felt awkward and self-conscious; he opened the door quietly and shut it behind him with a feeling of relief.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Somehow Jim knew that he would meet Delia. As he walked along the sands with his cap pulled down low over his eyes and his Burberry blowing a little open, showing his dress shirt, he almost wished that he wouldn’t. His meetings with her had not showed him at his best. Away from her he could think of her quietly: with her at his side he couldn’t. She responded too deliciously to his slightest touch. And then a sudden feeling came over him that the best thing would be to marry her at once. Take her away with him and teach her himself the ways of the world. And then he dismissed the thought as fantastic. Women were spiteful creatures, take them as a whole, and they would make her wretched in India. She would be so very unversed; she would start at a hopeless disadvantage. It would be all right after eighteen months at a good school—Mrs. Kemp knew of an excellent one in Lausanne; a great friend of hers in India had left her girls there. She would start writing letters about it at once. Jim had been talking to her about it after dinner that night. And he would come home again, perhaps in a year’s time; a year at school was a long time for a girl, and then—— His blood suddenly quickened. Delia his, utterly. How she would respond: in surrender—perfect. He suddenly dragged off his cap and stuffed it into his pocket; and then, with a shamefaced gesture, he passed his not quite steady hand over his hair. How ghastly to charge about the place with it all sticking up. He was ashamed of his sudden loss of self-possession.

Delia saw him first. And she crouched down still lower behind her rock. Her thoughts had brought him—you couldn’t think about a person like that and him not come. And now that he had come, what was she going to say? How was she going to hide from him that her mother had told her that he loved her? But he didn’t—he couldn’t! Not her, Delia, miserable and grovelling and untidy.

“Hallo!” Jim had come up level with the rock. And Delia, trembling, sensed the change in his face. Then perhaps it was true.

“Hallo!” She emerged, and stood there looking at him. Beloved angel face! Delia’s soul was in her eyes.

“What are you doing rushing about at this hour?”

“I felt I had to come out.” Delia’s small face was still lifted.

“Why, has the scheme about the school excited you?” Jim was smiling down at her. “Your mother was awfully nice to me,” he said, “and approves, so it’s all settled. And a friend of mine at the Medina is finding the school, so that’s all right.”

“Which friend?” It fled from Delia’s lips like a champagne cork from a bottle.

“A Mrs. Kemp.” Jim’s eyes were steady.

“I see.” Delia’s lips were suddenly tremulous. “I thought perhaps you meant that one who gave me these clothes,” she said.

“No; that one’s gone,” said Jim, and he said it with amused eyes.

“Gone! For good?”

“Yes.”

“Joy!” Delia flushed scarlet. “I loathed her,” she said.

“Yes, I know; but it was foolish of you.” Jim spoke gravely. “You shouldn’t let yourself loathe people,” he said; “it’s a habit that grows on one, and it’s a bad one.”

“I don’t so much loathe her now she’s gone,” said Delia, flushing at the reproof.

“No; that’s right. Now, don’t you think it’s time you went home?” Jim’s voice was matter-of-fact. He glanced down at the watch on his wrist. “Nine o’clock,” he said, “and it’s beginning to get dark.”

“Couldn’t we walk along just a little way together?” Delia’s eyes and voice were heavy with pleading. “As far as those trees. Then I can go home along the tram-lines and it won’t matter if it’s dark.”

“You’d much better go back straight away.” Jim’s keen eyes were sweeping the deserted sands. He had no business to be down here at this hour with this child who adored him. He had not meant to be, but somehow fate was always against him. Or was it for him? He cleared his throat abruptly.

“Do!” Delia’s voice was a prayer.

“Very well, then. But I warn you it’s only got to be a brisk walk. Just as far as the trees, and then you’ve got to go, young lady.” Jim held out his hand. “Catch hold of it,” he said quietly.

“I must kiss it first.” Delia buried her soft mouth in the hard, muscular palm.

Jim’s eyes over her bowed head were inscrutable. But he forced himself to stand still. “Thank you,” he said when she lifted her head again. “Now then, come along.”

“Did you like it?” Delia was walking lightly along the sands by Jim’s side. Her dark cropped head reached to just a little below his shoulder. He got a sudden insane desire to kiss it— to feel the ruffly hair of it under his mouth.

“Very much.” He forced himself to speak dispassionately. Delia seemed to drift along by his side like a little wisp of something blown before the wind. Her little cool profile showed pale in the evening light. They reached the first tall hedge of tamarisk blown slantwise by the fierce winds of earlier in the year. Jim stopped dead. He could no longer control himself. “Look here, I love you,” he said, and he said it hoarsely.

“You love me?” Delia drew back a little, and one wavy bit of feathery tamarisk flicked itself against her face. She brushed it aside. Her eyes looked into his, unseeing.

“Yes.” Jim caught hold of both her hands and held them against his coat. “I told your mother,” he said, “so it doesn’t so much matter my telling you. You must go to school for just one year, and then I’ll come home and marry you. That is, if you’ll have me,” he said, and he smiled briefly.

“Why can’t you marry me now?—something might prevent it.” The colour suddenly flamed high in Delia’s face and she snatched her trembling hands away. “I can’t live without you for a whole year—I shall die with the misery of it. Something might happen to you—you might die. People do die, especially in India. Major Chester, marry me now, I implore you to.” Delia’s voice was trembling on a high note of appeal.

“My darling child, it isn’t possible.” And then Jim talked to her quietly. He had to go back in a couple of months’ time. This was the wrong time to take a woman out to the East; he would be travelling in June, boiling in the Red Sea. He wanted her to learn—Jim, with the greatest tenderness, told Delia what he wanted her to learn. She was young—much younger than he—to start with, and, even so, very young for her years. Jim looked tenderly down through the gathering darkness. “Only just one year, darling,” he said, “and it will pass very quickly if you’re at school. Something entirely new. That will help a lot, you know.”

“No, it won’t.” Delia suddenly felt a strangling sensation in her throat. Something told her that this was the end, unless she could persuade him to marry her now. Not to have her with him—she didn’t mind that; but to have her just made his wife. Then it would be all legal and no one could interfere. “Nothing will help unless I know that I’m really yours,” she cried, and her face was white and strained as she stared upwards. “Marry me and keep it quite secret; I don’t mind. I don’t mind that either. I’ll still be Delia Browne. But marry me, then no one can interfere, Major Chester—Major Chester!” Delia began to cry, hopelessly and wildly.

And in the despair of the weeks that followed, Jim wondered why he had not done as Delia asked him. That would have settled things indeed. But now he only held her a little closer to him and talked to her quietly and reasonably. She was a silly little girl. She must be plucky and sensible. A year was nothing. He would be home again, and then—he pushed her hair back from her forehead: “Then we’ll be married,” he said, “and you’ll be glad—as I shall be.”

“It will never happen like that.” Delia spoke with a sort of heavy despair. “Things don’t. Major Chester, I implore you.”

“No, darling.” And Jim shut his lips very decidedly. And Delia, seeing it hopeless, laid her dark head on his hands and cried until she could cry no more. And he let her cry, knowing that it was the best way for her to get rid of her superfluous emotion. Women were like that; he smiled tenderly in the darkness. It had taken her by surprise, the knowledge that he really cared for her. And he kissed her soft hair again and again as he held her to him.

But back again in the hotel it took him a very long time to go to sleep. Some of the despair in Delia’s soul had communicated itself to him. He had been so happy when he had started out after dinner that night, all seeming so auspicious. He buried his head in the pillow as the fierce shaft of white light came swinging round the end of his bed. Curse those revolving lights! They ought to stop them when people wanted to go to sleep. How the hell! Jim buried his head deeper in his pillow and got a sudden stupid longing to be able to cry as Delia had cried. To get rid of it like that, the sort of heavy, horrid foreboding that suddenly seemed to settle down on his soul. Indigestion. He dismissed it defiantly as that, and turned restlessly on to his other side. That was the worst of a hotel run as well as the Medina was run. They fed you too well, and you made a beast of yourself and then were sorry for it.

Chapter XXVIII

But the next morning, when on his way back from his bath he met Jean, the lounge attendant, carrying a tray bearing on its well-polished surface the insignificant little flap of folded paper that meant a telegram, he wondered if his foreboding of the night before had had its root in something more far-reaching and devastating even than indigestion. He tore it open with sudden sick anxiety.

Father has had a stroke and is not expected to live. Can you return at once?—Madeline.

And Jean watching, wondered why Major Chester suddenly laughed. A laugh of overwhelming, ungovernable relief. And Jim himself wondered when, a moment or two later, sobered and horrified at his quick revulsion of feeling, he re-entered his room and began to dress with all speed. If he was to get to England the following morning he must catch the Blue Train at ten. An hour and a half, and he had all his packing to do. He set to work at once, pouring out his coffee and buttering a roll, and then hauling his two suit-cases from under the bed.

And as he ate and packed, his thoughts worked quickly. He must write a note to Delia: she would be frantic if she found he had gone and heard nothing. His two suit-cases completed, he took his cup of coffee over to his writing-table and sat down.

My own funny little Dahlia (he wrote),

I have just had a wire to say that my pater is seriously ill. So I must go at once, and am catching the train de luxe at ten. I will come back before I go back to India. I will take Biarritz on the way, and we will have a week together. So don’t be miserable. If you want to write to me, write to the Naval and Military Club, Piccadilly, London.

In great haste,
Jim.

The letter completed, he rang the bell and gave orders for his luggage to be taken down. And then he walked along the corridor to the Kemps’ sitting-room. Mrs. Kemp was up, sitting looking exceedingly nice in a boudoir cap and quilted satin dressing-gown, and having her petit déjeuner.

“My dear Jim, I am sorry!” Her pleasant face was all creased with ready sympathy.

“Yes, I know; it’s rotten luck. But, you know, the pater has been shaky for the last year or two. He had what the doctors said was a stroke six months ago, but he wouldn’t have it at any price. And now I expect he’s been overdoing it again. Morning, Kemp; sorry to interrupt you at this hour.” Jim turned and showed his teeth in a brief white flash as Mr. Kemp came into the room.

“My dear Jim, I’m sorry to hear the cause of it.” Mr. Kemp was sitting down and pushing forward his blue and red striped cup for his coffee. “Mind you let us know if we can do anything for you. Going off like this in a hurry will mean a bother, I’m afraid.”

“Only about the school for that child I was telling you about. But your wife will be a dear and fix that up for me, won’t she?” Jim Chester flashed his brilliant smile across the table.

“I will.” Mrs. Kemp smiled quietly back. “Directly I hear from Connie, I’ll go and see Mrs. Browne myself,” she said. “I want to see the child, too.” Mrs. Kemp’s smile deepened. “Jim, I believe you’re in love with her,” she said; “confess it now, before you go.”

“To both of you—and at this hour of the morning? Certainly not.” Jim stood up and laughed quietly. “Well, I’m off,” he said, “and I’m very sorry to say good-bye. I’ll write, of course, but if I don’t see you again, George, my boy, we’ll shoot the wily snipe together this cold weather. What about it? You’re certain to go to Garapore, and so am I. So we ought to get some jolly good shooting. Good-bye.” Jim had walked round the table and was holding Mrs. Kemp’s soft hand closely in his own.

“Good-bye, Jim,” and for some reason or other, when the door had closed behind him, Mrs. Kemp sat down again with the tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what it is, but my heart yearns over that boy,” she said.

“So do all women’s hearts. That young man has a way with him!” Mr. Kemp laughed good-humouredly as he sat down again. “But I know what you mean, Kitty; he is an uncommonly pleasant fellow, and I only hope——” And Mr. Kemp relapsed into sudden silence.

“What?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Mr. Kemp, with a look of quiet meditation, was buttering himself a piece of the delicious crumbly horseshoe of roll. “But you know I never liked that Pritchard female, and I always thought that Jim was extraordinarily unwise to take her up as he did. It was cussedness on his part, of course; but you can’t be cussed with people who are not of your own class. At least, you can’t unless you are prepared to run a very serious risk.”

“No; I know.” And then Mrs. Kemp also relapsed into a meditative silence. But as she went into her bedroom again and began to busy herself with the preparations for getting up, she argued with herself, almost as indignantly as she would have argued with anyone who was trying to show Jim up in a stupid light to her. Of course, he was able to take care of himself; he had had numberless and hair-raising affairs with women, and had emerged safely from all of them.

And Jim, busy with his thoughts, sitting staring out of the window of the train de luxe, lurching its way over the badly laid permanent way, regarded the horizon with a calm detachment. For many things he was glad that his visit to Biarritz had been cut suddenly short. It was becoming a little difficult. He loved Delia too much to see her as constantly as he was doing. At least, she loved him too much. His mouth broke suddenly in a little tender smile. It would be different when he was home again and they were going to be married immediately. Then she could love him as much as she liked: heavenly little sweet! He suddenly picked up his copy of the Continental Daily Mail and studied it through abruptly narrowed eyelashes. And the journey continued without incident. In between the excellent meals, he dozed in his comfortable seat, and waked alert and fresh in Paris. He drove across that gay town and thought of a wonderful week that he had once spent there with a great friend of his. Jove! they had made the money fly! He laughed as he sat with folded arms staring out at the gaily lighted restaurants. He slept again in the train to Calais, and watched the grey dawn come in as they neared the white cliffs of Dover. And eating an excellent breakfast in the train to London, he wondered why English people had nothing but abuse for their native railway services. The train he was in at the moment swung its way North with only the vaguest sound of vibration. In France you were chucked from side to side and expected to come off the rails at any moment. At least, he always did.

London was dark and it was raining. But Jim got the feeling of exhilaration that he always did when he saw the dingy old city again. He leant out of his taxi with almost a boyish feeling of excitement as he drove across to Paddington. Gad! it was good to be home again; he settled himself luxuriously into the corner of his first-class carriage as the long train stole carefully out of the echoing station.

But the next few days cooled his ardour again. His father died almost immediately he arrived, and that without regaining consciousness. The funeral was dreadful. Such things should not be allowed in a civilized country, thought Jim resentfully, feeling the tears sting his eyelids as he stood by the open grave. But as the house regained its normal cheerfulness he felt better again. His sisters were both left well provided for, and so was he. His father had been a rich man, and had invested his money well and carefully, so there was nothing to worry about. At least, Jim supposed that there wasn’t anything to worry about. But if there wasn’t, why did he feel so horribly depressed? he wondered, standing on the terrace at the back of the old half-timbered house, looking down at the lower lawn, where the younger of the two gardeners was mowing the grey, dewy grass.

But by lunch-time he knew why he was so horribly and unnaturally depressed? There was a letter from Maude by the second post, forwarded on from Biarritz. He knew it was from Maude when he saw the large sprawly, rather back-handed writing on the envelope. He ate his lunch with a queer sick feeling at the back of his throat that made it difficult to swallow. He would read it afterwards, in the smoking-room, over his cup of coffee. He excused himself to his sisters directly the meal was over.

And when he had read it he sat for quite a long time without moving with his eyes fixed on the fire. He had forgotten his coffee; it remained black and slowly getting cold in the tiny cup. And then he got up and took a Bradshaw almost mechanically from the crowded shelves. There was a train at half-past four; he would take it and be in London that night.

To give Maude her due, she had suffered the tortures of the damned before she had written to Jim. No one is wholly bad, and Maude was no exception to the rule. But she was sick with fear and terror, and when Jim saw her the next morning in the lounge of the Naval and Services Stores he would hardly have known her. She was pinched and old, and there were new lines about her mouth. In the midst of his despair he felt a queer pity for her. The world was damned hard on women, take it all round.

“We’ll take a taxi and go out somewhere into the country.” He had greeted her without a smile, and Maude had felt again the thrill that always caught her when she looked at him. After all, if it meant that she had got this man, it might be worth it after all.

But Jim was not going to give in without a fight. He was fighting for his life, and his questions were almost brutal as the taxi fled through the outskirts of Landon. They would go as far as Dorking and have lunch and come back. And perhaps on the homeward journey—his eyes clouded almost childishly as he remembered his boyish expeditions to the dentist. There was a time when you knew it would be over—on the way back, when it was all done with and there was nothing to be frightened of any more.

But it was not done with, and, the excellent lunch over and Maude left with a cup of coffee in the lounge, he walked away and stood for a minute or two at the window of the smoking-room. This thing should not be; his eyelids flickered down and lay passive for a moment or two on his rather pale face. And then he opened his eyes widely and went back to her.

“How much will you take?” The lounge was deserted and Jim spoke looking straight at Maude. He heard his own voice with almost a feeling of horror. He had always supposed himself to be a gentleman.

“I won’t take anything, if you mean by that that you’re going to bribe me to keep quiet and go through it all alone. Why should I have all the disgrace and everything and you get off scot-free?” Maude’s look of fright had given way to one of cunning.

“Whose fault was it?” Jim had his arms folded and his mouth was set in a line of extreme cruelty.

“That’s what a man always says when he’s let a girl in for something,” sobbed Maude, feeling for her handkerchief and blowing her nose with it.

Jim was staring at the big bowl of roses set on the deep stone window-sill: he laughed hardly.

“You haven’t answered my question,” he said.

“And I won’t, either.” Maude spoke defiantly. “And you’re no more nor less than a brute to take it like this, too. I’m not any too bad, look at it all round. I loved you and I gave myself to you. And this is all I get out of it”; and Maude began to cry with renewed vigour.

“Forced yourself on me.” Jim spoke with brutality. “Got me up in the mountains with the aid of a filthy Dago who earns his living by that sort of thing, and then declined to go out of my room when I besought you to. How often have you done it before, may I ask you that? And what guarantee have I that the child you are trying to lay at my door is not the child of somebody else? Believe me, before I agree to marry you I shall leave no stone unturned to shake myself free of this.”

Jim got up and began to pace about the lounge. His face was white and there were shadows at the root of his nose. He felt desperate, frantic. Get out of this he would, somehow. It was his life—his future; everything was involved. Delia—he felt a queer desire to cry and sob aloud. He would be done broken, if he had to drag out the rest of his life by the side of this underbred woman. And when he got back to London that afternoon, having deposited Maude outside one of the stations from which she could book to Surbiton—Maude sulky and rebellious, but under it all horribly and malignantly determined—he went straight to his old family lawyer, and sat rigid and desperate, staring at him over the massive writing-table set in the middle of the little oak-panelled room in the Inner Temple. “Get me out of it, Greyson, or I shall commit suicide or something.” Jim’s face was white and his clean-shaven top lip was flecked with little beads of perspiration.

“My dear boy, I’ll do my best,” and old Mr. Greyson faced the man that he had known from boyhood with a brief and sorrowful smile. But inwardly he knew that it was absolutely hopeless. This woman, whoever she was, meant to get this splendid man who now sat in front of him. And she would get him; drag her through whatever humiliation they chose to inflict, she would stick it all for the goal at the end of it.

And so it proved. No stone was left unturned, but Maude submitted to it all. And even the old family doctor who had brought Jim into the world faced him in his consulting-room with almost a groan. “We’ll give it a while longer, my boy,” he said; “but I’m afraid there’s no hope for you.”

“I won’t marry her.” Jim was not ashamed of the tears standing in his eyes. That very morning he had had a letter from Delia, the first since his hurried departure from Biarritz three weeks before. Mrs. Kemp had been to see them and had explained why he had had to go so suddenly, and had settled all about the school. “And I adore you even more than when you were hear,” wrote Delia, in her childish writing and with her indifferent spelling. “And when I am your wife I shall kiss your shoes when I clean them for you: no one else shall do them but me. It is almost pain, I love you so.”

So he faced the old doctor with despair in his eyes. Every day now was more despairing than the last. At first he had had a wild hope that one day he would hear from Maude that everything was all right. Surely no woman in her senses would want to marry him unless she had to, knowing as she did that he practically detested the sight of her. But Jim did not realize how desperately Maude was in love with him in her vulgar way. To her, he stood for everything that she coveted. The very sight of him, perfectly groomed and with every detail right, sent a thrill through her that she had never thought to experience. And in her common way she felt that once she was his wife everything would be all right. Men were more or less alike when it came to their relations with a woman, thought Maude crudely, not sensing in the least the fibre of which Jim Chester was composed.

So the days went on. Jim lived at his Club and was out morning, noon and night. Every now and then he heard from his lawyer. Mr. Greyson had seen Mr. Pritchard, Maude’s brother, who had talked largely of honour and had refused the large sum that Jim offered if only Maude would consent to let him go. Mr. Pritchard had incensed the dignified lawyer, who had replied with heat to the common man’s suggestion that Jim had only got what he had asked for.

“A pretty business, I call it, for a good girl like our Maude.” Mr. Pritchard had stood in his ghastly suit in the beautiful office facing Mr. Greyson with outraged virtue exuding from every pore. But underneath the virtue there was cold determination. His wife had had a very straight talk with him that morning, before he had left the double-fronted villa in Surbiton. “Don’t you let him go, Bert,” she had said. “It’s a chance of a lifetime for our Maude, and when she’s all fixed up in India our Carrie can go out to her.”

So Mr. Pritchard was very determined. And Mr. Greyson, seeing the determination and the type, knew that it was hopeless. This was one of those ghastly things that happened in this life, and the only thing that one could do was to face it and make the best of it. So he told Jim, Jim standing white-faced and with his back to him, staring out into Fountain Court.

“I shall kill myself, Greyson,” he said; and not caring in the least what the old lawyer thought of him, he groped unseeingly for his handkerchief.

“No, you won’t, Jim.” Mr. Greyson spoke kindly. “The girl loves you, and you must make the most of that. After all, there is no really sordid motive at the bottom of it, and we must make the best of that too. She is well off, so she is not after your money. That would make it ghastly. But she is young and quite good-looking, and once away from her family she may improve.”

“I shall not take her out to India with me.” Jim spoke with his back still turned.

“No? Well, for the present, of course, it would not be advisable,” said Mr. Greyson, and he spoke with his eyes fixed in deepest pity on the splendid figure outlined against the window.

“Nor shall she ever be anything but my wife in name,” said Jim; and as he said it his mind fled back in anguish to Delia. She was to have been his wife—Delia——

Mr. Greyson suddenly felt a swift spasm of compassion for Maude, tied to this man who hated her: what a fool the woman must be! It could not fail to be anything but a life of misery for her. However—— He spoke quietly. “That won’t help anyone, Jim,” he said.

“It will help me if I feel that I am making her suffer,” said Jim, and he turned round with a peculiarly dreadful look on his mouth.

Chapter XXX

And the look was still there when, a week later, he faced Maude in the elaborately furnished drawing-room of “Chatsworth.” Mrs. Bert had gone out to leave the field clear for her sister-in-law. But before she went she had exhorted Maude: “Don’t you be a silly and give in,” she said, “thinking of giving way at the last moment. Make him marry you: what are you going to do with the kid, pray, when it arrives? You can’t have it here, and that I tell you straight.” When excited, Mrs. Bert was apt to revert to type. She had been a barmaid when her husband had met her, and had had a very effective way with refractory clients.

So Maude faced Jim with renewed determination in her sunken eyes. She had suffered acutely in her uneducated way since the day at Dorking. She loved Jim desperately, but Maude was not all bad, or silly either. And in her calmer moments she knew that she was doing a fearfully cruel thing in chaining this man to her side. He did not love her and he loved somebody else. And somehow it was the vague knowledge that he did love somebody else that roused all Maude’s worst instincts. Somebody else would get all that divine chivalry and passion if she did not lay hold of it. Never mind, if she herself got it or not, nobody else could have it if she had it legally.

Jim knew at once, by the look on Maude’s face, that any persuasion he might bring to bear would be worse than useless. And he faced her with cold pride in his eyes. “Well, determined to have me at any price?” he said, and he laughed as he said it.

“Yes,” said Maude.

“God! and I’ll make you suffer for it!” said Jim, and he said it with a queer rigidity about his lips.

“O—h!” Maude was crying hysterically.

“I will; I’ll make you regret the day a thousand times before you’ve done with me,” said Jim, and he said it with a queer detachment as he began to glance almost curiously about the room. Maude was howling in a chair a little away from him, but somehow he hardly saw her. His mind was beginning to work with a queer, distant precision. Now that the inevitable result of his folly was actually on him, he seemed to be getting a queer enjoyment out of it. Presently he himself would begin to suffer, but now it was soon going to be within his power to make somebody else suffer. And she should suffer the tortures of the damned. Gad! how he would enjoy it. Maude stopped crying and raised her head to look at him.

“How funny you look,” she said, with an odd fear rising far away in her.

“Do I?” asked Jim with a laugh. “It’s joy at the thought of our wedding-day,” he said, and he looked down at the neatly shingled head a little way below him. “And now that it’s actually settled, supposing that I kiss you again,” he said, and he took a short quiet step across the floor.

“Do you want to?” Maude was suddenly all trembling surrender. This man utterly possessed her. He was perfect, and if he loved her—— She got up uncertainly from her chair.

“Want to? Of course. I consider you very desirable,” said Jim, and he stooped a little and took hold of her shoulders.

“But you said that you were going to make me suffer,” said Maude stupidly, amazed at this sudden change of front.

“People who love always suffer,” said Jim, and he said it with a funny smile at the corners of his mouth.

Chapter XXXI

Once Jim had made up his mind to marry Maude, he wished to get it finished with. But he kept it a deadly secret from all his friends. He would be married at a register office and would have nobody there from his side of the family. This he made clear to Maude in one of his brief visits to her at Surbiton.

“It looks so funny.” Maude was inclined to be pettish.

“Not at all.” Jim was looking at Maude and thinking how good-looking she really was—in a common way, certainly, but the good looks were undoubtedly there.

“It does.”

“Considering the circumstances, I think you may consider yourself uncommonly lucky to be within shouting distance of a wedding-ring,” said Jim coolly. And even as he spoke he shuddered away from himself. What a cad he was becoming! Fancy saying a thing like that to a woman, and to a young one too.

Maude remained silent, but her hands were wrenched together. She was terribly unhappy, and the hardness with which she faced Jim was more or less put on. Mrs. Bert had her hands full to keep Maude up to the scratch. Left to herself, she would have backed out of the whole thing. She had fits of terrible crying.

“Why shouldn’t I do what lots of other girls do?” she had confronted Mrs. Bert one day with wild eyes and ruffled hair.

“Don’t you be a silly fool,” and on his return from the City Mr. Bert Pritchard had had to have a very straight talk indeed with his sister. “Now you promise me that you won’t get up to any of those tricks, Maude,” he had said, and he had been stern and almost majestic in his manner.

“All right,” and Maude had given in with a heavy and almost sullen resignation. But in her heart she still knew that she was being a fool. Men of Major Chester’s class didn’t marry girls of her class and make it nice for them.

No; they did not. And Jim began to look forward to his wedding-day with amusement. His extremity of bitterness was over for the moment, it would return, but not just yet. He had had it out with himself the night before, when there had been another letter from Delia. Delia wrote with extreme frankness, and Jim, standing in his dress-shirt close under the electric light in his bedroom at the Club, held it in a clenched hand.

Darling Angel (she wrote),

I loved your letter, but it was awfully short. But of course it does not make any difference to me. If you never wrote to me I should not mind. Just to know you are there is so heavenly. Mrs. Kemp has been hear and her face was all swelled. Do you think it is that she does not like Mr. Kemp? What else could make her face swell with crying?—because I was sure it was that.

And when he had got as far as that Jim had flung himself on his face on his bed and shed at least three or four most bitter tears. So Mrs. Kemp was taking it hardly; he had thought so, by her letter, which had arrived earlier in the day. She had agreed with him in his wish to keep the knowledge of his marriage from Delia.

“After all, as you say, there is no point in telling her,” she wrote. “Let the child go to school in ignorance. She is young, and youth is elastic. And when she does eventually find out, your memory may have faded a little in her mind.”

But Mrs. Kemp did not say this to her husband. “The child adores him, and she will die when she knows,” she said, and she said it with the tears streaming down her face. Jim’s letter had come with petit déjeuner, and Mrs. Kemp had cried ever since the receipt of it.

“Don’t waste your tears on the damned fool. Let him go to hell with the little tart he has chosen.” Mr. Kemp, in dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, was storming up and down the room. Deeply attached to Jim Chester, he was as horrified as his wife at the news that had come by the early post. “Of course it all happened the day we went to Eaux Bonnes. And this is the process known as making an honest woman of her. There’s a kid on its way, of course; nothing else could make even Jim Chester such a damned fool. Honest woman!” Mr. Kemp was speechless and stammering.

And that was why Mrs. Kemp’s pleasant face was stained and swollen with tears when, later that evening, she went down the narrow road to the funny tumbledown little Villa Bliss. She had become attached to all the Brownes, and especially to Delia. And Timothy was a darling, too: she sat in the barely furnished little salon with an aching heart.

“When I come back I shall be quite grown up.” Delia was talking to her with an eager look in her grey eyes. “I shan’t do the stupid things I do now; I shall go gracefully, like a real young lady.”

“You are very sweet as you are.” Mrs. Kemp’s eyes dwelt on the shabby little figure in front of her. Delia’s delicate little face was all alight with excitement. She was tingling with joy.

“Yes, but I want to be quite perfect. Don’t you see, Major Chester paying for it makes me feel like that. It’s like choosing a special turkey and having it fattened for Christmas. It’s got to be fatter than any other turkey because it’s so expensive.” Delia’s little even teeth were showing in amusement.

“She’s a pig; her mind always runs on food.” Timothy, swinging on his heels, was amiable and at his ease. He liked Mrs. Kemp, and she had been very useful in dissuading Mrs. Browne from buying the wrong things. He, too, was being fitted out for school.

“She’s my own jolly little girl,” and Mrs. Kemp had drawn Delia close to her side with almost a groan. Oh! the agonizing pity of it; poor Mrs. Kemp cried all the way back to the Medina and most of the night as well.

But tears don’t prevent anything from happening. In fact, you don’t shed tears unless you know the horror that causes them to be nearly on you. So Jim Chester’s wedding-day crept relentlessly round, and nobody could do anything to stop it, because the principal persons concerned were determined to have it so: Jim Chester from a sense of necessity, now that he knew that Maude would be satisfied with nothing less than marriage, and Maude Pritchard because she adored the man concerned and would have him at any price.

Chapter XXXII

Chatsworth had a horrid common asphalt path in its front garden, leading down between two rows of shiny laurel-bushes to a wrought-iron gate. And when Maude got out of bed on the morning of her wedding-day and looked out of the window, she saw the laurel-bushes more shiny even than usual: it was raining with a sort of drear, obstinate persistence. This was wretched—a wretched beginning to a day that should have been a very joyous one; and as it was very early, Maude got back into bed again. And as she lay there, her pert little face turned up to the ceiling, the tears welled up in her blue eyes and ran unchecked down her face. She was visualizing her mother as she would have been if it had been an ordinary wedding-day and her mother had been alive to see it. All joyous fuss and excitement over her only daughter’s marriage. Bubbling over with selfless anxiety to make it all perfect, and only protesting a very little when Maude’s snubs were rather more sledgehammer than usual. And as she lay and thought, she lived over again that time at the Medina Hotel. She had got to know the man who was soon to be her husband, in spite of his very obvious desire not to get to know her, or, if he did get to know her, to keep the acquaintance on the most slender terms. She had practically forced herself on him, on many occasions, not only on the one occasion that had brought things to the present pass. And as Maude thought all this, she seemed to hear her mother’s voice in the room. “Don’t do it, dearie.” It was clear, seeming to hover over the bed. Maude sat up with a jerk. Was it—should she? Maude was suddenly out of bed and half-way to the door. Her dressing-gown. She dragged it off the door. She could ring him up. He had promised a year abroad. Mr. Greyson would fix it up—heaps of people did it in her position. Why, there had been that girl that she knew quite well herself: they used to go to the same dance club.

But Mrs. Bert had anticipated something of this kind, and as the walls of Chatsworth were thin, only being made of breeze blocks, she heard the thud of Maude’s bare feet on the carpet and was also out of her room, pulling on her dressing-gown before Maude had got to the head of the stairs. And that was enough; the sight of that florid and not too good-tempered face. All Maude’s new-born and trembling resolutions went flying before the wind. How could she stand the row—the ghastly horrible row? She couldn’t; it wasn’t any use to expect it of her.

So she stood in the dingy register office in Bolton Street apparently calm and collected, but inwardly in a very torment of feeling. There were only four people there besides Jim and herself—Mr. Greyson, her brother, her sister-in-law, and a rather depressed-looking clerk who married them. Jim stood very straight and still and had a queer compressed look about his mouth, and Maude thought that she could smell something like brandy, but she subdued the thought. Surely he would not have been drinking so early.

But Jim, who had been awake since four o’clock that morning, had had already a good deal to drink. It was the only thing that had got him to the register office at all, he told Mr. Greyson afterwards with a funny twisted smile. And the old lawyer with difficulty repressed a groan, although somewhere far away in him it was pity for Maude that was predominant.

As a matter of fact it was Maude who really was the one to be pitied. Jim that day was possessed of a calm, calculating cruelty that quite obscured the decent man he really was. And it began to have its way when, the ceremony over, they were alone in a luxurious Daimler car on their way back to Chatsworth. Maude was flushed and frightened at the new condition of things. They were to have lunch at her brother’s house and then, Jim told her with a careless arm flung round her, they were going down to Eastbourne for a few days’ honeymoon at the Bristol Hotel.

“Oh, I thought you just meant to leave me at Chatsworth till you had fixed up that flat you had told me of at Ealing.” Maude’s shallow blue eyes filled with tears. She was genuinely in love with Jim, and the thought of him in the new and rapturous relationship of husband filled her with a queer awe.

“Well, I thought perhaps we might have a day or two together first. Do you object?” Jim’s lazy blue eyes, not quite so clear as usual, were filled with a strange laughter.

“No; of course I don’t. I should love it, if you didn’t mind it.” Maude was tremulous and delighted. In her rather limited mind she was making all sorts of good resolutions. She had not been a good girl up to that point—at least, in a great many things she hadn’t. But now, with this splendid man by her side, she was going to try hard to be better. It would be easier when she got away from her sister-in-law. Ada’s ideas were somehow so sordid, and when you lived close by ideas like that, it was difficult not to be sordid too. If she got right away she could be more like this man who was her husband. And more like the girl that he loved: Maude thought the appalling thought with fear. After all, it was a risky thing to make a man marry you when you knew he was in love with somebody else.

It was; and, the rather terrible lunch at Chatsworth over—Bert thinking it an occasion for humour, and launching it freely and without stint—they drove in the same luxurious car to Victoria. And then Maude began to be nervous. Jim Chester was not a bit as she had ever known him to be. He was quiet, with a sort of deadly quiet. Polite, very, his manners were always perfect. And in a way loving, with a sort of studied lovingness. When they got into the reserved compartment in the long train waiting between the crowded platforms, he smiled at her.

“Alone, you see,” he said.

“Yes.” Maude was surprised to feel her knees shaking. She was afraid and yet strangely happy. Perhaps, after all, it was going to be all right. Men were like that with women when they had got them to themselves. And Maude knew that she looked nice. Money was plentiful and she knew how to dress.

And the grey georgette frock and the grey velvet coat that covered it up were beautiful. So was the chinchilla collar that came up close to her pert little face and softened the rather common lines of it. Her hat was nice too, and pulled down low over her eyes. Jim had no cause, so far as appearance was concerned, to be ashamed of his new wife.

He was the first to speak as the train stole silently out of the station. He had been watching Maude for some time. She could not meet his eyes for long, and it amused him to see her flush and turn uneasily aside. She adored him, that was evident. Jim had had a good deal of experience of women.

“Come along over here and sit next to me.” He reached out and pushed his much travelled crocodile suit-case farther along the seat.

“Do you really want me to?” Maude was astonished to feel the tears gathering behind her eyelids. She would really try to be a good wife to this splendid man. She began to unbutton her coat with trembling fingers. “I’m hot in it,” she said; and as the train, gathering speed, slid through Battersea Park, she stood up and began to take it off.

“That’s right.” Jim had a very pleasant voice and he made it specially pleasant with deliberate intent. He began to feel oddly entertained. The champagne provided by Brother Bert had been of the best, and Jim had already had more to drink that day than he generally drank in a week. He had forgotten Delia; the thought of her had been thrust resolutely into the background. She would return to him again, the feeling of her soft little flower-like face pressed close to his, the fragrance of her: her quivering breath, cool against his lips. But for the moment she was gone, banished from his thoughts. Maude was there now—very important for the next twelve hours or so.

“Comfy?” Jim had Maude gathered close up into his side. He crossed his long legs and put his well-shod feet up on the opposite seat. “Now we’re all right,” he said, and he turned his head and smiled whimsically down at her.

“I thought you didn’t——” And then all the repressed fear and dread and terror of the last few weeks had their way with Maude and she clung piteously to him. “I’m afraid!” she cried, and she sobbed and sobbed again.

“What of?” Jim was watching the flying advertisements and the vaguely seen crowds on the platforms of Clapham Junction. He had his face turned to the window, and he still watched as the train clanked and slid along the smoothly laid metals. Maude was trembling and sobbing in his arms. He held her a little more closely; it amused him to feel how she responded to his slightest touch.

“Of you.” Maude sat up and faced him with the tears pouring down her face. And somehow that did bring back memory—memory most poignant and agonizing. For when Delia cried she cried with vigour. And she looked frightful, all swelled up and discoloured: it had always been a joke with them. Jim looked at Maude with curiosity. How he would love to strike her in the face, he thought; to force her screaming and struggling backward out of the railway carriage, so that the next train that came that way would mash her up into an unrecognizable writhing heap.

And then he heard his own voice coming from a very long way off. “Do you really?” he said, and he suddenly breathed a little wearily. That had been a horrid moment—very horrid. Evidently that was how you felt when you murdered somebody—somebody who had done you out of something, who had either stolen from you, or in some way prevented you from getting the woman that you wanted. He smiled a little uncertainly at Maude.

“Yes; because I know you don’t really love me.” Maude was still sobbing. “But if you knew—-if you knew how I would try. How I would try not ever to disgrace you. I know I’m different—but I’m not as different as all that. I know I did wrong to come into your room that time, but, you see, I knew that I could only get you that way. You wouldn’t ever have thought of me unless I had.”

The train was thundering along between high green banks. Jim stared out at them and wondered if anyone else going away for their honeymoon had ever felt exactly as he did then. And when they shot into a tunnel he actually did have one moment of practical insanity. If he pushed her out of the train would there be a fraction of a chance for him? Would any member of the jury, sympathizing in secret, agree to disagree with the rest of his happily married and virtuous brotherhood? And then, as they shot out into the sunlight again, his brain cleared. And he laughed a little hardly and yet with relief.

“You silly little child!” he said, and he turned and stooped his head. “Kiss me. What, frightened to? Nonsense. Come along: hold up your face. I don’t believe you’ve ever been kissed properly before. It’s given to me to be the one to initiate you. There—like it?”

“Yes,” trembled Maude, shaking with passion and yet with fear. And then she cried out. “You’re laughing,” she said, and she suddenly drew away from him and stared.

“No, I’m not.” Jim lowered his lips quickly on his bared teeth. He was laughing, unconscious that he had been kissing her like that. Grinning against her frightened, tremulous mouth, with murder in his heart—murder and hatred.

Chapter XXXIII

The Bristol Hotel was very comfortable, and as Jim Chester always did everything well, so were the rooms that he had engaged for his honeymoon. Two very nice bedrooms and a sitting-room communicating, and with a bathroom leading out of the one that he had already allotted to Maude. Maude was delighted; she loved the feeling of arriving at a smart hotel with a man like her husband. He was so absolutely right—right in every detail. If she had been with her brother, he would have talked too loud and done the wrong thing somehow. Jim moved quietly, and the manager showed them to their room himself. He was evidently impressed, and spoke deferentially about the dinner that would soon be served to them in their private sitting-room.

“Thanks.” Jim was glancing about the same sitting-room. He saw it with a queer detachment. The view from the window was beautiful; it was still light enough to see the sea. There were a few scattered people on the Parade. Some were walking arm-in-arm; one, a very young girl with a ridiculously short skirt, was clinging to the arm of the man who was with her and staring upwards into his face. Jim watched them until they were both out of sight. And then he swung round to look at Maude, who had come in from her room.

“Found everything comfortable?” he said pleasantly.

“Yes, thank you.” Maude had quickly changed her frock. She knew the value of being well turned out, and had substituted for her georgette dress one of softest velvet. “Ring velvet, modom.” The girl in Borrods who had sold it to her had stepped back when Maude put it on, exclaiming in pleasure. The midnight blue of it set off Maude’s fair complexion to perfection.

“You look extremely nice.” Jim came forward and laid his hands on Maude’s shoulders. “I’ll change myself,” he said, releasing her gently.

As he shut the door behind him, Maude drew a quick breath. Bewilderingly happy, the nightmare of the last weeks seemed only to be a nightmare. Why had she worried—tortured herself with doubts and misgivings?

Why, indeed? Maude asked herself the question more than once as the evening wore on. The dinner was excellent and there was more champagne to drink. Jim drank of it freely, and Maude, who was frightened and excited, also drank a good deal. When at last the coffee-cups were removed and the waiter, with a deft touch to the already excellently burning fire, withdrew noiselessly, Maude almost screamed out loud.

“Jim!” She suddenly flung herself at his feet, getting out of her own easy-chair to stumble across to him.

“Happy?” Jim Chester took his cigarette from between his lips and laid it carefully across the brass ash-tray on the arm of his chair. “Come into my arms then,” he said, and he said it tenderly. “There now,” he lifted her gently from between his feet.

“You do love me—you do love me.” Maude clung and choked.

“Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it?” Jim was smoking with deliberation. He had his eyes on the Dresden china clock on the mantelpiece. Another half-hour, and then Maude should have her hell. Let her be happy for another thirty minutes or so; it wasn’t much, considering that probably for the rest of her life she would never really have another happy moment. So for the rest of the evening he talked to her gently, moving his lips every now and then gently, quietly across her hair. And Maude, thinking, lay perfectly still, and thought in her little unformed struggling way that this was going to be the beginning of a new life. She would be better, she would try. And if the baby was a boy, she would bring it up to be like him—wonderful, and courteous, and tender to women.

At exactly ten o’clock Jim moved his knees gently. “Time to go to bed,” he said, and he lifted Maude’s chin with a lean brown finger.

Maude hesitated, faltered, and then buried her face in the palm of his straying hand. “Will you come into my room?” she said, and she said it inarticulately and with a choking breath.

“Certainly I will.” Jim was looking at the carving on the corner of the mantelpiece. Not so badly done, considering that it was only a hotel. Probably in the old days it had been the mansion of some old seafaring buccaneer.

“Will you forget that I——-?” Maude was looking up at him pleadingly. He looked down at her, quietly.

“Run along and don’t talk rubbish,” he said. And as he said it something far away in him grinned. He had just brought her to the pitch when her suffering would be most acute. A very passion of surrender could be his if he had any fancy for it. But he hadn’t. No; all he wanted was to be able to get a little of his own back. To make Maude suffer as she had been able to make him suffer. A suffering of starvation—of denial. A suffering beyond anything that he had ever been able to imagine. To want a thing with all of you, and to find it for ever out of your reach. Hell—no other word for it. Ghastly, diabolical, unendurable hell.

After Maude had left the room, timorously and with a pathetic backward glance that Jim met with a quiet smile, he got up and pulled back the velvet curtains. It was quite dark by now, but the lamps on the Parade still showed a few clinging couples. They walked as if they were one person, arms and hands intertwined and faces close together, evidently enjoying themselves. Jim pulled the curtains together again and turned back to the fire. They had not really needed a fire, but he liked the look of it. He kicked the coals together with a long foot; directly he had finished with Maude he would go out.

He gave her half an hour. And at the end of that time, with his light overcoat over his evening clothes and with his grey felt hat in his left hand, he walked out of the sitting-room into the little corridor into which Maude’s bedroom opened and tapped at the door of it.

“Come in.” Maude’s voice was faint and tremulous. She had been sitting for some time gazing into the fire. The room was a very beautiful and luxurious one, and the big bed in it had a black and gold eiderdown. Maude had been looking at it and wishing that it was pink. There was something awful about black, as if when you were under it you would be dead. Not just beginning to live, with everything joyous.

“Why, aren’t you——?” Maude’s exclamation was astonished. She forgot that she was sitting there in only just a most beautiful nightdress, waiting for the man who was her husband. She saw that that man was ready to go out, and smiling to himself with a queer sort of secret smile—as if he was enjoying some huge joke all by himself.

“Well, hardly.” Jim spoke with his eyes on Maude. She looked very nice, even he could see that. And he was relieved to feel no answering thrill to it. He had expected it to be a bit of a tussle to leave her brutally on her marriage night. Fate was kind; he was going to enjoy it all to the utmost. “Hardly,” he said again, and this time he did laugh.

“But don’t you——?” Maude was staring up at him. Never had Jim looked more desirable. He was tall, and in his evening clothes he looked taller. The hair over his rather pointed ears was white—surely before it had only been grey, thought Maude stupidly. The hand that held the hat was brown and the fingers of it were lean. A hand that could caress divinely. Maude had a queer sensation of wanting to scream.

“Don’t you——? Go on: what were you going to say?” Jim had laid down his hat and had come a little closer to Maude. His eyes dwelt on her soft fairness. All for him—if he wanted it. But he didn’t. And now that he had got her legally, it wasn’t for anyone else either. A bit of a trial for Maude, if he knew her as well as he thought he did.

“Are you going out, then?” Maude was crouching in her chair. Somehow, some of her fair prettiness seemed to have faded already. She huddled in her crêpe de Chine and lace and clutched her hands together over her soft breasts with a gesture that was pitiful. But Jim could feel no pity; this woman had got him by a trick. And she was going to suffer for it, too.

“You will remember that when I consented to marry you I told you very clearly that you would never be anything but my wife in name,” said Jim slowly, and he said it with extreme cruelty. “Did you stir my pulses in the very slightest degree I might go back on that, because, after all, I am only human. But you don’t—not an atom. I only feel a little sick when I look at you, remembering as I do that you have ruined my life.”

There was a short silence. Maude moved her head a little from side to side, as if she was trying to dodge a blow. Keyed up as she was to a high pitch of emotional excitement, the cruel words fell on her almost like a blow. But the look in Jim’s eyes told her what her brain could not grasp. This man hated her, and she was tied to him for ever. Loathing her as he did, yet he was her husband. She held out her trembling hands in agonized appeal.

“Don’t attempt to plead with me, because it is utterly useless.” Jim spoke with the same queer smile still on his lips. “I made love to you on the way down on purpose,” he said; “it might make you suffer more, and I want you to suffer. I want you to suffer as I have suffered, and shall suffer in the future. You have ruined my life, and I only hope to God that I have ruined yours.”

“You have.” Maude spoke with a choking throat. She stood up and the soft nightdress fell round her slender body, revealing the curves of it. “You know that I love you, and yet you tell me that I make you feel sick. Think what that must mean to a girl—even to a Common one like me. Jim—Jim—have mercy on me!” Maude suddenly fell on her knees and clutched at his feet.

“You had no mercy on me when you got me trapped in that foreign hotel,” said Jim, and he stepped quickly backwards. “You must have known that I should have had something fairly powerful to drink when I came in half frozen like that. And yet, on the strength of it, you forced your way into my room. It was the act of a prostitute without the excuse of a prostitute. The need of hard cash would have made the whole transaction more decent than it was. As it was, it was only revolting. Good-night.” And Jim turned and walked quickly to the door.

“Jim, Jim, stay!” Maude was after him in a frenzy of misery. Small and with beautifully manicured fingers, she caught at him, dragging desperately at his coat. Surely this man whom she had known to be so kind and courteous to her mother couldn’t be all cruelty. “Don’t be so brutal—so cruel!” she sobbed. “I’ll try—to be what you wish. I don’t mind if you don’t want to stay with me to-night. I understand. But don’t say that you will never love me at all. What shall I do—all by myself for always?” Maude’s voice was terrified and shrill.

“I don’t know. And I certainly don’t care.” Jim was detaching his fingers from hers with brutal deliberation. “Let go of my coat, please. And don’t make more of a row than you can help. This is a decent hotel and they don’t cater for that sort of thing.” And Jim, with a short cruel laugh, was gone.

Shutting the door of the bedroom behind him, he walked back into the sitting-room and stood for a moment or two looking down at the fire. That was done—and it had gone off rather better even than he had hoped. He walked down the shallow stairs, and crossing the heavily carpeted hall, went out into the dark night. A couple of turns up and down the Parade, and then he would go to bed himself.

But it was late before Jim came back to the hotel that night. In fact, the big policeman at the corner just by the Pier looked at him more than once as he strode along with his tall head held a little sideways. It had begun to rain, and the drifting dampness of it reminded him somehow of Biarritz.

Rain in your face always clears your mind. You can drug yourself with champagne, and a good fire and all the luxurious accessories of a really first-class hotel. But out there by the sea, with the sluggish drag of the backwash coming hollowly up from the edge of the beach, and with the great sweeping light from Beachy Head combing the skies above your head, things seemed somehow to be sorting themselves out into their proper values. You were alive after all, then; things weren’t only a queer distorted nightmare. It was true that you had missed something; something perfect and meant only for you. It was true—Jim caught his lower lip between his teeth as he suddenly visualized what this night might have meant for him. Delia—there, waiting for him in that beautiful bedroom, all trembling childish fright and apprehension, and yet all love and purest passion for him alone. Delia, longing for him to come back to her and yet terrified when he did come. Delia, ducking her little dark cropped head out of his reach when he tried to catch it to his heart, and tremblingly pushing him away from her with ineffectual weak little hands. Jim suddenly cried out again, and at this point the big burly policeman really did think that it was the moment for him to do something, and he swung ponderously round on his large flat heels and advanced towards Jim.

“Lovely evening, sir,” he said, and as he said it he glanced out from under the curved brim of his substantial helmet and met the gaze of the man in the soft felt hat opposite to him. And what he saw there caused him to be more apprehensive than ever, and he did not lose sight of Jim until he saw him finally mounting the steps of the big hotel. “For,” as he said to his affable wife a good deal later in the evening, “it’s people with faces like that that makes the blown-out corpses on the beach in the morning. And we can’t have that; not opposite them expensive hotels, at any rate.”

And what the big policeman expressed rather crudely, so Jim felt in his own soul when, with at last the blurred relief of approaching sleep upon him, he rolled over on to his side in his comfortable bed. You’ve got to carry on, whatever your own particular hell may be. Jim’s long line of self-controlled ancestors brought him to that conclusion before he closed his eyes that night.

But Maude had no long line of ancestors, self-controlled or otherwise, to help her, nor had she any self-control of her own, so she sobbed and writhed and twisted under the funereal eiderdown until well on into the dawn of the next morning. And Jim had been foolish in his petty triumph, because, as the golden streak of early sunrise stole up over the grey line of the sea, Maude’s love had almost turned to hatred. And it is always unwise to have anyone hate you. To make him suffer as he had made her suffer, that was what Maude prayed for as she lay down again under the eiderdown, a tumbled heap of expensive crêpe de Chine and lace. She had got up to go and look out of the window; it was dim and raining, horrible outside as it was horrible within. Maude shivered as she drew the clothes up so as almost to cover her shingled head.

Part II

Chapter I

When Maria was really very happy, her lined and crinkled face became more lined and crinkled than ever. And it was at its very crinkliest on this lovely morning in late September, because Delia and Timothy were coming home again—Delia for good, and Timothy for a long summer holiday. Both children had been away for nearly two years, and during that time both Mrs. Browne and Maria had got to look younger. Things were a good deal easier at the Villa Bliss and money went a good deal further without two hungry young things to gobble it up. Delia’s school fees had been paid regularly and mechanically by the Bank, and Timothy’s fees being guaranteed by Mr. Marcus Stoneham had not come within call of Mrs. Browne at all. The only thing she had had to do had been to write to the children, and this she had done regularly. Short, ineffectual letters, rather, but still they had been letters, and they had kept the children in touch with what was going on.

And now Mrs. Browne was waiting in the little salon with a certain amount of nervousness. Having more imagination than Maria, she was wondering what it would be like to have Delia at home all the time. She was not altogether happy in the prospect of it. Delia and she had never really understood one another. And why, now that Delia was grown up, should they understand each other any better? Mrs. Browne was perfectly sure inwardly that they wouldn’t.

But it was different with Timothy. Timothy was only going to be at home for a couple of months. Besides, he was a boy, and also he had his work still to do. Groaning under the weight of it, six stalwart French workmen had staggered up the path of the Villa Bliss with a cottage piano on their heads. This had been deposited in the salon to await Timothy’s arrival. By the order of Mr. Marcus Stoneham, all Mrs. Browne had had to do was to sign the crumpled receipt for it. And this she had done with a certain amount of pride. A piano in the house for even two months was very grand indeed. And perhaps it would be able to stay there longer. Delia might be able to play, now that she had finished with her grand school.

Now she sat and waited with the evening sunlight streaming on to her face. She hoped that Major Chester would soon come back from India and marry Delia. That would be a wonderful solution to everything. All the joy and excitement of a wedding. And no dreadful wonderings as to whether things were going to be a success or not. Just all the fun and joy of that, and then a lovely long time alone with old Maria again. Certainly, Major Chester had not written for a very long time; in fact, now Mrs. Browne began to think about it, he had not written at all. But no doubt he had written to Delia; she would ask the child when she had settled down again. Where were the children? The sun was getting long on the narrow strip of grass in front of the little house. Mrs. Browne got up, and settling her soft dress in front of the long mirror in the corner of the little salon, she strolled out into the hall.

And only just in time. She almost collided with old Maria, who came charging out of the kitchen. “They come, they come!” Old Maria had seen the taxi turn the corner. “My babies, my little lambs!” Maria was running down the front garden. And she was the first to catch each child to her heart. Timothy emerged tall and smiling. “Darling old Maria!” he kissed her again on each brown cheek. And Delia kissed Maria, too. Delia, although rather dreading the homecoming, was genuinely glad at the rapturous welcome. It made it all more easy, more spontaneous. She had been so dreadfully afraid that she would be stiff. School had been so different and so altogether wonderful. “Mother!” Delia, tall and willowy and with a wonderful shadowy beauty that made Mrs. Browne gasp, was holding her mother in her arms.

“My darlings!” And then Mrs. Browne could say no more. Were these her children, she wondered, these two self-possessed young people: Timothy, paying the taxi and pulling a leather purse out of his trousers pocket. Standing there entirely unconcerned, dressed absolutely right in a beautifully cut blue serge suit. And Delia, dressed in clothes that even to Mrs. Browne’s unsophisticated eyes spoke of Rodier and Paris. And with a hat that shadowed surely the most wonderful eyes that had ever been set in such a small pointed face. Mrs. Browne looked at her and gasped. Both children saw and understood her stupefaction. And it set them both entirely at their ease. They all walked up the narrow path chattering and laughing. Timothy was talking French with all his old fluency. He caught old Maria round her capacious waist and kissed her again. “You have grown younger, Maria,” he said. And then, turning to his sister: “See how she fats,” he said, and he laughed joyously. “Isn’t it all topping, Delia? Aren’t you frightfully glad to be home again?”

And Delia said that she was. But when, an excited tea over, she was at last up in her bedroom quite alone, she stood and stared out of the window and wondered whether she was. It was all so small—so minute. School had been so huge, and so wonderful. All the girls of her own sort and age. Everyone keen and excited about something. Wonderful excursions into the mountains. Winter sports: they had all spent a month at Villars last Christmas and practically lived on the ice. Delia had been taught to skate by a famous professional. She had been fitted out with lovely skating clothes. Delia was very often envied by the other girls; she was allowed all the extras. Madame Monier was always very nice to Delia; she was one of the richest girls in the school.

But no one but Delia and Mrs. Browne knew where the money came from. Madame had been given to understand that a very rich uncle was responsible for Delia Browne’s school fees, and the bills went straight to the Paris branch of Lloyds Bank and were paid there. Her pocket-money came from there too, and a brief notice from the Bank manager during the last week of her term at school had stated that a quarterly sum would be paid to Miss Browne at their branch at Biarritz until further notice.

“And further notice must mean until he comes home and marries me,” said Delia to herself, and she said it again for the hundredth time as she stood and stared out of her bedroom window that late summer evening. For it was the only thing that worried her. Jim Chester wrote to her; he wrote regularly once a month, from some queer place right in the North of India, where it was awfully cold in the winter and broiling hot in the summer, and where, when it rained, it simply went on and on and never stopped until it was time for the next season, which was winter again. And he told her what he did: he played polo, and shot big game and also small things like snipe and ducks, and he went away on manoeuvres, and altogether he seemed to have a very varied life. But of one thing he never spoke, and that was of his next homecoming and of his marriage to her. And somehow now, in the strange solitude of her shabby little bedroom, the omission came home to Delia with a new force. At school there had been no time to think long about things; you were always busy, and she had shared a bedroom with another girl. But here, all by herself and for good—that is to say, until he came to fetch her—what wouldn’t she be able to think about? Delia suddenly shivered with a strange new apprehension.

And the apprehension didn’t grow less as the days went on. For the life at the Villa Bliss was a very different affair from the life that Delia had been living for the last eighteen months. Every moment at school had been accounted for. If you weren’t actually in bed and asleep, you were being shepherded out for a walk, or you were going to the town to buy things, or you were starting off in a funny train for some gorgeous excursion. A train with carriages that stood ever so far off the railway lines, so that you had to climb up into them; and when you were in it you were well looked after by an official who walked through the carriages when you least expected it and demanded to look at your ticket. What on earth would happen if you by any chance hadn’t got one? wondered Delia, intrigued and excited with the newness and interest of it all. And she never got used to Switzerland either—to the wonder and glory of it all. The sight of the Alps standing cold and blue, with the little villages cuddled in at their feet, they never failed to stir her blood when she looked out of the window of her bedroom. The school stood high over the Lake of Geneva, and the lake very often looked like blue glass under the glorious sunshine, with the little steamers fussing about. And there was something desperately romantic about seeing a steamer leave the quay at Ouchy for Evian. Just over on the other side of the lake was another country altogether. Different coinage; different everything. And yet so near that it looked as if you could throw a stone on to it. Delia never got tired of gazing and wondering.

But here, in this rather decayed corner of Biarritz, it was a very different life. And Delia began to resent it. She had outgrown the Villa Bliss and the people who lived in it. Nothing happened. No one came to see them; of course they didn’t, because they didn’t know anyone to come. Mrs. Browne and Maria lived a life of almost complete seclusion. Maria had a few friends of her own class, but that was all. And Timothy somehow had changed. He was absorbed in his singing. He would spend hours in the little salon picking out tunes on the piano. And sometimes, forgetting that he could be overheard, he would begin to sing. Like some lovely lonely nightingale he would send out the most enchanting notes from his young throat. And then they would all guiltily creep to the door and listen. For Timothy would never sing if anyone was there. It made him cross if you suggested it; he shook his large head and said that his voice was breaking and that he could only make a noise like a crow.

So Timothy was not much of a companion. And in those strange first days of this old, uncongenial life, Delia was a great deal alone. She used to go out alone, quite unconscious that with her unusual beauty she had no business to wander about Biarritz by herself. But she did not care: she loved to go out by herself and look at the shops. To wander about by the Medina Hotel and think about when she first saw Jim Chester on the golf links. To go down to the busily crowded station and to imagine the day when he would come, because things that you longed for always did come eventually. She would stand there as she was standing now, and one day someone would step down from the door of the great lumbering sleeping-car and it would be he, and she wouldn’t be able to move, she would be so dead, so overwhelmed, so prostrate with joy.

And that was how Maude first saw her again. She had come down to the station to inquire about a missing suit-case, and as she stood by the Bureau de Renseignement Delia swung by. “Swung” was the only way to describe the way Delia walked. She walked with a queer lilt, as if she could quite easily step off the earth and skim along just above it. She was beautifully dressed, too. Maude, who always dressed well herself, was astounded at her clothes. Where on earth had the little ragged girl got that finish and poise? Someone had sent her to school, not a doubt about it. Who? Maude walked back to her hotel with a very queer compressed look about her mouth.

The next meeting took place on the Promenade. But Maude dodged it; she saw Delia coming and she bolted off into a shop, leaving her baby and the nurse alone on the low seat. Somehow the sight of Delia’s face had been too much for her. Why, it was lovely, with a sort of strange, unearthly loveliness. Delia’s big grey eyes were smudged into her face, and her eyebrows were faintly pencilled and arched. Her mouth was pink and shaped like a bow. No one had any business to be as lovely as that without being made up. Maude sucked her own lips and began fumbling in her bag, holding it up sideways so that she could see herself in the little mirror fastened on to one of the silk pockets of it.

But Delia stopped at the seat. This wasn’t by any means the first time that she had spoken to this baby. She had got to love it because it was so solemn and so fat. It sat up so squarely in its expensive perambulator, staring benignly out of it. It had a French nurse, who talked excitedly to it in her own language, and it listened and apparently disregarded; and then suddenly smiled secretly to itself with huge amusement. As if, if it could.it would say, “Shut up and talk sense,” but couldn’t quite manage it.

Also, it had a way of gazing at Delia that somehow made her feel odd. She had never cared very much for quite young children, but this one was different. She began to look forward to meeting it on the Promenade. And on the day of which we speak she saw its fair head with a huge feeling of relief. Here was something that would let loose that sort of hungry feeling in her soul. She sat down on the seat and laid her young soft hand on the fat one gripping the side of the pram.

“Sweet!” she said, and she smiled deliciously.

And when Maude from the shelter of the shop saw the smile, all that was evil in her rose up and took her by the throat. This was the girl who had ruined her life. If Jim had never seen Delia, he would have turned to her, his lawful wife. Any man would, after a time, because she, Maude, was quite nice-looking. And instead of that, nearly two years of neglect. Two years of nothing but stiff letters from some horrid place in India, the name of which she could not even pronounce. And how many more years of exactly the same thing to come? Not any more, resolved Maude as she stood there staring. She would take things into her own hands now and make other people suffer too. She wasn’t going to be the only one.

So she walked out of the shop and strolled up to the seat. And when Delia saw her coming she jumped up hurriedly. She did not connect Maude in any way with the baby, but she recognized her as the girl who had given her her old clothes, and the remembrance of it made her hot with discomfort. Besides, she had run after Jim Chester awfully, and she might say something about him. Not that she would probably recognize her, Delia, because when she had seen her before she had only been a disreputable little caddy in green felt slippers. But still, she would get away in case she did recognize her. It would be too awkward to start it all over again.

But Maude was too quick for her. “Hallo!” she said, and as she said it she took hold of the fat baby hand that clutched delightedly in the air. “I see you’ve got to know my baby; isn’t he rather a lamb?”

“Is it yours?” Delia was flushing and confused. Longing to get away, yet something holding her to the ground. To be able to say his name—it would be rather heavenly after all.

“Yes; he’s just fifteen months old. I married soon after I went away from Biarritz that time. Isn’t he a pet? So fat!” Maude squeezed one dimpled knee with an air of proprietorship.

“Yes, he is—gorgeously fat.” But Delia spoke without enthusiasm. Before, she had felt for some reason or other that a halo hung round the large fair baby. Now that she knew that it belonged to Maude the halo had faded. After all, anyone could have a baby like that. She started to walk away.

“Don’t go. I remember you quite well. You were the jolly little girl who used to carry my husband’s golf-clubs.” Maude’s eyes were on Delia’s face. She said it with apparent carelessness. But she was watching with all her soul. That was one for Delia—and for Jim too, indirectly. He had been educating and clothing this girl. Beast! and he couldn’t even be decent to her, Maude, his own wife.

“Your husband! I don’t think I did. I only carried clubs for one man, and he wasn’t married.” Delia laughed a little nervously. The sun was in her eyes and she couldn’t see Maude very well. She took hold of the baby’s fat hand to give her confidence.

“Yes, but he is married now. He’s my husband, you see. I’m Mrs. Chester. We were married almost directly after I left here, and then he went back to India. This is his baby too: don’t you think it is like him?” Maude laughed, but not with so much confidence as before. Supposing this girl fainted, or had a fit or something. She looked as if she was about to do something of the kind.

But Delia, far away in her stunned brain, was rallying all her forces. You didn’t show when you were mortally wounded; people could run for quite a long way with a death-wound through their heart or lungs or something, Delia was sure she had read it somewhere. She felt the baby’s soft fingers gripping hers, and clutched unconsciously back at them. In a way, they were his fingers, because this was his child. “Oh, are you his wife?” she said, and as she said it she suddenly sat down again on the seat. And then she smiled up at Maude. “Of course, the baby is rather like him,” she said, and marvelled at the sound of her own voice. It was a voice, although it was coming from somewhere very far off.

“Yes, everyone thinks so.” Maude also sat down on the seat. Her mind was working with extraordinary rapidity. She was thinking out a scheme, a scheme that if she could only bring it off would give her back all the vengeance that she wanted, with a lot to spare. But she would have to go at it very carefully. The first thing to do was not to alienate Delia. She talked to her gently and with a great show of interest. She was awfully glad that she had met her again, because she hardly knew anyone at the hotel. And she had to go away for a week to Pau to-morrow. Would Delia keep an eye on the baby? The nurse was perfectly trustworthy, of course, but still she was French and Delia was English, and it was so nice to think that she would perhaps make a point of meeting little Brian on the Promenade and going for a walk with him.

“Is his name Brian?” Delia was staring with unseeing eyes into the perambulator.

“Yes; Jim is such a ghastly name: I couldn’t label any boy with it. It wouldn’t be fair, would it?” laughed Maude, wondering how any woman could love any man so much that the news of his marriage would make her look old and shrivelled up all of a sudden. Delia Browne looked positively plain; Maude was glad.

“Oh, I rather like that name!” Delia was never good at dissimulation. Beloved, precious name! she still stared unseeingly into the perambulator.

“I’ll tell nurse that you’ll keep an eye on Brian.” Maude spoke smartly. “I believe she’s told me about you already. Haven’t you, nurse?” Maude turned and spoke in halting French to the woman in the big white cap. The woman smiled across at Delia. She did not like Maude; she was cross and arbitrary. She was thankful she was going away for a week. And if this distinguée English young lady was going to share the responsibility of the babe with her, that was the best news of all. Then she would be able to get out sometimes and not always be chained to the hotel. She beamed and chattered her approbation.

So it was settled. Maude was going away the very next day, and she would tell the proprietor of the hotel what she had arranged. So that there would be no question if Delia walked in and out of the hotel like one of the residents.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Maude was eyeing Delia with a sort of repressed triumph.

“No, I shall enjoy it.” Delia was still staring at the baby. She was wondering if her knees would hold her if she stood up. Or would they buckle up and let her fall limply and hopelessly across the perambulator? She tried, with extreme courage, praying wildly as she did so. And they held her, and she was even able to smile. “Good-bye,” she said, and she squeezed the baby’s fat hand and then let it drop again.

And Maude let her go. And then she turned and saw Brian’s pink mouth open and ready for a roar. And she was cross and smacked the fat baby fingers sharply. “Shut up!” she said, and the nurse heard and was cross.

For in her own mind she thought that a very little more would label Maude’s treatment of her child as cruelty. But she could not help leaving it, because her young man would not hear of her going to England with the common madame. If it had not been for him she would have gone, so that Brian should not be left to her. Nothing but sharp smacks for a baby of fifteen months old, and a good one into the bargain; it was outrageous. She lagged behind with the perambulator when Maude gave the signal to move on, and wiped the tears from the wide-open blue eyes.

And Brian thumped the edges of the perambulator and was comforted. Foggily, in his tiny mind, he was visualizing Delia again. He could only smell her, sweet and consoling. His mother smelt bitter; that was why sometimes he pushed her away with fat, protesting wrists. His nurse smelt comforting; he could lean his large bald head up against her ample bosom and sink into it. His mother was flat; there was nothing to sink into. Brian thumped and stared and made bubbling little noises like a jolly little animal. While Delia walked home wondering if she would ever get there. Because it was all done—all finished; there wasn’t anything left. It was all bleached and barren and hopeless.

She drifted into the hall and went straight up to her bedroom. And there she stood and stared out of the window. If she could cry, it would let loose something that was throttling her, killing her, by strangling her throat.

Chapter II

Delia went through twenty-four hours of extreme hell. To be quite alone, and as near to the ground as possible, that was her one wish. She lay on the floor of her bedroom with her face pressed to the shabby rug, and resisted all the attempts of the other members of the family to come in.

“I have got the most frightful pain in my tummy, and only want to be left alone. No; I don’t want a doctor or a hot-water bottle, thank you.” Delia was calling out the words with her riven face turned a little up from the carpet. If only they would go away; if they didn’t soon, she would begin to scream and yell, and then perhaps run insanely out of the room.

“Leave her alone, mother.” Timothy was speaking equably. He was beginning to understand nerves a little. The boys at school got them when they had to sing or recite or play the violin at the monthly concerts. One boy, a little more excitable than the rest, had even been found trying to hang himself just before a concert, and had been interrupted only just in time. Although certainly he had been a Pole.

“Oh, but do you think——?” And then Mrs. Browne had been reassured by Timothy’s steady glance and had drifted downstairs again. So Delia was left undisturbed to her grief. But it was a very terrible and devastating grief, and when she came out of her room again she did not look quite the same girl. Something had gone from her face that would never come back to it.

But through it all her faith in the man she adored never wavered. He had been caught, and by Maude at her very worst. It had been at that hotel in the Pyrenees; Delia was sure of it. Men weren’t quite like women in that way: temptation affected them more strongly. Delia’s school in Lausanne had been like most other schools in that beautiful town, and affairs of sex had been discussed freely and by girls of different nationalities. She knew it had been Maude’s fault, and he, dear and chivalrous always, had married her because there was a baby coming. And at the thought of what his despair must have been when Maude told him that, Delia’s tears gushed forth. And the tears saved her from an attack of brain fever or even worse. Because no one can have everything that they have been living for and counting on smashed up at one fell blow without suffering very terribly.

The tears brought relief. And with the relief came the instant thought that she must tell him that she knew. Fancy what he must have been suffering; wondering when she would find out and knowing that she would be certain to. And he still sent her money for her clothes—darling and most precious angel!

Delia got up from the floor and went a little unsteadily over to her dressing-table. She would write to him at once; she would get into bed first, undress, and put her dressing-gown on. It must be frightfully, fearfully late; she must have been lying on the floor for hours. The family had gone to bed—she had heard Timothy crooning in a low, melodious undertone as he undressed. What a mercy they had not tried to make her eat anything; she would only have been desperately sick.

Delia reached out a little wearily for her writing-case as she stood there in her crêpe de Chine nightdress. She had made this particular nightdress herself; she always loved nice underclothes, because somehow they seemed like him; he would loathe anything stodgy or bundly.

And Jim Chester got the letter on his return from a long’ day’s shooting. Muddy and with his heavy shikar boots still on his soaking feet, he stood under the badly trimmed lamp on the verandah of his bungalow and scanned the envelopes of his three letters. One was from Maude; he had got to detest the sight of her thin back-handed writing. One was from the Biarritz branch of his Bank; he dropped it on to the bamboo table by the side of Maude’s. And one was from Delia; he flung himself at full length in a long chair and shouted for his bearer.

As Wali Mohammed unlaced the heavy boots and then respectfully drew the soaking stockings over his sahib’s long feet, Jim still read. And then he asked rather hoarsely for a whisky and soda. And as the tall Mohammedan stooped and poured the soda into the quickly filming glass tumbler, he eyed his sahib rather closely. Bad news, and from the Vilayat; Wali Mohammed had had plenty of time to examine the letters since he had taken them from the flabby hand of the postman who had drifted earlier in the day across the overground compound.

Delia wrote very simply.

Beloved Darling (she said),

I ought not really to call you that now, because I have found out that you are married to somebody else. It was so awful at first. I found out this morning, and I came home and lay on the floor and prayed to die. And then I thought about you, of how you must have suffered when you found you had to marry her. Because I know it was that. She was going to have a baby and you felt you must. You see, I know all about those things now; I am nineteen, and the girls at school talked about them a lot. I think it is sensible; it is so stupid not to know. In fact, it was the baby that first told me you were married, because I got to know it, and then to-day I saw Miss Pritchard—I can’t call her Mrs. Chester. And she told me. The baby is most beautiful—very fat, and its wrists look as if they had been tied round with string: they bulge over its hands—you know how they do. But she has called it Brian. How could she? “Jim” is such a darling, precious name.

And when Delia had got to this point she had stopped writing and had cried until she could cry no more. But the letter showed no sign of it, and Jim finished it quietly. In a way, it was a tremendous relief to him that Delia knew. He had dreaded telling her, and, manlike, he had put the horrible task away from him until it was inevitable. In the depths of his soul he had hoped that Maude would die when the baby was born. And when she didn’t, although he was bitterly ashamed of himself, he was so sick and desperate that he had not felt able to court further misery by telling Delia the ghastly news. She would find out some time, and the later she did find out the better. Girls at Delia’s age were impressionable, and the blow would fall less heavily if she had forgotten him a little.

But at dinner that night he was very silent. He and the man with whom he shared the bungalow were dining at home. They had had a long, tiring day, and to get into uniform and trek over to the Mess would have been the last straw. Jim shared the bungalow with the Colonel of the battery, whose wife was at home. And Colonel Adams eyed him shrewdly as he sat with his brown fingers curled round the stem of his wine-glass. Chester had had bad news by the mail, obviously. He spoke tentatively.

“Not overdone it to-day, I hope, Chester?” He smiled pleasantly from under his short greyish moustache.

“No, no, not a bit, sir.” Jim came back with a jerk. Where had he been? Under the pines close down by the sands at Biarritz, the salt wind from the Atlantic blowing all Delia’s short hair back from her face. “No, no; rather not.” He spoke pleasantly.

But Colonel Adams was not going to be put off by Jim’s apparent unconcern. The man looked wretched. For the last two years he had looked wretched, as a matter of fact. Colonel Adams knew all about Jim’s marriage, although not about the circumstances that had led up to it. He knew also that he had a child. It was a pity that he did not have the wife and child out, he thought to himself frankly. Chester was too young to live alone as he was doing. In a couple of months he, Adams, would have to turn him out of the bungalow in which he was now, because his own wife was coming out. Well, why shouldn’t Chester have his wife out too? And the child as well; it would give him an interest in life. Colonel Adams stared at the man sitting opposite to him for a moment or two. Should he say something of what was going on in his mind? He decided that he would.

“Look here, Chester,” he said, and he said it with a certain amount of diffidence. Although Jim Chester was his junior officer, there was something about his personality that made one chary of butting in. “Look here,” he said. I’ve been thinking about you a good deal lately. You’ve been looking decidedly off colour. Why not have your wife and child out? You know you’ve got to turn out of this bungalow because my memsahib is coming out. Well, it seems to me to be a chance. You’d love to see the kid, too. I remember my two were topping at that age. Why don’t you think about it?” Colonel Adams stopped abruptly.

There was a little silence. Wali Mohammed was in the room again, moving noiselessly round the table with his bare feet. He caught deftly with one hand at a large brown moth that was fluttering helplessly up against the opaque white lamp globe and removed it with a little snort of disapproval. He then went out again, carrying with him a couple of used plates.

“Well, I had never thought of it.” Jim spoke slowly, like someone just waking up from a dream. The idea fastened on to his imagination and remained there, riveted. His own son—to see him; to play with him; to have him toddling fat and jolly about the bungalow. It would be nice; it would be something to live for. It would be easy, too, because there was plenty of money about. The kid could have an English nurse. Jim began to feel suddenly excited; “I say—that’s a good idea of yours.” He stared across the verandah, his blue eyes suddenly looking more awake between their long lashes.

“Yes; I think it is, and I’m glad you agree with me.” Colonel Adams was highly delighted with the success of his venture. He had a vague idea that Jim had married a little beneath him, but with a good deal of money in the background that would not matter very much. And Elsie would make it all right; Colonel Adams had a vast confidence in his wife’s tact.

“They could come out this cold weather”—Jim was speaking with something approaching animation. This new idea had, for the moment anyhow, stilled the torment of the thought of Delia. “Ferguson is giving up his bungalow and going in with Potter. I could have his; it would have been too big for me alone, of course, but with my wife and kid——” Jim stopped abruptly. Of course his wife would have to come too. But she would understand: nothing more to him, ever, than she had already been. He would make that quite clear when he wrote to propound this new scheme.

But later that night, when he was in his own barely furnished bedroom and moving quietly about it, the excitement and the thought of seeing his own child faded again. Tall and powerful in his striped pyjamas, he stood close up under the lamp that hung on the whitewashed wall and read Delia’s letter all over again. And this time he seemed to discern the awful suffering that had gone to the writing of it. No reproaches; she loved him too selflessly for that. And she was too afraid that she should be seeming to reproach him.

Don’t think that I blame you for marrying somebody else. I know that you simply had to. But of course it is most frightful agony, especially just now, because I have only just found out. But by degrees I shall get used to the idea perhaps. Only I suppose now you ought not to send me any more money. I shall try and get something to do, so that I shall be very, very busy.

And then Delia had just added her own signature and it was the end of that pitiful letter: the letter of a girl whose life he had ruined by his own wanton folly. Jim shut it up in the drawer of his writing-table and walked over to the window. The moon was blazing down on the compound, turning all the leaves of the pepul-trees to silver. Jim, staring out, wondered why he couldn’t feel more acutely. Somehow, Delia’s letter did not seem to stir his emotions very much. It was like somebody else reading it. A letter from a girl who had loved somebody else, not him. An echo of something that was gone and put behind him, and dead for ever. He had made a hash of his life, and had taken a wife to himself who would live for ever, debarring him from any tender intimate joys of his own. But he had his son left. And he would always see that Delia was kept amply supplied with money. And by and by she really would forget him; he would ask her to, when he replied to her letter. Jim turned back from the window and stood staring down at his narrow bed, enveloped in its white mosquito-curtain. That was the best of Ferguson’s bungalow; it was huge and roomy. Maude and he could have rooms far apart from one another. He must make that quite clear when he wrote to her propounding this new scheme.

Chapter III

And he did. And Maude read what he put in his very explicit letter with fury in her soul. But all the same, she was pleased and excited with the news it contained. She had always wanted to go out to India and he had always declined to entertain the idea of it. What had brought him round to it now? Something that Delia Browne had said in her letter to him about their child. Maude was certain of it, and she eyed Brian, sitting large and contented inside his pen, with something approaching dislike in her eyes.

If it had not been for this child she need not have ruined her life by marrying this man who openly showed that he detested her. With her money she could have had a jolly good time; and there were lots of men who weren’t so particular. Maude could think of one at that very moment; she had met him in the Blue Train only the week before. Of course, the journey had been short, only as far as Dax for her, because she had had to change there for Pau; but even in that short time they had seemed to get to know one another quite well. They had sat opposite to one another at one of the tables in the luxurious Pullman and he had touched her foot by mistake and had apologized awfully nicely. And then they had talked to one another during the beautifully served déjeuner. And Maude had been quite sorry when she had had to get out. He had had lots to say and was in the Army too, and knew Garapore; only he had pronounced it differently from what she had thought it was. In fact, that brief rencontre in the easily swinging train had brought all Maude’s bitterness and discontent back again. What on earth was the use of being the wife of a good-looking man if he hated you, and only apparently wanted you now, after two years of complete indifference, because he wanted to see his child?

So Maude walked over to the pen and stood staring down at it with her mind all evil. And when Brian poked a toy through the bars at her with easy cordiality, she shoved it back so that it jarred against his soft little mouth, and he howled at once. If he howled, this evil-smelling relation of his generally went away: young as he was, he had gathered that. So he howled with vigour, and Maude, thoroughly put out, picked him up and smacked him sharply, and then put him back again.

And just at that moment Delia walked in. Shaken and tormented as she was, she could not keep away from the hotel. During Maude’s week in Pau she had been there morning, noon and night. A frenzy of love had seized her for this baby. The French nurse welcomed it. Knowing that she was not going to remain in Maude’s service, she did not care an atom what she said about her. Madame was brutal to her child. The residents in the hotel had noticed it. They spoke openly to her, Hortense, about it. Madame was always smacking. “One does not smack a child of this tender age,” said Hortense, and she gathered the large fair head to her ample bosom.

“No; I should think one doesn’t.” Delia was sitting on the floor as Hortense discoursed to her, close up against the radiator, with Brian, a little way off, sprawling on a woolly blanket. He alternately sprawled and sat up very erect, thumping at intervals with expensive woolly toys and making gurgling sounds of appreciation. She reached out to him with a little inarticulate murmur of love, her white face breaking up in a sudden smile. Hortense watched her with her brisk, shrewd eyes. Something had happened to this pale, beautiful mademoiselle during the last few weeks—some affaire de coeur, of course. Hortense dropped her eyes to her sewing again and sighed. These men—what were they not responsible for, the devils?

So when Delia walked into Maude’s room and saw Brian in tears, her fragile pallor was suddenly drenched in a fierce flame of colour. Supposing Maude really was unkind to this baby. This child—the child of the man she loved. Why—and it couldn’t defend itself. She stopped and stammered.

“Hallo! I say, I’m sorry I walked in like this.” She was looking at Brian. “He’s crying—I say, may I pick him up?” Delia, quite off her guard, was trembling a little.

“Do.” Maude’s eyes were malicious. This girl was a fool, although she was so pretty. Not her style, though; she had never cared for that blown-before-the-wind look. Rather contemptuously she thought that Delia looked exactly like one of those things that get blown off a dandelion in seed and go flying all crookedly up in the air. Although she was beautifully dressed—someone had taught her to dress in Lausanne, and someone also, although not in Lausanne, had kept her supplied with money; Maude’s eyes went suddenly vindictive. That little velvet coat, black and double-breasted, and with the crêpe de Chine blouse underneath it. And the hat; and the pleated crêpe de Chine skirt. He was a damned fool to give her so much. And to get nothing for it, either. But perhaps he did—perhaps before her. Only, then, why had he married her? It couldn’t have been only the baby—men weren’t as chivalrous as all that. Or perhaps Delia was cold—one of those stupid, backboneless people who thought everything like that was wrong.

“He’s a spoilt little devil. When Hortense goes I shall get someone much stricter for him.” Maude was speaking with the complacence of complete possession. She eyed Delia as she stood swaying a little way off, with the baby held to her breast. She had the fair head pressed close to her with one small hand spread out on it. She looked like the Virgin Mary, thought Maude, suddenly furious inwardly.

“Oh no—don’t!” A queer terror leapt into Delia’s grey eyes. And as she spoke she was conscious that there could be a worse hell in store for her even than the one she was enduring now. To know that his child was unhappy—crying, perhaps, and no one there to cuddle and soothe it; no one there to flood out that almost frenzy of loving that seemed to drown the little creature in your arms. “Oh no, you wouldn’t do that!” she said, and she said it with funny, stiff lips.

“Wouldn’t I? I’m sick of his tempers and spoilt ways,” said Maude. “And Hortense ruins him, too. I must say you don’t spoil him, because you do make him play by himself. But she does nothing but cuddle him up to her; I call it positively unhealthy.”

“She loves him so that she can’t help it. She’s older, you see, and doesn’t realize.” Delia was clutching at the baby in her arms and staring over its head at Maude. She suddenly felt as if she was going mad. If she had to see this baby handed over to some hard-hearted nurse, she really would go mad. To meet him perhaps crying in his pram and not be able to do anything—to see his jovial attempts to be jolly all smashed up and cruelly damped. “You don’t train little babies like this strictly,” she said, and she said it with straining eyes.

“Yes, you do, if they won’t do what they’re told any other way,” said Maude, and she said it cruelly. And then the plan that had been forming in her mind for the last week took coherent shape and voice. “You’d better come out to India and be his nurse, if you’re so keen on him,” she said, and she laughed as she said it.

“What?”

“What I say.” Maude laughed again carelessly. “I’ve heard from Jim,” she said, “and he seems suddenly keen to see the baby. I suppose you’ve been writing to him about him, haven’t you?” Maude swung suddenly round.

“I do write to Major Chester,” said Delia, and she clutched at the baby’s fat knee to give her courage. This was all being very awful, she thought vaguely, but above everything she must be truthful. He would be disgusted with her if she was frightened and said what was not true.

“Yes, I know; and look here, I think we’d much better have the whole thing out now we’re about it,” said Maude. “I know you’re in love with him, or were, anyhow, and I’m sorry for you, in a way. But, of course, it’s hopeless for you now, because he’s married me. Anyhow, I know it, so you needn’t try to hide it. And I know he sends you money too; that’s the only thing I can’t understand. Why should he send you money if he doesn’t get anything for it?”

“What could he get for it?” said Delia with unsteady lips.

“You, of course,” said Maude, and she said it impatiently. Really, these girls with faces like Madonnas were stupid, she thought. Although sometimes they weren’t: Maude suddenly remembered her schooldays, and the big boys’ college at the corner.

“He sends me money because he wants me to look nice, now that he has paid for my education,” said Delia tremblingly. “But I have often thought, since I knew that he had married you, that I ought not to take it. I will write to him to say so. I ought to have done it before.”

“No, you needn’t; we’ve got heaps between us,” said Maude with a sort of patronizing cordiality. “But, look here—think over what I said. I must have someone to look after Brian on the voyage, and when I get out to India too; Jim says something about that. Where’s his letter, by the way? I’ll read it to you.” Maude went quickly over to the writing-table. “Put down that great lump of a child; he’s far too heavy for you,” she said, “and sit down, because if we really are going to decide something about you coming, we shall have to do it quickly.”

Delia sat down, after putting Brian tenderly back into the pen. He reached amiably out for toys and thumped affably with them. She watched Maude’s neat back with a sort of stupefied feeling in her brain. There were too many things to think about at once, she felt vaguely. No one could decide everything in about a minute and suffer everything in about a minute as she was having to do.

Maude had found Jim’s letter and was reading it as she walked back. It was a very short letter, Delia could see that, but then his letters to her were never very long. “He says,” said Maude, reading it out:

If you decide to come out for at any rate this next cold weather, you must bring either an English nurse or a governess for Brian. I will never have any child of mine spending the evenings and early mornings sitting and playing over an open drain, as do most of the children in Garapore who have ayahs. Send me a cable to say what you decide, and tell me at the same time that you have engaged a nurse. Then I will cable direct to the P. & O. for your berths, and ask them to write you as to the date of sailing. Money you will have plenty of, and I will tell Lloyds to remit the passage money to the P. & O. direct. Make up your mind quickly, as there is always a rush for passages at this time of year.

“So there you are,” said Maude, and she raised her rather shrewd eyes and let them rest on Delia. “If you are fond of Brian and would like the chance of going out East, here it is straight in front of you. You would probably marry—there are stacks of men in India. Anyhow, you would have the chance of seeing something new. Be quiet, Brian; we can’t talk if you make that stupid noise.” Maude turned sharply to the pen.

“It’s the noise he makes when he is pleased,” said Delia, tremblingly on the defensive, half getting up from her chair and then sitting down again.

“Well, he can’t make it now, because we’re busy.” Maude scowled, and then turned back again to the letter in her hand. “Well, think it over and let me know what you decide,” she said. “Personally, I think you would be stupid to refuse. After all, it isn’t as if there was anything between you and Jim now. He’s got over it, and so have you, of course. And it isn’t as if it would be for very long, either; we should only be out for the winter. And you are fond of Brian, too. Of course, if you went as his nurse you would have to be his nurse. I mean, you wouldn’t expect to be out all the time, as I should probably be, would you?”

“No,” said Delia faintly. Again she got the feeling that at any cost she must get away and be by herself. This decision that she had to make was too vital, too tremendous. “But what would Major Chester say?” she asked, feeling queer and uncertain, as she got up from her chair.

“Oh, he wouldn’t care,” said Maude with easy decision. She forced herself to stare frankly into Delia’s cloudy grey eyes. “You see, he’s like you are,” she said, “mad about Brian. He’s never seen him, but still he feels that he’s fearfully important.”

“Yes, I expect he does.” Delia was standing up, and as she stood she looked over to where Brian sat very straight up, whacking a woolly rabbit against the bars of his pen. To leave this baby to the tender mercies of somebody else, and perhaps somebody cross. She could not—whatever she herself might have to suffer, she simply could not.

Chapter IV

Timothy had gone to bed when, late that night, Delia decided to consult her mother about Maude’s suggestion. She had come to the decision during an afternoon of terrible restlessness and misery. Somebody must help her; she could not go on bearing all this load of unhappiness alone.

And Mrs. Browne showed an unusual intelligence when confronted with this almost stupefying proposition. “But I thought he was going to marry you, dear.” Mrs. Browne was doing some simple cross work on canvas, and she laid it down on her knee.

“Yes, I know, and so did I.” Delia forced herself to speak with a sort of sarcastic dryness. Her mother must never know what she had gone through during the last week or so.

“Well, dear, perhaps it’s all for the best.” Mrs. Browne removed her eyes from Delia’s drawn face and resumed her work. Her child had suffered acutely, Mrs. Browne was not such a fool that she could not see that. But now she had a very good chance of making good in some other way. Mrs. Browne had enjoyed herself in India. Delia would marry if she went out there; there were plenty of men, and she was an attractive girl.

“Mother, it isn’t quite that.” Delia was suddenly speaking wide-eyed and sobbing. “But it’s the baby I mind about. She isn’t kind to it, and its nice nurse is going. She is going to get a cross one who will bring it up properly. You can’t bring a little baby like that up properly. At least, not without loving it as well. If I don’t go, I shall never have a happy moment again, thinking that it is crying for me. Oh, what shall I do—what shall I do?” Delia suddenly slipped off her chair and flung herself at her mother’s knees, clutching at her skirt.

And mercifully Mrs. Browne rose to the occasion. When her two children had been small she had adored them with the same passion that Delia was manifesting now. She gathered the dark rough head closely to her knee with her two slender hands. “Don’t cry so bitterly, my darling!” she said. “Tell me all about it. We have grown a little apart from one another, but I can understand what you are telling me now. You love this little baby very much, evidently, Delia. Why do you love it? Because it is fat and sweet and clings to you, or because it is the child of the man that you used to think you cared for? If it is the latter, you had much better keep away from India. Only trouble can come from your going anywhere near Major Chester again.”

“I love it mostly for itself.” Delia was still sobbing, and through her tears and anguish she really thought that she did. “It clings to me, and I seem to understand it. And when she gets it to herself—Mrs. Chester, I mean—she always seems to smack it. And think of it on the voyage; sometimes tiny babies do feel sea-sick. There was a girl at school who had come from India and her baby brother felt awfully ill. And they might leave it in the cabin shrieking. I should go mad if I thought of it—I really should go mad, mother.” Delia wrenched herself up from her knees and began pacing about the room.

Mrs. Browne watched her, and her rather shallow eyes were full of concern. She was being torn by two very conflicting emotions. Up to a point Mrs. Browne was a selfish woman, and she very much preferred, provided that she was certain that her two children were happy, that they should be away from home. They alarmed her. Their ideas were altogether different. “What does Major Chester think about the idea of your going out?” she said, and she said it with her slender hands laid quietly over her work.

“I don’t think he knows anything about it,” said Delia, and she stopped in her pacing to wipe her eyes. “I think Mrs. Chester only thought of it this morning.”

“Then you must wait to find out what he does think of it,” said Mrs. Browne sensibly, and she began to fold up the canvas on her knee preparatory to stuffing it into her workbag. “And don’t torment yourself about anything until you do know Delia. If he doesn’t approve, you must simply give up the idea. Get Mrs. Chester to cable and ask him; they have plenty of money. You will know in a week.”

“If he doesn’t approve, I shall still have to go. I couldn’t leave Brian to anyone else. You don’t understand, mother.”

“I do understand quite well.” And Mrs. Browne, getting up on to her feet with a quiet, rather injured dignity, really thought that she did. But in reality she could not enter into what was going on in Delia’s mind at all. As a matter of fact, Delia did not really know herself. She felt mad—desperate. Everything was suddenly knocked from under her feet. The man that she adored and thought was going to marry her had married somebody else. The baby that she had taken to her heart and got to love in a peculiar, almost tormenting way was going to be torn away from her. Small wonder that Mrs. Browne, remembering, when she got to her room that night, Delia’s small tormented face as eventually she had held it up for the good-night kiss, felt extremely worried. Things had been going so extremely well, as she thought, moving a little fretfully between her dressing-table and the shabby wardrobe—Timothy wonderfully provided for and Delia apparently the same. And now everything, so far as Delia was concerned, dreadfully upset. However, the plan of sending a cable to Major Chester had been a good one, thought Mrs. Browne, feeling happier in her mind now that she was really in bed. Good old Maria always filled the hot-water bottle so beautifully full, and with such really boiling water. Mrs. Browne groped for it with her toe and drew it up so that she could hold it a little closer to her pathetically withered breast.

Meanwhile Delia, desperate and sodden with crying, flung off her clothes and climbed hopelessly and despairingly into bed. Nobody understood, nobody. She would have to go to India, whatever Major Chester said. She would not be parted from the baby, even if it tore her soul out of her body to see the man she loved married to somebody else. She would hand the baby over to him and then take poison and die in his arms. She would do anything to still this awful agony of mind that was killing her. “Darling, darling, you oughtn’t to have done it when you promised me that I should be your wife.” Delia burst out the words of pitiful reproach, choking and stuffing the blanket into her mouth so that nobody should hear. God had deserted her, that was quite evident. But she would wait to kill herself until she had given Brian to the man to whom he belonged. Then nothing would matter, except that the awful agony in her mind should somehow be stilled. And she could easily do that, thought Delia, staring up at the ceiling, seen dimly by the light of the lamp at the corner of the road. You could buy a whole bottle of aspirin and take them all at once. That killed you—one of the girls at school had told her so.

Chapter V

But the morning brought a certain amount of sanity in its train. And with Mrs. Browne’s quiet words in her ear, Delia set off for Maude’s hotel. “My dear child, I will not give my sanction to any scheme for your going to India unless I know that Major Chester both approves of and sanctions it.” And as Mrs. Browne hardly ever put her foot down on anything her children chose to do, her words, when she did, carried a great deal of weight with them.

Maude’s eyes as she surveyed Delia were a little fugitive. Jim would never agree to Delia going out as Brian’s nurse, Maude knew that perfectly well. But she was determined that she should go. She had had that morning a letter from the man she had met in the Blue Train. Fearfully exciting: Maude had flushed and thrilled all over as she read it. Couldn’t they meet again? Captain Armitage had remembered with such pleasure their brief journey together. He was at that very moment staying at the Hermitage Hotel at St. Jean de Luz. Trams ran between St. Jean de Luz and Biarritz. He could come over for the day, or wouldn’t Mrs. Chester come over and lunch with him? His leave was up in another month, so time was getting dreadfully short. But he did hope most fearfully that Mrs. Chester would not think him awfully impertinent for having written. She had been so awfully kind in letting him know where she was staying in Biarritz.

So Maude was determined to get Delia as Brian’s nurse, whatever happened. With her to look after him on the voyage, she could have the time of her life. Probably Captain Armitage would be going out on the same ship. Anyhow, he could probably change his berth if he wasn’t.

Maude spoke with a sort of eager candour as Delia stood, pale and trembling a little, with her hand on the back of a chair. “I will cable and ask him at once,” she said; “of course you were quite right to think of it.” But as Maude stood by the counter in the stuffy post-office and handed over the lengthy cable, she looked twice over her shoulder to see if Delia was anywhere about. Because it would be too awful if she found out that she had said nothing whatever about Delia by name in the cable. It had been very expensive and explicit, with the exception of that important omission.

I should like to come out, and suggest the ship leaving Marseilles on October the 24th (wrote Maude). I have an excellent nursery governess who is devoted to Brian, and she is willing to come too. Please cable me if this is all right.

Jim got the cable on one stuffy evening three days later. He had just come in from playing polo at the Mess, and was standing on the verandah, rolled up in a sweater. The crows on the thatched roof of the low bungalow were preparing to go to bed and making a good deal of noise about it. Jim, after tearing open the cable and reading it, stood with it crumpled up in his hand. One part of his life ended and another beginning. God! how was he going to go through with it? “Wali Mohammed!” His shout went echoing out through the funny bare dining-room on to the back verandah, where Wali Mohammed, looking like a large bale of white calico, was squatted on the ground engaged in cleaning the silver.

“Huzoor.” Wali Mohammed took about ten seconds to get from the back verandah to the front one. When the sahib shouted like that the only thing to do was to hurry.

“Whisky soda lao.”

“Attcha, sahib.” Wali Mohammed vanished, and in less than a minute was back again. Something was amiss, and the Mohammedan wondered what it was. He had gleaned a certain amount about his sahib’s affairs from a friend, a Mohammedan baboo in one of the offices in Garapore, and to him he took any letters or cables that he found lying about. The sahib had married during his last leave and now had a son of his own, that Wali Mohammed knew. But that there had been no rejoicing either over the marriage or the birth of the son had puzzled Wali Mohammed very much. Both were causes for rejoicing in the ordinary course of events.

“I wish to send a cable.” Jim had taken a long draught of the freezing liquid and felt a little better.

“Attcha, sahib.”

“You had better take it yourself. There’s heaps of time before I need change. I’ll write it now. Is there a lamp in my room?”

“Hain, sahib.” Wali Mohammed wagged his huge pugaree with complacence. Was there a lamp? Had he not trimmed it with his own hand and placed it there against his sahib’s return?

“All right—I’ll call you when I’ve written it.” Jim drained his glass and handed it to the waiting servant. And as he handed it his eyes twinkled. Extraordinary the way one’s personal servant interested himself in one’s life. Wali Mohammed was bursting with interest: tingling to know what was going on. He would tell him when he had settled what to reply to Maude. She was still in Biarritz, then. Jim strolled into his bedroom and sat down in the chair close up to his writing-table. Had she seen Delia? he wondered. Not likely: the two girls had never fraternized, and Biarritz would be crammed at this time of year. Jim suddenly dropped the flimsy pink telegram on to the table, and letting his head fall into his hands, he groaned. God! what an unutterable fool and cad he had been. But this was the best way out of it: to interest himself in his child and in that way banish the thought of Delia from his mind. She herself was young, and now she knew that he was married she would probably forget him. He would always continue the allowance that he was sending her now. He would have it made all pucca, in case anything happened to him.

“Wali Mohammed!” Jim was shouting again.

“Sahib!” Wali Mohammed’s dark luminous eyes were intent.

“Look here; take this cable yourself to the telegraph office”—Jim was folding the paper over in two—“and when you come back, come straight in here. I shall be making a new bundobast, and I may as well tell you about it now.”

“Attcha, sahib,” and with a gratified salaam, Wali Mohammed had taken the paper and the ten rupee note that Jim handed him with it and was gone. With his heavy native slippers slopping at the heels, he hurried through the dark compound and out on to the deserted cantonment road. Evening had come in with its queer Eastern swiftness, and the cool air was heavy with the acrid scent of wood smoke.

Wali Mohammed hurried into the telegraph office with an air of importance. The native signaller, sitting with his feet curled up underneath him, took the paper from him with a contemptuous air of detachment. He himself was a Brahman; he spat just to emphasize the fact.

I will cable for berths for the 24th of October and will meet you in Bombay if I possibly can. Don’t forget that the weather will be cold; see that Brian has plenty of warm things. Lloyds will have money for your expenses.

The baboo read it out in a monotonous sing-song.

When Wali Mohammed got back to the low bungalow and Jim told him what he proposed to do, it was not all news to him. He could understand a certain amount of English, although he could not speak it. And Wali Mohammed went to bed that night well content. Although there would be an English miss sahib to look after the baba sahib, he himself would be able to care for it too. And he would have the arranging of the new bungalow, and would hire all the furniture for it from Cursetjee, the Parsee near the Maidan. He would be able to make a goodly sum before he was done; Wali Mohammed curled himself up on his string mattress with a snort of content and satisfaction.

And Maude got the cable two days later. Nothing about her; only a fuss that Brian should be warmly enough dressed! She crumpled the flimsy paper up in her hand and then, recollecting, tore it up into tiny pieces and threw it into the wastepaper basket. She must not run any risks. Delia would be round in an hour or so, and she had got to pretend that Jim approved of her going out. The fat would be in the fire if Delia found the cable afterwards and saw that there was nothing whatever about her in it.

“Yes; he thinks it an excellent plan.” Maude was dressed to go out when Delia eventually arrived. “So now all you’ve got to do is to get ready. It will be cold when we get out there, but I’ll find out from a friend of mine, who knows Garapore, exactly what clothes we ought to have.” Maude spoke with complacence; she was going to St. Jean de Luz the next day and was looking forward to it.

“Oh, does he?” Delia suddenly felt stupid. In her wildest dreams she had never imagined that under the circumstances Major Chester would allow her to go out. Ever since her mother had said that his permission was to be asked, she had mentally given up the idea. God would take care of the baby. Delia had been confiding it to him with agonized tears during the last three days. And now—Delia gasped. Ah! but how little he must ever have really cared for her, that he could bear to have her near him, and under such changed conditions, thought Delia, her pride giving a sudden throb. She would show him that she too could be proud. “Oh, I’m glad,” she said, “and mother will be glad too. She is quite keen that I should have the chance to travel.”

“Yes, that will be jolly,” said Maude. “But don’t forget that you will have lots to do, too. I mean, I’m an awful sailor; I shan’t be able to look after Brian much.”

“Oh no, I know.” Delia flushed awkwardly. “I quite realize that I shall only be Brian’s nurse,” she said.

“Yes, as long as you realize that, it’ll be all right,” said Maude, and she said it with a quick glance of venom that Delia did not catch. Delia Browne was beautiful; Maude realized it more at that moment than she had realized at all. Why was she taking her out to flaunt her in the face of her husband? So that she could get rid of him, thought Maude, viciously triumphant at the success of her scheme. No woman could stand what she had had to stand without hitting back somehow. And she had found a gorgeous way—a magnificent way; Maude smiled out of the window of the tram nearly all the way to St. Jean de Luz. Jim had been a fool to treat her as he had done. He deserved all he got for it.

Chapter VI

Mrs. Browne did not really approve at all of this sudden and extraordinary plan of Delia going out to India as nurse to Major Chester’s baby. But after all, as she asked herself, what was going to become of Delia if she stayed at home? They knew nobody and went nowhere. Timothy was very shortly going back to Vienna; besides, Mrs. Browne was shrewd enough to see that the brother and sister had already drifted apart. Timothy now cared for nothing but his music. Timothy was gone so far as his mother and sister were concerned; even rather stupid Mrs. Browne had the sense to see that. And Delia, left at home, living her own queer, reserved life, would be a very difficult problem indeed. In fact, an almost impossible one, thought Mrs. Browne, observing her daughter’s strange, exotic beauty. She would get into difficulties from which she, her mother, would be quite powerless to extricate her. So she heard with a rather guilty feeling of relief that Major Chester approved of the plan of Delia going to India, although inwardly she was immensely surprised that he did.

“And now, my darling, you will have to see about getting some clothes ready,” said Mrs. Browne, already fluttered and excited at the idea of the shopping in store.

“Yes, mother, I shall.” Delia felt a queer feeling at the back of her throat. In less than a month she was going to leave her home for about a year, and Timothy for more than a year, and she hardly cared at all. That was what happened to you when you were grown up, she thought wearily; things that used to matter awfully did not matter at all. How she used to adore Timothy, and now they could do without each other quite well. And he had already made her wince a little by his casual reference to the man she had once loved. “So he’s married somebody else, has he? Poor thing. What a ghastly husband he would make; you are well out of it, Delia.”

So that was Timothy’s idea of her poor, pitiful, smashed-up romance. It should be hers too, resolved Delia, stung and embittered in every fibre of her. He had cared for her so little that he could contemplate seeing her always in his house without a single pang! Then she too could feel like that; after about a week of restless misery, Delia came to that conclusion. Only a letter from him telling her that he had really loved her fearfully, and had only married somebody else because he had to, would put her soul right with him again.

And that letter never came, because Jim, now that he had made up his mind to have his wife and child out to India, was resolved not to let Delia think by any word of his that he still loved and wanted her. Such a condition of things would be hopeless; he came to this conclusion as he sat over the brief letter that, after hours of indecision, he at last succeeded in writing to her. She was young and would forget him: he would always provide for her, because he had plenty of money and wanted to; that was the gist of the letter that arrived five weeks after the mail that had taken him Delia’s desperate and broken-hearted one.

And it was just the final lash to her self-respect and pride that Delia needed. That letter, combined with his ready acquiescence in the scheme of her going out as nurse to his child, set her on her feet. A caddy and a nurse, that was how he regarded her. And God was good to give her this chance of returning in some way the money he had given her and spent on her. She would spend her life in caring for his child; she would lavish herself on it. Delia went raging up and down her bedroom in a very torment of feeling. She loathed him—she had spent months of her life in worshipping a man who had only really made fun of her and kissed her just to see what she did. Delia stared at herself in the glass and made up her mind that she was going to be a nurse to Brian really, through and through. Not a pretended nurse or a stupid thing like a nursery governess, but a real nurse, wearing a cap and apron like Hortense. And she would call him “sir” when she saw him, and stand up when he came into the room: she would shame him and make him wish he had never been born, as he had made her wish she had never been born.

But Maude rather demurred at the cap. Close down over Delia’s smudged-in eyes it made her look exactly like the most exquisitely beautiful nun. “I don’t think you need wear that,” she said, and she said it rather uneasily.

“Oh yes, I must.” Delia was excitedly smoothing her apron. She had arrived at the hotel with a parcel of things from Le Bonheur, so as to give Maude a dress rehearsal. “You see, it will make it so much easier on the voyage if I am dressed like a real nurse,” she said. “Then people will know that I’m not to be included in things. Otherwise they’ll ask me to dance and things like that. I have got an outside dress too— I mean a bonnet and cloak. Look, I think they’re nice, don’t you? “ Delia was rummaging in a gaily flowered cardboard box.

“Very nice.” Maude’s voice was a little grumpy. She was vaguely beginning to regret the scheme of taking Delia out to India. After all, if Delia sat looking like a Madonna on the deck of the Albania, it didn’t matter a bit if she was a nurse or not; people would be certain to want to get to know her. At least, men would.

“I’m so glad you like it.” Delia was stripping the cap off her dark head. “And I have made up my mind to call you ‘madame.’” she said; “I think it will make it so much easier. And I shall call Major Chester ‘sir.’ Then he won’t feel uncomfortable at seeing me in that sort of position in his house,” concluded Delia, turning away to secure the string more firmly round the flowery box.

“I don’t think he’ll feel that, anyhow. He was always sorry for you. I remember when he asked me if I had any clothes that I thought would do for you; he spoke awfully nicely,” said Maude, and she said it quietly and evenly.

“Did he? How kind of him!” Delia was still stooping over the cardboard box, although its outline had got a little blurred. A queer rushing noise filled her ears: she waited to speak until it had gone. “Did he? How kind of him!” she repeated; “he was always kind to me. That’s why I am so glad to be able to do anything for his child. I shall love it just as if it had been my own.”

“It easily might have been,” said Maude readily; “and sometimes I really rather wish it was. I think a child ties you down so. It will be an awful relief to my mind to know that you’ll be looking after it on the voyage. I shall be able to have some fun. I already know one man who is going out in the Albania,” ended Maude with a note of satisfaction in her voice.

“Do you?” said Delia, and she said it with all the excitement and animation gone out of her voice. She stood up with the box held close under her arm, and Maude looked at her curiously. How this girl changed, she thought. Like a candle blown out; something black and smoking in the place of a dancing, trembling flame. She really need not be jealous of her. Anyhow, Captain Armitage admired her figure—Maude smoothed herself down with complacence after Delia had gone. It really was rather nice: Maude stood with her hands on her trim hips and spun herself round in front of the long glass.

Chapter VII

“Who’s the nurse with a face exactly like an angel straight down from heaven?” asked Major Martin, and he asked it exactly three days after the Albania had left Marseilles. It didn’t seem possible that it was only three days, thought Delia, remembering all the packing, and the parting, and the long journey from Biarritz to Marseilles; and the scrambling on board and all the extraordinary wonder of the huge liner, and the strange new life on it; and the agonized, tearing feeling of leaving Timothy and her mother and her home, and the almost equal agony of realizing how quickly that tearing feeling faded.

“She’s the nurse of that woman who sits in corners with Armitage,” returned his friend. “I never had any use for that young man, and I haven’t any more now. Why on earth he can’t leave married women alone, I can’t conceive. He’s horribly in debt, too, or was. It’s a fool’s game.” Mr. Benton laughed shortly.

“Yes, but you always were rather on the austere tack,” returned Major Martin, laughing lazily. “But to return to the nurse. Can’t one get to know her? I mean to say—a face like that—it’s a shocking waste.”

“You are a silly juggins.” Mr. Benton, sitting back in the corner of one of the deep chairs in the beautiful oak-panelled smoking-room, laughed again. And then his eyes suddenly narrowed. “Your chance, Martin,” he said, and he glanced out through the open door. “The angel trying to move the kid’s pen. Go in and win, my boy,” and Mr. Benton laughed still more as the figure sitting beside him suddenly heaved itself out of the low chair and vanished.

And Delia, glancing up from under the starched band of her cap, laughed right away inside her somewhere. This was fun. She had seen this man looking at her before, and in a way she had liked it. He was ugly, but it was an attractive sort of ugliness. He had bold eyes and a moustache brushed up from his mouth. He had a sort of daring look. It was most frightful fun being dressed up like a nurse on a ship—almost like acting in a play. She smiled a very little. “Thank you so much, sir,” she said, and she said it with grave eyes.

“She calls me ‘sir’.” Major Martin was back again after folding and carrying the pen down the deck, and setting it up again. While Delia had arranged the toys in it and put the rug right, he had held Brian. People watching them had laughed. Trust Martin to get to know the prettiest girl on the ship, whatever her class, they said, and laughed again. For most of the people in the Albania knew one another, and most were going to Bombay.

“Wise girl; she knows her place and means to stick to it. Leave her alone, Martin. No good ever came of fooling about with a girl below you in station. They say that that’s what finished Chester—you know Chester; he was in Jhansi with the 5th Battery when I was there as Collector. Not exactly finished him; I mean to say, he’s always a rattling good soldier, but finished him socially. He never goes anywhere, they say; an awful pity, because he was always a roaring social success. Women simply fled after him; don’t you remember him in the Jhansi days?”

“Rather! So he’s been and gone and done it, has he?” Major Martin flung himself back in his chair and crossed one long leg over the other. But as he spoke his daring eyes were wandering out of the smoking-room window. Delia had evidently taken Brian out of the pen, because she was walking round the deck pushing him in his cart. Her delicate profile showed up clearly against the occasional heave of the grey sea. They were just running out of the shelter of Italy and the ship was pitching a little.

“Yes; and, by the way, I wonder if the Mrs. Chester on board is his wife. I saw the name to-day while I was waiting for my bath. She’s in one of those single-berth cabins on the top deck, and the nurse is next door to her with the kid. Jove! I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if the nurse isn’t your pal, Martin.” Mr. Benton’s clean-shaven clever face suddenly grew animated.

“We’ll ask Bamfield; he always knows all the gup.” Major Martin tipped back his chair and spoke to a man sitting behind him. “Bamfield, who’s the woman who’s clicked with Armitage?” he asked.

“Chester’s wife, the gunner man. She’s got a nurse with a face like an angel. The Sapper boy in my cabin is quite potty about her”—Colonel Bamfield was laughing. “They say the nurse is a lady, but chooses to dress like that to keep impertinent fellows like you off the grass, Martin. Take notice in time, my boy.” Colonel Bamfield laughed again through a cloud of smoke.

“Gad! I thought she was.” Major Martin fell suddenly silent. Then he spoke again. “Someone says that Chester has married beneath him,” he said.

“He has. But not too obviously so,” said Colonel Bamfield charitably. “And she has money of her own, which always helps. Although his father left him quite well off, I believe.”

“How you always know things, Bamfield.” Mr. Benton, who had been listening, laughed quietly.

“Yes, I know. But as long as one doesn’t spread it about spitefully I don’t think it matters,” said Colonel Bamfield cheerfully. “And, as a matter of fact, I think it’s rather a good thing to have someone on board a ship like this who really knows the true facts of the case. For instance, there are charitable people who maintain that it was a case of ‘needs must’ with Jim Chester’s marriage. But I happen to know that that is a foul calumny.”

“Really? Well, I’m awfully glad to hear it, because I too heard something of the same kind,” said Mr. Benton, and he let his eyes linger on Colonel Bamfield’s good-tempered profile. Bamfield was a rattling good chap, he decided; it was a pity there were not more of his kind in the world.

“Yes; and now I’m going down to have my hair cut,” said Colonel Bamfield, and he heaved himself lazily out of his chair and sauntered across the smoking-room.

And the two men watched him go. And then Major Martin got up suddenly.

“I’m not sure that I won’t have my hair cut too,” he said, and he grinned down at the man left sitting in the corner o£ the sofa.

“Silly fool!” said Mr. Benton, and he watched Delia’s slender drifting figure come into sight and then vanish again with Major Martin’s tall figure in close pursuit. And he sighed as he bent his eyes again to the book in his hand. For Mr. Benton had loved somebody very much once, and she had married somebody else. And that had made him feel that anything in the way of a love-affair was something very much to be avoided.

Chapter VIII

By the time the Albania was in the Suez Canal Delia had come to the conclusion that a voyage was the most ecstatically exciting thing that could ever happen to anyone. Everything was fun, from the early morning tea, brought by the extremely nice stewardess, to the excellent dinner, served at eight o’clock, after Brian was safely in bed. For Delia did not go to the nurses’ meals; Maude’s economical spirit rebelled at that. After all, she had paid a full first-class fare for her, she thought; she might as well have the benefit of it. And it was all made easy for Delia because everybody liked her, and everybody liked Brian too. People were anxious to hold the affable and beautifully dressed baby who smiled at everyone. And Maude was only a very little jealous, because she herself was having such a very good time that she could not bother much about Delia.

Delia was almost perfectly happy. She forgot about her misery of the last two months. She was an excellent sailor, and so was Brian. And he might just as well have been her own child for the way he was left to her to manage. He slept beside her berth in a large wicker basket. And in the mornings he would wake and make heavings and bumpings under the blankets, and Delia would roll over and watch him in a very ecstasy of love. Till at last the large fair head would emerge, and he would see her and break into an angelic smile. And that was the beginning of a lovely day. It was hard work, but it was delicious work, because Brian was so awfully good. He smiled at everyone, and everyone smiled at him, because everyone always does smile at a baby who is deliciously dressed, and smells of sweetly scented powder, and is never any bother to anyone.

So Delia enjoyed herself. And, guiltily, she felt that a good deal of her enjoyment had to do with Major Martin. Guiltily, because she felt that she ought not to be able to like any other man but Major Chester. But after all he was married, and it was wrong to think about him. And this feeling that she had for Major Martin was not in the least like the feeling that she had had for Jim. That had been a sort of worship: an adoration; something enshrined. Major Martin made her laugh. She laughed because he got so angry when she would call him “sir.”

“I am a nurse; I must.” Delia had got Brian in her arms and was carrying him down the deck to the sheltered corner where Major Martin was going to put the pen.

“No, you needn’t; you aren’t a nurse at all; it’s all my eye.” Major Martin was laughing. Delia, looking at him, thought how nice all the men in the Albania were. Nearly all nice-looking; all with charming, educated voices, and all with nice teeth. And all with the delightful look of having just come out of a bath. She dimpled under her cap.

“Take that cap, for instance; you only wear it because you know it’s so desperately becoming.” Major Martin had set down the pen and was holding out his arms for Brian. “Give me the kid while you settle its rugs.”

“I don’t”—Delia handed Brian over; “I wear it because it shows that I’m different from the other women,” she said. “There’s going to be a dance to night, for instance. Well, I shan’t dance. Nurses can’t. They’re menial. I shall go to bed instead.”

“If you do, I shall come and fetch you out of it.” Major Martin had his eyes on Delia’s delicate features. This girl was a dream, he thought. As different from these half-naked, lip-sticked, sophisticated modern horrors that flooded the decks of the Albania, as salt water is different from fresh.

“Don’t; I hate that sort of remark.” Delia went suddenly scarlet. She felt that this man had taken a liberty with her. She held out her arms for the baby.

“Sorry! Forgotten! Say it is!” Major Martin’s daring eyes were penitent. He held on to Brian. “You shan’t have it till you say you forgive me,” he said.

“Don’t be so silly.” Delia was laughing uncomfortably. In a way she resented the effect that this man had on her. It was almost like a stimulant on her young imagination. He was so frightfully bold—and yet not exactly bold: more daring. It was as if you were being swept along by a wind—fierce devastating wind that blew you along from behind, and you had to run whether you wanted to or not. And you didn’t want to. And as you ran you felt shaken, and laughing, and anxious, all at once. Everything all mixed up. Delia avoided Major Martin’s eyes as she still held out her arms. “Give him to me,” she said. “Yes, it’s all right about what you said. Only please go away now. Everyone stares when you talk to me. They realize that what I tell you is true; I am different from them. Officers in the Army aren’t meant to talk to nurses in caps.”

“Officers in the Army.” As Major Martin walked away down the deck his dark eyes were amused. This girl was a duck, he thought. He would find out more about her. He would try to get that Chester female by herself, if it was possible, some time when that Armitage youth was not in attendance.

Luck was with him. As he sauntered round the hurricane-deck looking for Maude, he spied her in the saloon writing letters. He walked in and sat down by her.

“Busy, lady?” Major Martin had had a vast experience of young married women and knew exactly how to talk to them. He put just the requisite amount of deference and caress into his voice.

“Oh no, not a bit!” Maude was pleased. She resented a little the way this man followed Delia about. People were already beginning to talk about it, and Maude had heard quite enough about “that beautiful young nurse of yours.” This would be a chance to put Major Martin straight about it. Maude proceeded to do so.

“Really! caddied for your husband, did she? Some people have all the luck!” Major Martin emitted a queer subterranean chuckle.

“Yes; and then he sent her to school in Switzerland. I think it was silly of him. But if you know Jim you know what he is. He has those silly idealistic ideas.” Maude’s voice was acid.

“Yes, I know him.” Major Martin was staring at the toes of his white deck shoes. But inwardly he was lost in bewilderment. Chester educated a young girl who had caddied for him on the Biarritz golf links, and then had her out as nurse to his kid, having married meanwhile someone below him socially. Major Martin suddenly felt indignant. And it didn’t sound like Chester either.

“So you see I wanted to be kind to her,” went on Maude rather virtuously. “And her people are awfully poor and she would never have had a chance in Biarritz. Also, she adores Brian. So I suggested her coming out to India for this next cold weather. And she jumped at it. So did Jim. He wouldn’t hear of Brian coming out unless he had an English nurse.”

“Quite right too.” Major Martin looked at his nails and then put his hands into his pockets. “Who are her people?” he asked.

And in the short space of time that followed, Maude’s mind went round and round in a flurry. Since leaving Marseilles she had had plenty of time to think, and she had come to the conclusion that perhaps the scheme of having Delia out to India had been a mistake. She attracted so much attention, Jim might be furious about it. Or Jim might instantly fall desperately in love with her, and Maude did not want that at all. In fact, now she began to wonder why she had ever thought of the scheme. It had been a queer idea of getting her own back somehow. But what was the use of it? She was the one who would be got back on. Instead of having an excellent position as the wife of a popular and well-to-do officer, and able, because of that position, to flirt as outrageously as she liked with somebody else, she would be left. So Maude began to put things right. And by the time that Captain Armitage appeared in the doorway, resentful and aggrieved, Major Martin was in full possession of the facts. Delia was the daughter of military people, and had one brother with a marvellous voice whom Marcus Stoneham had taken up. Maude had no objection whatever to Delia dancing or doing whatever she wished, provided the baby was not neglected. And she believed that Delia had some evening dresses with her.

“Thanks very much!” Major Martin was now standing up, and he looked down at Maude with a certain amount of cordiality. She had begun cattishly and ended up generously, he thought. What had worked the transformation? No matter, so long as it was worked. He went back to Delia.

“Yes; but I don’t think I want to.” Delia was sitting on a little low chair, and she kept her eyes on her work. They were uneasy eyes. She suddenly felt a leap of her pulses at the idea of dancing with this man, and she was ashamed of it. “I should keep on thinking that Brian was waking up and crying,” she said; “I should be wretched.”

“No, you wouldn’t, because we’d keep on going and looking to see that he wasn’t,” said Major Martin, and his eyes dwelt on the white-capped head, so sweetly downcast. This girl was a dove, he thought enthusiastically.

“Yes; but Mrs. Chester won’t like it.”

“She suggested it.”

“I don’t see how she could, because before we started she said that I wasn’t to join in things,” said Delia uneasily.

“Yes; but she’s thought better of it. She’s having the time of her life and she wants you to have it too,” said Major Martin boldly.

“How can she have, when she’s married?” The words were on Delia’s tongue, but she bit them back. Maude’s absorption in Captain Armitage appalled her. But, as she had told herself, lying in the darkness of her cabin and staring at the ceiling, who was she to talk? She had thought herself utterly absorbed in Jim Chester, and now, here she was, deeply interested in somebody else. It must be something to do with the sea, thought Delia, dismissing the question, as many a one before her has dismissed it.

“Well, will you dance with me to-night?” Major Martin’s eyes still dwelt on the white cap.

“I don’t know.” Delia lifted troubled and beautiful eyes to the man sitting beside her. He had ruthlessly purloined somebody else’s chair, and the owner of it was even at that very moment leaning over the side of the deck laughing down into the water.

“Martin’s fairly hooked,” said Mr. Benton, and he grinned sideways at his friend.

“Who is she?” Bobby Darrell was also laughing, and he laughed with sympathy because he also had got engaged at Home.

“The lady nurse of the female who’s hooked Armitage,” returned Mr. Benton. “But I prefer Martin’s choice. Only I wish the blighter would get out of my chair. Good! he’s done so. See you later for bridge—tata.”

And as Major Martin walked triumphantly down the deck—triumphantly because he had got Delia to give way—the rightful occupant of the chair sank into it again and looked frankly at Delia. She was beautiful, he concluded, but with a sad, pitiful beauty. Not at all the type for Martin to work his will on. However, it wasn’t his business; the clever fingers busied themselves with the latest, and very involved, White Paper.

Chapter IX

Given certain material and certain conditions, a great deal can happen during the ten days that lie between Port Said and Bombay. The moonlit decks of a great liner are ideal for love-making; that is to say, if they are not too moonlit. The blue seas of the Indian Ocean; the brilliance of the stars hanging over it, that look exactly like pinpoints of light stuck into a dark-blue inverted pudding-bowl; even the very throb, throb of the powerful engines all seem to typify the very ruthlessness and the heart of love.

Delia was swept off her feet—bewildered. Major Martin said that he loved her; he couldn’t: she stared frightened and breathless up at him as he stood beside her one night.

“Why couldn’t I? I do!” Guy Martin spoke hoarsely. Never in the whole of his life had he met anyone like Delia. She eluded him; she inflamed his imagination by her terrified withdrawals. She ran away from him; women generally ran after him. He adored it; he wanted the voyage to go on for ever. He wanted to marry Delia as he had never wanted anything before in his life. He had never wanted to marry anyone before—the very idea of the permanence of it had sickened him. Now he thought of nothing else but marriage with Delia. Delia all the time—nothing else but that would satisfy him.

Delia was terrified. For as well as her terror at the vehemence of his love-making, there was terror at her own feelings. Something in this man attracted her very deeply; there was a lawlessness, a recklessness about him, that awoke some answering lawlessness and recklessness in herself. She was ashamed of this feeling; her heart had been given irrevocably to someone else. As Major Martin stood over her, his vaguely seen eyes raking her face for any response to his appeal, she began to cry.

“Good God! what have I said?” Guy Martin was desperate. The quiet slapping of the gentle sea up against the hull of the liner as she stole through the quiet waters of the Indian Ocean was the only sound except Delia’s strangled sobs. He had taken her right up astern; the only human being in sight was the lascar on watch. And even he, outlined against the moon, looked like a figure cut out of black paper.

“You don’t understand.” Delia was trying to control herself. “It’s not that I’m not grateful to you for what you say. But it’s the awfulness of it; the ghastliness, the despair.”

“How all these terrible things?” Major Martin was suddenly very quiet. His mind fled back to Maude’s recent confidences. “Tell me what you mean,” he said.

“Well, I believe I will.” Delia, feeling utterly desperate, suddenly felt that she would take this man into her confidence. After all, why not marry him if he wanted to marry her? What good would it be to go and live in the same house as Jim Chester and try by a sort of terrible bitterness to show him that she did not care for him any more? Once she had handed Brian over to him, her duty would be over. Why had she ever consented to come out to India like this? It had been the action of someone not quite responsible for what she did.

“Come along back to the top deck and we’ll find a couple of chairs.” Major Martin had his arm round Delia and was gently leading her. She suddenly clung to him.

“I’d rather tell you here,” she said. “Wait; it won’t take very long.”

And as the lascar suddenly sang out in his melancholy and musical voice, striking the hour of the watch on the big, swinging bell with his skinny arm, Delia began to tell the story of her love and subsequent anguish. And as Major Martin listened he watched her dimly seen face. She was telling the truth, that was quite certain. But the weak point was, why had Chester, when he had once won the love of a girl like this, married another one? He put the question gently.

“I can’t tell you that part of it.” Delia’s face was uplifted.

“Oh, all right; don’t, my sweet.” The question was answered so far as Major Martin was concerned. He had thought as much, only in a case of the kind it was always better to give the woman the benefit of the doubt. He took hold of Delia’s shoulders and drew her a little nearer to him. “Then you had much better marry me now,” he said; “that settles things all round. I love you, and I think I can make you happy. Say yes, Delia, you funny little darling!”

“Funny little darling!” The words awakened some distant echo in Delia. He had thought she was funny. He had called her sweet, too. What was she doing, to contemplate giving herself to one man when she felt like this for another? She suddenly dropped her hands and stood there trembling.

Major Martin had the sense not to press his suit any further at the moment. Delia was not altogether averse to him, that was something. He stood looking down at her hair, wondering what she would do if he suddenly tore her into his arms and half killed her with kisses. Would it be a wise move, or wouldn’t it? Should he try?

“Let’s go and dance again,” he said, after a short pause during which he fought for and successfully regained his self-control.

“All right.” Delia spoke like someone in a dream. The whole thing was being like a dream, she told herself as she walked along the dark deck by his side. But she must go and see if Brian was all right first. She said so, lifting her small pale face up to his.

“All right, I’ll come too.” Major Martin held Delia’s arm as they went down the companion steps together. People watching them smiled and looked at one another. That was a case, evidently, and Martin was a lucky man. Because Mrs. Chester’s nurse in evening dress certainly was a picture. The dress was evidently a model. People said that Miss Browne was fabulously wealthy. A mercy, because Martin was sure to be in debt. A man who had led his life could not fail to be. But now he would probably settle down and be an exemplary husband. That sort of man generally did, if he pulled up in time.

“Doesn’t he look a perfect dove?” Delia and the man beside her stood looking down at the cot on the sofa berth. Brian’s minute nose was outlined against the soft pillow; he had been sucking his thumb and his fat fingers had fallen away from his face. “He’s all right.” Delia stooped to pull the blanket a little down from his neck. “He’s hot; it is hot in here. I think I’ll turn the fan on, shall I?”

“Yes; I think I should.” Guy Martin stood with his hands in his pockets, his blazing eyes fixed on Delia. The look of her as she had stooped over the cot had awakened all his passion. She was like an angel, this girl: an angel with a gorgeous streak of humanity in her. And if he could only get at the streak of humanity it would flame to his caresses: he knew it would. He would risk it; he suddenly switched out the light and caught her in his arms.

But Delia struggled and at last he let her go. “I say, I’m sorry!” He was gasping as he caught hold of her hands in pleading.

“Why did you? I—I—I——” Delia was sobbing again. “Go away, I tell you; I’m going to bed!” she cried. “You had no right—I never said. Oh, why was I ever born?”

“Don’t! I’m very sorry.” Damned fool that he had been, he had frightened her away. Desperate, he apologized in a hoarse stammering whisper. He had not meant—it was only that he—— He tried to catch hold of her hands.

But Delia pulled them away. In reality she hardly knew what she was either doing or saying. It was all too awful. She had given him her confidence—why had she done it? She spoke on a high note of nervous misery. He must go away; she would see him in the morning and tell him what she had decided.

And Major Martin had the sense to go. But when at about twelve o’clock he had at last left the smoking-room, he also did not know very clearly what he was doing. He had been drinking heavily for about an hour; the only thing to do when a fellow felt like he did, he told himself sulkily and half aloud, as he lurched into his cabin, clutching at the swinging door to steady himself.

Chapter X

Maude now proceeded to take up the matter of Delia and Major Martin. Maude had been made extraordinarily uneasy by Geoffry Armitage’s frank strictures on her plan of taking Delia unannounced to Garapore.

“Your husband will see red,” he said; and he stuck his neat feet out in front of him and surveyed them. “What on earth did you do it for? You must be balmy to have even contemplated such a thing.”

“Don’t be rude.” Maude was short and cross.

“Well, but you must be.” Captain Armitage was now on terms of easy freedom with Maude. She responded to his rather familiar brutality. He despised her, but got a good deal of fun out of her, one way or another. And after all, he was going to Quetta, and there was not much more of the voyage to run. “May as well have all the fun I can,” he said to himself rather unpleasantly. Because he was not at all a popular young man on the Albania. Maude and he were left largely to their own devices; and they made the most of them. Delia was secretly horrified at Maude’s tolerance of what seemed to her unpardonable familiarity.

So Maude sought Delia out in her cabin. She was dressing Brian, talking to him with little chuckling, cooing noises. This was the time that she liked best; she clutched his fair bald head to her breast and kissed it again and again.

“How you do spoil him!” Maude had pulled back the curtain from the open door, and Delia jumped at her voice.

“I don’t”—she said it with a smile as she went on powdering his back.

“You do; but that’s not what I’ve come to say.” Maude sat down on the vacant berth, shoving a heap of Brian’s clothes along to the end of it. “I’ve come to say this: everyone sees how keen Major Martin is on you, and everybody’s talking about it, too. You’d much better marry him if he asks you. He’s nice. I believe you’d be awfully happy.”

“Yes, but what about Brian?” Delia was busy pulling little garments over the baby’s head. He held up adorable fat arms to help her. Her face was scarlet and confused. The whole situation was so fearful; much more like a book than anything else.

“Oh! I don’t mean instantly. Come up with me to Garapore and all that. Only be engaged, if you get the chance. You’ll have a different position at once if you are. Major Martin is in a cavalry regiment—Indian Cavalry, of course; but still——”

Maude paused.

“Yes, but I don’t know that I care for him.” Delia was suddenly tremulous. She reached down for the soft hairbrush and began brushing the baby’s soft hair with a rather shaky hand.

“Care for him!” Maude laughed a little bitterly. “That’ll come when you’re married,” she said. “Give Brian to me while you tidy up. You funny little josser!”—-and she jogged Brian uncomfortably on her knee.

“Please don’t shake him. I had to give him his bottle before his bath to-day, because he waked so frightfully early. There!” Delia stepped forward hurriedly as a cascade of curdled milk appeared on Brian’s spotless bib. He beamed affably, as one who had distinguished himself.

“Oh, you horrid little beast! Here, take him.” Maude was anxiously looking at her silk blouse. She hustled Brian unceremoniously off her knee. “Has it gone on my skirt?” she asked.

“No; I can’t see any.” Delia was hunting for another bib in the blue-lined basket. To hear Maude call her beautiful baby a beast made her feel quite sick. How could she leave him to her tender mercies? She couldn’t, at any rate not until she had seen him safely into his father’s care.

“Well, to return to Major Martin.” Maude was getting off the berth preparatory to leaving the cabin. “Think about what I say. I’m sure you’ll be sorry if you give up a good chance like that. After all being engaged doesn’t mean being married at once, does it?” Maude was eyeing Delia as she spoke. She was suddenly profoundly anxious that she should get engaged before they arrived in Bombay. After all, they were only five or six days out now. And Jim might be furious at seeing her. He might even refuse to have her up to Garapore at all. But it would be quite another thing if she could say, “Don’t excite yourself; Delia is engaged, and is going to be married in a couple of months.” Maude was suddenly profoundly disturbed at the idea of confronting Jim with Delia. She had already seen him angry once. It had been quite enough for her. And even if Major Martin did drink, he would probably give it up when he was married. All men drank more or less, thought Maude comfortably.

And whether it was Maude’s anxiety to get her safely off her hands, or whether it was her own wretched certainty that the whole idea of coming out to India had been a ghastly mistake, and that this idea of getting engaged before she arrived was at any rate one solution of the problem, Delia never knew. But the fact remained that that night, standing very still and frightened close up to the rail of the ship, with Major Martin in evening dress beside her, she told him that she had thought over what he had said the night before and that she was willing to marry him.

“You blessed little darling!” Guy Martin gripped the small hand lying on the rail beside his and held it to his lips. “I swear I’ll turn over a new leaf, Delia.”

“Why? Need you?” Delia looked up and thought that her lover looked very nice. His eyes were blazing and his mouth was trembling. She suddenly felt glad that she had taken the plunge. Now her life was settled, and it only remained for her to hand Brian over to his father and then get ready for being married. “When shall we be married?” she asked, and she asked it with complete freedom from anything even approaching self-consciousness.

“As early as ever we can in January,” said Major Martin. “I shall be out on manoeuvres until then.” And he said it with great tenderness. But inwardly he was a little surprised and a shade disappointed. He hadn’t expected Delia to ask that, somehow. He had expected her to be alarmed and a little perturbed at the idea of marriage.

But all surprise and disappointment vanished later in the evening, when, Delia safely gone down to her cabin, he entered the crowded smoking-room with a look of triumph on his face. His whispered news was soon made broadcast. He was the hero of the evening. He never knew how he got down to his cabin; but he did get there, because he waked in it at eight o’clock the next morning with one of the worst heads that he had ever had in his life, and that was saying a good deal.

Chapter XI

There is always something rather dramatic about the arrival of a big liner in Bombay harbour, especially when it brings with it the English mail. Almost everything in India hinges on the English mail. It brings news from Home, and it isn’t until you have actually lived in India that you know what news from Home means. It means almost everything, especially to those English people tucked away in little up-country stations, and there are plenty of those, gasping, living only for news from the outside world.

And as Jim Chester stood on the great stone Mole watching the huge ship heave slowly nearer, broadside on, he too felt a thrill that he had never thought to feel again. An echoing thrill from the thoughts of the eager waiting groups of expectant husbands and lovers all around him. He himself felt no particular joy beyond a warm, throbbing curiosity to see his son. But he was human enough to enter into the joy of other people, and he was thankful to feel that he was. He stood a little way from everybody else, a quiet, distinguished figure in his tussore silk suit and white pith helmet. And Delia, with a sudden sick leap of her pulses, saw him standing like that, as with a crowd of other people she stood leaning over the side of the ship watching the bustle on the quay.

“What’s the matter? Don’t go away just as we are going to make fast.” Major Martin put out a detaining hand and caught hold of Delia’s arm. She shook herself free from him and ran. Anywhere, anyhow, tearing down the narrow stairs to her cabin. Brian, sitting up in his cot beaming at the Goanese steward who was doing the cabin, bubbled a delicious welcome. Next to Delia he liked the Goanese steward best. He was always happy when he was left to him. Alone together, the two talked a mysterious whispered language. Francis, the steward, also had a little boy baba in far-off Goa, and he told Brian all about him every day. And Brian listened in rapt absorption, every now and then emitting a high, breathy crow of ecstasy.

“I can’t bear it—I cannot, cannot bear it!” Francis had discreetly withdrawn, and Delia, left alone, flung herself down on the floor by Brian’s cot. Why had she come; why had she horror of horrors—engaged herself to another man? She loved him, adored him just as much as ever; the mad feeling of ecstasy at the sight of him had told her that. Then what was she going to do—what was she going to do?

“We’re nearly in, Delia; have you got everything packed up?” It was Maude, just behind the swinging curtain. “May I come in? Oh, good! Everything’s ready. I wish I knew if Jim was coming down to meet us; his letter at Port Said said he wasn’t sure.” Maude was evidently nervous, because she avoided Delia’s eyes.

So Maude had not seen him. Delia stooped, busying herself with her half-shut hatbox. “Yes, everything’s practically ready,” she said; “I’ve only just got to put on Brian’s outdoor things. Have you seen him in his topi? He looks a perfect duck!”

“No; and I can’t stop now.” Maude spoke absently. “I only just came to see if you were getting on all right; I thought you were upstairs, but Guy said you had just come down. Oh, Delia, you aren’t going to wear those things, are you? I thought you’d put them away.”

“Yes; I’d rather.” Delia was hurriedly stuffing some coloured clothes into the long-suffering hatbox. “Guy doesn’t mind: besides, he has to catch the Punjab mail, so he won’t see me in them. I’d rather be a proper nurse, if you don’t mind.”

“All right.” And Maude went away, dragging the curtain across behind her. She felt deeply uneasy. Now the news had to be broken to Jim, if he was there to meet them, and if he wasn’t, Garapore was only two days off. And she had to say good-bye to Geoffry too. She hated that, although she was really a little tired of him; but she understood his way of talking. Maude wished only a little less vehemently than Delia that she had never left Europe. It had been a hair-brained scheme, the only consolation about it being that she had not started it herself.

Major Martin was pacing up and down the deck when Maude arrived upstairs again. He wanted every minute that he could get with Delia, because in an hour or two he was to be torn away from her for at least three months. “I say, we’re nearly alongside,” he said; “I suppose you’ve seen your husband? He’s there on the quay. Where’s Delia?”

“Downstairs,” and with that brief word, Maude had also turned and fled. Her husband: there on the quay, only twelve feet or so away! Soon to be told of what she had done. Maude brushed through the little knots of laughing, chattering people and dashed downstairs to her cabin. Geoffry Armitage saw her go and called to her. But she did not answer, and he shrugged his shoulders and let her go. He had seen a couple of pals on the quay and was already looking forward to a jolly afternoon at the Yacht Club. Maude would have been a bit out of place there, not being quite out of the top drawer. She was all right for a voyage, but that was about her limit, concluded Geoffry Armitage, watching her disappearing legs with a feeling of relief.

Jim Chester, having walked up the very sloping gangway a few minutes later, and having stood about bareheaded for some time watching the other people greeting one another, suddenly saw Mr. Benton, an old friend of his, and strolled up to him with a quiet smile. “Seen my family, Benton?” he asked.

“No; not for about half an hour or so,” replied Mr. Benton, and as he spoke he wildly racked his brain to put a name to this grey-haired man who stood quietly looking at him. Chester, by all that was holy; how the man had aged! “Ah, yes; I saw Mrs. Chester about five minutes ago,” he exclaimed. “On her way down to her cabin, I think. It’s on the hurricane deck, next to her nurse’s. Fifty-two, I believe it is. How are you, Chester? I haven’t seen you for years.”

“No; it’s a long time.” Jim Chester stood still and smiled quietly. He was not going to Maude’s cabin for anything on earth; they must meet for this first time in public for both their sakes. She would appear eventually, and he would wait there until she did. “I’ll sit here and wait,” he said; “there’s always a lot to do in the way of odd packing at the very last, and the passport regulations now are the very devil.”

So there he sat, his long legs crossed, waiting. And eventually Maude appeared. Two, if not three, people had been to her cabin to tell her that her husband was waiting for her in the saloon. But she was physically incapable of making a move. She and Delia, all unconscious of one another, both huddled in their respective cabins sick with apprehension, both petrified at what they had done, both ready to give all that they possessed to have it undone.

“Well——” Jim had his topi in his hand, and he got up on to his feet as Maude appeared at the top of the saloon stairs. He had an instant pity for her; she was as white as paper. She had improved in looks though. He took her hand cordially enough. “Well, what sort of a voyage have you had?” he asked.

“Very nice, thank you.” Maude’s voice died in her throat and then revived again.

“And how is Brian?”

“Oh, he’s splendidly well.” Maude cast a hunted glance around her. “He’s in his cabin,” she said; “his nurse is getting him ready to come off.”

“Good. I’ve got you an ayah, too.” Jim felt more at ease now that Maude was so abjectly terrified. “At least, my bearer got her for me. An English nurse always expects one. They push the pram and all that. By the way, have you got a perambulator?”

“Yes; it’s in the hold,” said Maude.

“Good! And have you got your keys? I’ve got Cox’s to clear all your kit, and we’ll go to the Taj for to-night; I’ve taken rooms there. I stayed there myself last night.”

“I can get my keys.” Maude was not far away from tears. The nervous strain of the last few weeks became apparent.

Jim was sorry for her; sorry, that is to say, in a queer, detached way. He spoke kindly. “Get them, then,” he said, “and I’ll wait here. Be as quick as you can, because the earlier we get off the better; it begins to get hot later.” Jim sat down again with a queer, miserable feeling of amusement in his brain. Maude was panic-stricken, that was obvious. Not a very good beginning to the whole thing.

“I want your keys.” Maude brushed past the curtain and went straight into Delia’s cabin. “What on earth is the matter with you?” She stared at Delia, sitting pallid on her berth.

“Nothing.” Delia got up and began to reach down her topi. The stiff white brim of it accentuated her pallor. She fumbled for her keys and found them. “Here they are.” She set Brian’s topi tenderly on his head, and lifted him in her arms.

“You’d better take him up into the saloon and wait for me there.” Maude’s mind, desperate and fugitive, had hit upon a scheme. She would pretend that she did not know that Jim knew Delia—that she had found her at a loose end in Biarritz and had just brought her out. Anything would be better than presenting Jim with Delia face to face. In fact, she was by now incapable of doing such a thing. She would die on the spot.

So Delia went up into the saloon with Brian in her arms and walked practically straight into her old lover’s arms. And the shock was too great; she sat down abruptly. “This is your baby,” she said, only those stupid words seeming to come to her lips, and she held Brian out.

“What?” Jim had got up. He, too, suddenly felt sick and stupid. This slender girl, sitting in the chair in front of him—was it Delia? His stunned brain refused to function. Mechanically he took the baby into his arms. Brian reached up and with a wavering, uncertain hand tried to lay hold of his ear.

“How on earth have you got out here?” Jim spoke after a stupefied silence.

“I’m your nurse. She said you liked the idea.” Delia was looking round the deserted saloon. Mercifully deserted, for the stricken pair could not but fail to have aroused remark by their appearance.

“She said I liked the idea?” Mechanically Jim imprisoned the tiny, wandering hand in his. He had forgotten all about Brian; he never even remembered that he had a child. He only saw Delia—Delia, far more beautiful than he had known her; Delia, pallid, and with huge dark eyes fixed on his.

“Yes; don’t you?” Delia was beginning to come slowly to herself. Things were straightening themselves out in her brain. Maude had never told him, then; the awful torture of having thought that he did not care whether he ever saw her again or how he saw her was no more. Then why had she got engaged? Of course she must break it off; now, this instant. She got up.

“Where are you going?” Jim also got on to his feet. He suddenly felt less dazed. Far away in him the most extraordinary rapture began to dawn, like a heavy cloud melting before a persistent sun. Delia was here—actually under his very eye. And his wife had wrought this miracle. He suddenly took hold of himself mentally. “It is an excellent idea,” he said, and he spoke with all his old self-possession. “And now I expect you have one or two more things to do before we leave the ship. I will look after Brian while you do them.”

“I won’t be a minute,” and Delia got up and made for the door. But she was too late. Guy Martin was standing there, and seeing her, he took a joyful step forward. He caught hold of her hand, and then, seeing Jim Chester, he grinned cheerfully. “Hallo, Chester!” he said; “you stand in the position of the heavy father, I expect. I want permission to marry your nurse, my boy.”

“What?”

“No, don’t—not now.” Delia’s upturned face was imploring and agonized. “I don’t know whether I can marry you now,” she said; “I’ll write and let you know.”

“What?”

But there are some situations that are too appalling to be allowed to continue, and Jim suddenly stepped into the breach. “Congratulations, Martin,” he said, and he walked forward with his child in his arms. “But Miss Browne has got to go and collect the rest of her kit now. Come and join us at the Taj; we’re there for the rest of the day and to-night.”

“I can’t; I’m catching the Punjab mail. The special train is on the Mole now; I’ve been hunting for Delia for the last half-hour.” Guy Martin spoke a little sulkily. He swung on his heel and followed her out of the saloon. “Look here, what do you mean by saying that you don’t know if you can marry me now?” he said. “You’ve got to. I won’t leave Bombay until you promise me you will. I’ll overstay my leave—I’ll——”

“Don’t—don’t worry me by saying things like that.” Delia spoke with the overwrought terror of a frightened child. “I’ll write to you—I promise I’ll write. I don’t know what I’m doing—it’s because it’s all so new. Leave me alone; don’t kiss me. Ah!” Delia suddenly cried out and tried to wrench herself away.

But half an hour later, when Guy Martin with his long legs stretched out on the comfortable seat of a first-class carriage watched the inexpressible squalor of suburban Bombay unroll itself before his gloomy eyes, his thoughts were extremely miserable. There had been something, then, in that affair with Chester—all that education and caddying and everything. But all the same he was going to have Delia; his own life hadn’t been any too savoury that he could afford to be particular. But still, you expected a girl to be rather different. Anyhow, he would have a whisky and soda now; that was the best of the Punjab mail: there was always heaps of ice to be got, and his ice-box was full of it: Guy Martin got up and groped about under the seat. Ah, there it was, and the whisky was in his tiffin basket. He found both the liquids that he wanted and mixed them both, with perhaps a little overemphasis on the whisky. But still, that had been a nasty shock that Delia had given him when she said that she couldn’t marry him after all. One wanted more than one whisky and soda to drown the memory of that, thought Major Martin.

Chapter XII

To Delia, those first few days in India passed like a glorious dream. All the nightmare of the months behind her was blotted out. The man she adored was there; that was enough for her.

Fortunately, Maude took it in very much the same way. She did not care for Jim, but she had been in a condition of abject fright about Delia’s arrival in India as nurse to his child. So the fact of his taking it with apparent unconcern was an enormous relief. Maude had mentally given up Jim some time ago. The position as his wife she coveted because it gave her a standing that she would never have had otherwise. But she did not want anything more, and it was a good thing that she didn’t, because she would not have got it.

Jim had taken three large bedrooms and a sitting-room at the Taj Mahal Hotel, all on the second floor, facing the harbour. And Delia moved about hers in an ecstasy. This was too heavenly for words, she thought, standing at the window and staring out of it.

“Look, ayah; a man with snakes. Oh, how awful! He’s getting a rat out of a bag by its tail. Oh, how perfectly fearful!” Delia was watching with horrified eyes.

“Mongoose, miss sahib.” Mary, the large intelligent Goanese ayah, with Brian in her arms, came padding barefoot over the matting. Wali Mohammed had chosen Mary with great skill. She had been ayah to the General Memsahib, who had just gone Home. But she had been nurse to the General Memsahib’s one child, who was now a stout little schoolboy at his preparatory school in England, so she knew all about little boy babas. And Brian grasped this, and clung to her and chuckled, as he had clung to and chuckled with Francis, the Goanese cabin steward.

“Will the snakes kill it?” Delia was gasping and terrified, and staring down on to the wide stone pavement below her.

“Mongoose killing snake,” said Mary with confidence. And she was right. After a horrible battle, during which the mongoose eluded every dart of the snake’s infuriated and glancing head, it caught it by the back of its shiny neck and flung it over its furry shoulder as dead as a door-nail, and was then hustled back into its bag of rather grimy sacking.

“Oh, how perfectly awful!” Delia turned from the window feeling a little sick. Mary was grinning, and had apparently enjoyed the whole thing enormously. So had the crowd of laughing and chattering natives that now dispersed as hurriedly as it had formed.

“Oh!” And then Delia fell silent. What an extraordinary country, she thought, regarding Mary fixedly, where even women laughed at seeing anything even as horrid as a snake tortured to death. And then the door opened and Jim came in.

“Well, what do you think of it all?” Jim was speaking to Delia, but he was not looking at her. He was snapping his fingers at Brian, who, at this further sight of the tall, distinguished and pleasantly smelling stranger, held out his arms and bubbled.

“Can’t you walk, you useless little tyke?” Jim took Brian into his arms and smiled pleasantly at Mary.

“He can, only I don’t let him try much, because he’s so fat.” Delia spoke in quick defence of her charge. She came up and stood close to Jim. “What a heavenly country!” she said.

“Like it?” Since Jim Chester had first found out that Delia was actually in India he had had a tremendous and tough struggle with himself. This marvel of marvels had actually come to pass, that he could not deny. Nor could he deny that the thought and realization of it filled him with an overwhelming and almost stupefying rapture. Nor could he shut his eyes to the fact that Delia loved him just as much as ever she did; her look at the first sight of him had told him that. And yet another thing too; he also loved her just as much as ever he had done; more, perhaps, because of the years of fruitless longing for her that lay behind him and the gnawing anguish of the ever-present thought that it had only been through his own folly that he had lost her. But one thing he could do, and that was to guard Delia from herself. His task it must be to keep this thing on the level on which it must be kept if he was ever to have another really happy moment. As to her engagement, that must be gone into later on. Knowing Delia as he did, Jim did not think that there was very much in it. Probably only an affair of the voyage that would die a natural death. In any event, before he consented to Delia marrying anybody he would make very searching inquiries about the young man. And by what he already knew about Guy Martin his inquiries would not have to go very far. And then—and as Jim stood with Delia by his side, her short ruffled hair quite close to his arm, his dark eyelashes narrowed over his unconcerned eyes. “Like it?” he said, and he said it quite quietly.

“Adore it!” said Delia, and as she said it she flushed and gripped her hands over her heart. She had said that once before, down on the sands at Biarritz. Surely he must hear the thundering of her heart now.

But Jim was not going to hear anything that he did not want to hear. He was laughing at Brian, who, still more intrigued with this large, strong person, who held him with a pleasant security, was making dabs at his nose. Jim caught hold of the minute white one and pinched it. “Take him, ayah,” he said. “Delia, Maude and I are going over to the Club. We shan’t be long, and shall be back in time for dinner.’

“Oh yes!” and with that gasping rejoinder, Delia stood very still and watched him go. She was not his wife, Maude was. And once outside the door, Jim stood very still, and then put his hand over his mouth. He had had to say that, although it had almost finished him. He steadied his lips and went to find his wife.

On the whole Maude acquitted herself quite well. The voyage had given her a certain amount of poise. That, and the presence of this well-dressed, distinguished man by her side, made her feel that it was up to her to do him credit, if she could. Later, she could have some fun; later, when Delia had given herself more thoroughly away, and Jim had felt that he could keep up the pose that he was assuming no longer. Maude had a certain amount of rather brutal perception, and she had watched them both at lunch. But now she was out to behave herself. But how long it would last she did not know, she thought, feeling all her old bitterness return as Jim, who had been down in the lounge having coffee with a man he had run up against as they went in to dinner, came up into their sitting-room and said that he thought it was time she went to bed.

“We shall have to get off fairly early in the morning,” he said, “and with all the kit we have between us, we must be at the station in good time. I’ve booked a compartment, but you never know nowadays: a native High Court Judge may be travelling, and he’ll yell himself hoarse if he has to go in with another native. The white man is at a discount in these days of State Railways.”

“I see.” Maude was standing with her white hands moving nervously on her frock. This man was better-looking than ever he had been. Quiet and distinguished, with his grey hair brushed back over his ears.

“I’m sorry, Maude.” Jim lifted his eyes, clear and very direct. “But you see I made up my mind two years ago, and I shall never go back on it.”

“I know—I——” And then Maude got herself somehow out of the room. And Jim, left alone, strolled over to the window and stood looking out of it. There was a dance on at Green’s; he could hear the band. There were a couple of natives arguing under the window. Jim gave them a minute or two to stop, and then, as they didn’t, he dropped a large juicy orange on to their heads and listened amused to their agitated “Wah, wah!” And then he walked away from the window and only just stood there, thinking. Delia, only a few feet away from him—his little love. And Maude, his wife, only in the slenderest, and yet in the most tenacious sense of the word. What a situation for any man to tackle with decency and self-control. And Jim was not a bit ashamed of the short prayer that he sent up that he should tackle it with decency and self-control. That was how one got accustomed to praying in Flanders. Suddenly, in jerks, like spurts of flame.

Chapter XIII

In India the native servant knows everything. He knows exactly what your pay is; he knows exactly how you stand socially, irrespective of any official position you may happen to have. He knows exactly when you are going to get promotion or the reverse, and he also knows, which is far worse, exactly how you stand domestically. And Jim Chester’s household proved no exception to the rule.

Wali Mohammed and Mary were great friends. Mary was a Roman Catholic and Wali Mohammed a Mohammedan, but that did not matter. They met and discussed everything on the back verandah. And this annoyed Maude; she would hear their monotonous murmurings and scream to them to “Chuprao.”

“Attcha, memsahib,” Wali Mohammed would call back with deep respect, and then make signs to Mary to follow him into the dispense khana. And there they would sit and go on with their murmurings. They both detested Maude; no one is quicker than a native to detect anything faulty in origin. They both adored Delia, which was odd, considering that she was a nurse. Because the native has no use for anyone who earns her own living. That in a member of the white race spells inferiority to them.

So Maude started with a heavy handicap; and it was hard on her, because in a way she was trying to do her best. But she was not received with cordiality in Garapore. The General’s wife did all she could for her, but Maude was not easy to help. She easily took offence, a peculiarity of those who are not quite sure of their own position. And in a little up-country station like Garapore there was no time for people who took offence. Also, Jim Chester was very popular, and people were annoyed that he had married beneath him. Maude began to find it difficult to get into a four for bridge, And nobody seemed to want to include her in a game of tennis. She began to wander about the little Club by herself. Everyone went to the Club at Garapore between the hours of five and eight in the evening. You played games and then sauntered on to the wide friendly verandahs and sat in cheerful circles and drank different sorts of drinks. It was the Medina Hotel over again thought Maude, going furiously out to her two-seater car and calling crossly to her chauffeur to come and crank it up. “Let the lazy little devil do it,” she thought viciously. “Why should she waste her self-starter on a native?”

So Maude started absolutely wrong, and very foolishly she vented her rancour on Delia. She knew she was not being a success in Garapore, and it embittered her. Delia was being a success in a quiet sort of way. People were always asking her who that charming girl was that she had brought out as a nurse. The officers of the battery got to know her by sight as, tall and slender in her white morning frocks, she would come strolling home along the one decent road in Garapore, laughing and talking to Brian, who would be chuckling and gurgling in his pram. Delia loved this early walk, when all the beautiful crisp air was full of the smell of wood smoke, and when you met queer wild-looking natives with long bare legs, and their heads rolled up in brightly coloured shawls. Mary would bring her her chota-hazri very early, and would sit on the floor and dress Brian while Delia crunched up her toast and drank her lovely hot tea. Mary would laugh and talk broken English to Brian. “Baba’s big dada going out on big horse,” she would say, and then she would look with her black, snapping eyes at Delia as she strolled, still with her toast in her hand, to the verandah door to look out. Yes, there he went, looking even more perfect than he had looked in England, thought Delia, coming back all unconscious to pour herself out a second cup of tea.

So on the back verandah it was common talk that the miss sahib loved the sahib. But whether the love was returned was another thing. Wali Mohammed could not find out. The idea of the native on the subject of love is primitive; as a rule it has to him but one interpretation. Jim made short work of it.

“What the hell were you doing in the bungalow last night?” he said one day to his bearer, as he stood in front of him with his shirt ready to slip over his head.

“Forgetting lock drawing-room verandah door,” replied Wali Mohammed glibly.

“Well, don’t forget it again,” said Jim shortly. And there the matter dropped. Jim, being a man of strong personality, had his feelings as well as his face well under control. And it was a good thing that he had. Because Maude began to be rude to Delia at meals.

“Hadn’t you Brian out rather late last night?” Maude was sitting eating an orange. The big bare dining-room was pleasant with the flaming bunch of hibiscus in the middle of the table. Jim had finished his breakfast and was standing in riding kit looking at the Pioneer. Wali Mohammed, bare-footed and noiseless, was beginning to clear away.

“Was I?” Delia had that cheerful lift in her voice that speaks of complete content. Sometimes she asked herself why she was so content. Because he hardly ever spoke to her. But he was there—oh, he was there! And she was in the entrancingly glorious position of being in a sense in his service. What could be more perfect? Delia in these days was more or less in a glorious dream state of trance. Every now and then she wrote a sketchy letter to the man to whom she was supposed to be engaged, and then forgot about him again. That would come presently. This life was so wonderful. It was so wonderful to have an ayah to do all the laborious work for her. All she had to do was to watch over Brian and have him in his cot near her at night, And that was a joy. She adored Brian. His son; how could she help adoring him?

So she answered Maude pleasantly enough. Delia was sorry for Maude. In fact, she often thought that if she was in Maude’s position she would die. Fancy being the wife of a man like Jim and not having his love. Because, of course, it was obvious that she hadn’t got it. Every word that he said to her showed that, although, of course, he was always polite. Besides, he slept right away from her; Delia, looking at Maude, wondered how she could endure that and not die. If it had been her, she would have rushed into his room and crawled round the floor and caught hold of his feet and laid her face on them. Although what would be the good of that, if he had already made up his mind?

“I was in before it was quite dark,” she said, and she said it brightly. “In a way I am guided by Mary in those sort of things. She knows better about times than I do, you see.”

“We don’t keep an English nurse to be guided in what she does by an ayah,” said Maude sharply. “We expect you to use your own judgment about Brian. Please don’t be in late again.”

There was a silence. Wali Mohammed had moved the oranges back on to the sideboard and was arranging them afresh in the blue bowl of Delhi ware. Jim was still apparently reading the paper. Delia stood up.

“I did not mean to be late,” she said. “But lots of the babies were still out.” And then her voice trembled. He said nothing. He allowed Maude to sit on her. She went out of the room blinded with tears, all reason suddenly swamped by a wave of the most awful despair. After all, what was she in this house? Only a dependent.

Jim waited until Wali Mohammed had left the room, and then he spoke. “You are not to speak to Delia like that,” he said, and as he said it he looked over the top of the paper at Maude.

“Why not?” When Maude was angry her voice was shrill. “I’m sick of Delia,” she said. “When you have a nurse, you don’t expect her to take the position of a lady. Everyone at the Club is always asking me why she doesn’t come to the dances. Why should she? She came out here to look after Brian, and she’s got to do it. Considering the ridiculously large salary you insist on giving her, she ought to do it properly, too.”

Jim laid down the paper. From bitter experience he knew that it was useless to attempt to argue with Maude. She screamed and became hysterical if you did. For the hundredth time he asked himself what was to be the end of all this. The whole thing was a failure from beginning to end. He could not even enjoy his child, because his only hope of safety lay in keeping away from Delia and the nursery. She went to his head like wine. His one desire; his one longing; his one passion was to be with her. And always underneath, like an awful gnawing anguish, was the thought that she was pledged to another man. And yet she loved him; he would have staked his last breath on that.

“While Delia is here you will please treat her decently,” he said. “And you would be far wiser if you did allow her to go to the Club dances. People will only say you are spiteful if you keep her shut up.”

“So that you can dance with her, I suppose,” said Maude, suddenly sneering. She began to think with furious regret of Captain Armitage. He at least had been interested in her. She understood that sort of man; this distant cold courtesy drove her mad.

“I should certainly dance with her if she was there,” said Jim, and he turned to go out of the room. Because, as he said it, he realized what it would mean to him. To be able to hold her in his arms again. Anywhere—anyhow, so long as she was in his arms.

“All right, then, I’ll take her.” Maude half breathed and half spat the words. All her being was aflame. She would do something—something to still this torment of jealousy and fury that devoured her. She would throw them together, smash up all this ridiculous semblance of virtue, get rid of them somehow, and then have some little happiness of her own. They could have Brian; she didn’t want him. If it hadn’t been for Brian, none of this would have happened.

Chapter XIV

The dances at the Garapore Club were held once a week. Delightful little informal affairs, everyone knowing each other. Twice that week, during her early morning walk, Delia had been hailed by discontented boys from the battery. “I say, why don’t you come to the dance to-night?” Captain Maynard spoke almost crossly.

“I’m a nurse; I can’t.” Delia had laughed as she stared up at the boy on horseback. Although he was not really a boy at all. But somehow to her they all seemed to be boys.

“You aren’t a nurse at all; it’s all my eye.”

“No, it isn’t! Come on, Mary!” And Delia had gone her way. But somehow that day the thought of the fun that she could be having rankled a little. India was a place where you ought to have fun. The other ordinary nurses had fearful fun, dances galore in the sergeants’ Mess. But she, Delia, got nothing—nothing but walks with Brian; and although she adored Brian, sometimes she felt the need of something else.

But at tea that afternoon Maude was especially pleasant. Tea was always a nice meal, laid on the verandah. The bungalow that Jim had secured from the departing Ferguson was a charming one. Delia watched the malis running in the compound with the brimming kerosene tins full of water, with renewed interest. They watered so weirdly, seeming to live for nothing else. The crows, too, showed a lively interest in the splashing and clanking, and hopped along sideways behind the malis on their queer claws, cawing with raucous emphasis. Delia thought again that India was a wonderful country, provided that you had just a little fun sometimes. Fun of your very own, that was.

“I don’t believe I shall go to the dance to-night.” Maude suddenly spoke, leaning back in her deck-chair and looking languid. “My head aches; I believe I was out in the sun too long this morning.”

“Didn’t you have on your topi?” Delia was watching the gate. Jim had not come in yet. She bit into her beautifully made scone.

“Yes, I did—but I don’t know. Somehow those dances get on my nerves. I suppose you wouldn’t like to go instead of me, would you?”

“Yes; but wouldn’t you mind?” Delia’s heart gave a sudden leap. But perhaps he wouldn’t go if Maude didn’t.

“No; I shouldn’t mind a bit for once. You see, I should be here to keep an eye on Brian, in case he waked.” Maude was suddenly very maternal and kindly. “Then you wouldn’t have to hurry away before the end. It’s fun at the end; you have black beer and grilled bones.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t want those,” said Delia, laughing.

“Yes, but Jim would,” said Maude, and she said it with a sort of disagreeable grimace. He had always been so chill and cold on the way back from those dances. How had she put up with it so long? Maude really did not know. But things were going to be a bit different now, and Geoffry had written quite a nice letter in answer to hers. He might be in the neighbourhood of Garapore in a month or so; he had been invited to a Christmas Camp near there.

“Oh!” And then Delia fell silent. Suddenly she felt that Maude was watching her. She struggled to control the wave of colour that flooded over her pale face and left it paler than before.

Maude lowered her eyes vindictively. “Get ready in plenty of time,” she said, “and I’ll tell Jim when he comes in. Of course, he may not want to go when he knows I’m not, but if he doesn’t, one of the boys from the battery will look after you.” Maude spoke with studied care. She never quite understood Delia, and it was best to be on the safe side.

That evening Delia hurried back early from her walk. She had told Mary that she was going to a dance that night, and Mary was as excited as she was. She knew all about dressing young ladies for a dance, she told Delia; she had been used to helping the ones that sometimes stayed with the General Memsahib. And the miss sahib must wear the golden frock Mary decided, looking into the wardrobe and picking it out.

“Oh! but isn’t it too grand?” Delia was excitedly undecided. Brian was in bed and Mary had promised to come straight in from her supper and sleep on the floor beside his cot until Delia came in.

“Miss sahib not thinking about baba at all,” said Mary importantly. “My all the time watching.”

“Oh, thank you, Mary!” Delia was relieved. Maude was too impatient; the thought of her perhaps shaking or even smacking Brian if he waked would have spoilt the evening. She seized the soft yellow chiffon frock and slipped it over her head. It frilled out round her slender knees in entrancing waves. Mary was delighted.

“Very beautiful, miss sahib,” she decided. And someone else decided it too, as Delia, very shy and walking a little self-consciously into the drawing-room, found Jim there alone, standing with his back to the fire. The up-country cold weather evenings came drawing in very cold now. Wali Mohammed had built up a gorgeous fire of logs and pine cones.

“Oh, it is cold!” Delia spoke wildly, to cover her confusion. Somehow the sight of him standing there had taken away all her breath. He was coming with her, then; he had on his white tie and long coat.

“Yes, thank the Lord!” Jim spoke easily. “Otherwise nothing would have made me put on these inventions of the devil,” he said.

“Why?—don’t you like them?” Poor Delia’s pitiful attempts to appear at ease went to Jim’s heart.

“Like them?” Jim twitched at the tails of his long coat. “Look at them,” he said. “Who could like them?”

“Oh! I think they look very nice.” Delia’s eyes were troubled. She suddenly wished that she had not decided to go to this dance. After all, what was the use of it? What was she in this household, except a dependent? Belonging to this man in almost a degrading way, paid a salary by him—there had been a short, although very brief, discussion about that salary.

“I insist.” Jim had gone straight to the nursery after a heated discussion with Maude. Maude was nothing if not economical! Jim had been extremely generous to Delia for the last two years; let the girl work it off by looking after their child for a month or two. Maude purposely said “their child”: sometimes she wanted to hurt Jim—badly.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Jim had looked at Maude in quiet disgust and had then gone in search of Delia. She had by then been looking after Brian for six weeks, including the voyage, he said. Here was two hundred and fifty rupees, her salary up to date.

“No; not from you.” Delia had made distressful motions with her hands. She had just come in from her morning walk, and her dark eyes looked desperately out from under the brim of her topi.

“And why not from me?” And as Jim said the words he would almost have liked to have cut his own throat. But it was the only way he told himself, to be almost brutal; for her sake as well as his own.

“Oh! well—I——” And then Delia had faltered and turned away. But she let bitter tears fall on the notes as she shut them up in her suit-case. She would never spend them, at least not until she was at the very end of her tether.

So the salary question had been decided, although Jim had made up his mind that the next time it was due he would send it along to her in an envelope. Not again that most awful experience. It had reminded him of his earliest attempts to drown a kitten that had just got its eyes open. It had got itself somehow to the edge of the tub and stared at him.

But now he had forgotten it. Inwardly he was in a very tumult of joy. He was going to take Delia to a dance all by himself. He could hardly believe his ears when Maude, greeting him on his return from the Mess, told him that she was not keen to go out that night, and would he take Delia instead?

“Oh, I don’t know.” Anything to conceal makes people very astute. Jim answered carelessly, putting his topi down on the verandah table.

“I think you’d better; she’d enjoy it if you did.” Maude looked at her husband almost with scorn. What a fool he was to think that he could take her in!

“Oh, all right!” And then Jim had gone off to his dressing-room to dress in almost a frenzy of joy. Wali Mohammed was a fool—one of the new ties that he had had sent out from England, of course. And the dhobi was to bring an iron and iron out his dress trousers—now, of course: have him in here—the dressing-room.

So Kullu, the dhobi, rolled himself from his string charpoy, crammed his huge iron full of charcoal from the little open fire in the corner of his mud hut, and trotted in to the sahib’s presence under the direction of Wali Mohammed. And the whole compound knew that the sahib was going to a dance with the miss sahib, and the whole compound rejoiced. The sahib was a good and just sahib, and the miss sahib was gentle and spoke sweetly to the servants. The memsahib was a shaitan,¹ and deserved all that she got. Kullu ironed for all he was worth, and salaamed almost to the ground when Jim, rolled up in his bath-gown, turned from his dressing-table, where he was shaving for the second time that day, to throw the dhobi an eight-anna piece as baksheesh.

So Jim was very lighthearted that evening. Maude, having decided to do the kind thing for once, had decided to do it properly. She had gone to bed before dinner. Ayah would take her some in her room, she said; she would read, and settle off to sleep early.

“Don’t we wait for Mrs. Chester, then?” Delia spoke after a little trembling pause. Wali Mohammed had just said “Khana taiyar hai,”[^2] and had gone away, and Jim seemed about to follow him.

“No; she’s gone to bed. She thought she’d have a whole evening resting. I think she’s wise. Come along.” Jim stood aside for Delia to pass, holding the curtain that hung between the two rooms in his hand.

“Oh!” And with that stupid little monosyllable Delia walked into the dining-room. She was speechless and afraid. It was all so terrible after what had passed between them. How could he be like that, never saying anything about it? And he must know that she was engaged; how could he not say anything about that, either!

But as dinner went on, Delia felt more at ease. It was so much easier without Maude there; she was astounded at the difference it made. They just talked or they didn’t talk, and Wali Mohammed seemed to participate in the comfort of it all. He padded round the table with renewed alacrity, and whispered confidentially to Delia that he would bring the coffee into the drawing-room.

“I’ll go now, then.” Delia started awkwardly to get up from the table. Jim was pouring himself out a glass of Madeira. “Madness, this!” He smiled at Delia as he held the decanter tipped over the glass.

“No—why? Sit down again, there’s heaps of time.” Jim spoke quietly. “Besides, nowadays one doesn’t have to fuss about getting a partner. They all fix themselves up weeks before. They don’t start to dance until about a quarter to ten, either.”

“Oh!” Delia sat down again. All her self-possession had deserted her. Her starry eyes were fixed on her plate. Wali Mohammed had gone; Jim allowed his gaze to flood over her. And this was the girl that he might have had if he had not been such a worse than damned fool. He was terrified at the surge of passion that swept over him. And she was pledged to another man—by God, he should not have her!

“Now we might go and have our coffee.” Jim spoke with his usual quiet self-possession. They went into the drawing-room together.

“I’d better get my coat,” said Delia timidly.

“All right; get your coat while your coffee gets cool.” Jim was speaking from the fireplace. He was sheltering his cigarette with his cupped hands. “Wali Mohammed, tell Hari Pershad to bring round the car,” he said.

“Attcha, sahib,” and Wali Mohammed departed well pleased. The miss sahib looked very beautiful and the sahib was regarding her with favour; so he reported to Mary later in the evening. And Mary was pleased; she had excitedly got Delia’s coat out of the wardrobe for her. “Miss sahib having very happy evening.” Mary had looked at Delia’s flushed cheeks and had concluded that there was every prospect of it.

“Oh yes, I shall. Take care of Brian, Mary. And if he wakes and cries, you know, a little of that honey again, like I told you before. Rub it on his gums. Only wash your finger first, Mary; I know you will. Good-night,” and Delia, with just one quick tender glance through the mosquito-curtain that shrouded Brian’s cot, ran back to the drawing-room.

“That’s right.” Jim had finished his coffee, and as Delia came in he crushed out his cigarette and threw it into the fire. “Have your coffee and then we’ll be off. The car’s round. No, I don’t think I want a coat, Wali Mohammed. Oh, well, perhaps I do! Put it in the back of the car. Tell Hari Pershad to get in; he’s got to drive, because of parking the car at the Club. Ready?” Jim looked at Delia.

“Yes, thank you.” Delia’s eyes were averted. Her heart was beating so that it seemed to fill up ah her throat. She was going to be all alone with him, now and for about four hours after. She walked out on to the verandah and saw the compound ah flooded with moonlight with eyes clouded with joy and anticipation.

“Get in.” Wali Mohammed was holding the curved door of the saloon car open. Delia stepped up into it and Jim followed her. “The Club, Hari Pershad,” he said. “Yes, you’d better wait up, Wah Mohammed.”

“Attcha, sahib,” and Wah Mohammed, with a profound salaam, watched the tail-lamp of the big car circle round the little lawn and vanish winkingly out of the gate with a feeling of satisfaction in his soul. Now to talk it all over with Mary. But first to be sure that the shaitan was safely in her room.

Chapter XV

The Club at Garapore was some way from Cantonments, quite twenty minutes’ drive. But the road was good, and under the blazing moon it unrolled itself in front of them as white as paper. Jim could see Delia quite plainly, but he wished she would turn her face towards him. She sat small and well back in the corner of the car, her delicate little profile outlined against the window.

“How many dances are you going to give me?” said Jim, after about five minutes’ silence.

“I don’t know.” Delia caught her hands together underneath the rug and wrenched them. She was thinking in a sort of blind, helpless way that this was not quite fair. No one ought to love a person as much as she loved this man and yet not be his wife. Or to have to see him married to someone else who was not worthy of him. Or to “I don’t know,” she repeated.

“I do. You’re going to give them all to me.” Jim spoke quietly. During the last couple of hours he had been having a fierce straggle with his conscience. And he had finally relinquished the struggle. Let decency and fine feeling go to hell, he had decided. He had had enough of them; Delia was his, and she adored him.

“Can you do that?” Delia’s heart gave a great leap and then suddenly settled down again.

“Yes, of course you can; everybody does. That’s the snag at these dances; if you aren’t fixed up beforehand you have to sit out all the time.”

“I see.” Vaguely Delia was wondering what he had done, then, when he went with Maude. Maude had sometimes grumbled that her husband spent all his time in the bridge-room. Had she, then, sat out all the time?

“Can you dance these new dances?”

“Yes; I can, most of them. You see, I learnt them in Lausanne.” Delia said the words with a gasp. Lausanne—it was like another life, the thought of that.

“Well, meet me on the verandah when you’ve taken off your coat. You know, the shut-in bit”—they were getting near the Club. The twinkling lights of it showed through the thick prickly-pear hedge. There was the honking of many motor-horns. A tall chowkidar with a swinging lantern stood by the gate to mark it. The car stole in between the white gate-posts. Hari Pershad was a good and careful driver.

Delia found herself in a crowded dressing-room. All Garapore was there. The women eyed her with astonishment. Where had this lovely girl sprung from? they asked themselves in whispers. There was much talk round the crowded looking-glasses. Mrs. Chester’s nurse; the word suddenly went round.

“Lor’! what are we coming to?” Some of the women were inclined to be spiteful. But Mrs. Adams, who arrived just after Delia had left the room, put everything right. “A charming girl—the daughter of people in the Service.” Mrs. Adams was the senior memsahib in the battery. She hung up her coat with a gesture of satisfaction. “I am so glad about it; my husband has been urging Major Chester to get the girl to go out more,” she said.

Which was not altogether true. But Mrs. Adams knew Garapore and felt that this slight deviation from the truth was justifiable. But as the evening wore on she wondered if it had been. Jim Chester monopolized Delia entirely. No one else had an opportunity to get near her.

Someone else got rather uneasy, too. Jim Chester, on his way from the bar with a glass of lemonade for Delia, ran into someone who greeted him with a grin. “Upon my soul, if it isn’t Kemp;” Jim shifted the glass of lemonade from his right hand to his left, and wrung his old friend heartily by the hand.

“Yes; posted to Garapore, by all that’s holy! Be sure your sins will find you out, my boy; I generally follow you round. But Kitty will be pleased. She’s here, by the way. And how’s the memsahib?” Mr. Kemp spoke with a vague feeling of awkwardness.

“Very well; she’s out here now, you know. And the kid too.” Jim flushed under his tan. “Well, I’ll see you later, Kemp; I’ve a partner in the offing dying of thirst,” and Jim vanished, hurrying and leaving Mr. Kemp staring after him. That had been pretty brief. Not like old Jim at all.

And as the evening wore on Mr. Kemp knew why. Everyone was talking about Jim and his lady nurse. Delia danced beautifully and so did he. Her yellow frilly skirts blew against his black clothes, showing the soft outline of her. Her dark head was pressed against his shoulder.

“My dear, if that isn’t that girl from Biarritz whom he sent to Lausanne to be educated!” Mrs. Kemp had been watching Jim and his partner from the door of the bridge-room.

“Chut! not a word.” Mr. Kemp put up his pince-nez and stared at the couple through them. “Begad it is!” He put them down again. “Did he introduce you to her when he spoke to you just now?”

“No; I expect he thought I should have forgotten her. And, of course, she has changed tremendously, but for the better. Did you ever see anything so lovely?”

“No; I don’t think I ever did!” Mr. Kemp was still contemplating the two in the distance. “But what’s happened to the wretched woman he married?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll find out before we go to-night,” said Mrs. Kemp, and she went back into the bridge-room. And before a couple of hours had passed she had found out all she wanted to know. Maude was extraordinarily unpopular in the station. Jim was just as much a favourite as before, but had lost all his joie de vivre. The lady nurse was a beauty, but was kept studiously in the background, this being her first official appearance in public. The baby was a duck; but rumour had it that its mother didn’t care for it, and was unduly harsh to it when she got the chance, which was not often, because Delia and Mrs. General’s old ayah, who was now in Chester’s employ, kept too close an eye on it and her.

So that was that. And Mrs. Kemp stored it all up in her mind to tell her husband later. She did not see Jim and Delia again that night. They had gone, somebody told her when she asked for them.

Jim told Delia that the Kemps were there. As he stood in front of her watching her drink her lemonade he told her.

“What? Do you mean that awfully nice woman who helped me get my clothes for Lausanne?”

“Yes.” Jim had taken the glass away from Delia and was setting it on the wooden railing of the verandah. “Come along,” he said.

“Come along where?”

“To dance again—can’t you hear it?—‘Charmaine.’ We mustn’t miss a note of it.” Jim drew her hand unresisting under his arm. “An old-fashioned habit,” he said, “but I like old-fashioned things. Come along, my child.”

Was she alive or was it a dream? Delia wondered again as he took her quietly into his arms and slid out on to the floor with her. Jim danced beautifully and they had fallen into one another’s step at once. The band was a good one, the string band of the South Worcesters, who were billeted under canvas for the winter. The station prided itself on its weekly dances; people came in from outlying stations and brought their friends with them. The floor was good; the lighting of the room was good. The haunting music of the waltz seemed to settle down on Delia’s brain and stupefy it. She suddenly clung to him.

“Oh—oh!” It came up to his ear in a trembling whisper.

“What’s the matter?” Jim slid easily to the side of the room and with one arm still round her he shepherded her to one of the big open doors that gave on to the verandah. Through that, down a couple of steps or so and into the deserted fern-garden, only took a minute. All the sitting-out places were at the other end of the Club. They were safe enough here, Jim knew.

“I—I——” Delia lifted her eyes to the man standing very close to her. She could hardly see him; only the blur of his face and the white of his shirt and waistcoat showed up against the darkness of the ferns. Someone had left the tap over the galvanized-iron tank dripping; each drop seemed to echo in Delia’s brain like a shot from a gun. She struggled with the feeling that was holding her paralysed—a feeling as if verily the soul of her was fighting to get out so as to be nearer to this man. “Jim—Jim, I love you so frightfully.” The words came out on a strangled breath.

“My darling!” And then that was the end of honour and decency, so far as he was concerned, thought Jim with a sort of lightning cynicism. He held her strained to his heart. “My darling—my own little, little sweet!” He left his mouth lingering and close-pressed into her neck.

“Jim, and I thought you didn’t care!” Delia was standing with her soft bare arms linked round his neck. “I hate your collar,” she said; “I want to kiss your neck too.”

“You don’t hate it as much as I do!” Jim laughed quietly. “Delia, Delia!” he breathed.

“Why did you let me come out, if you loved me like this?” asked Delia.

They had groped their way to a little wooden seat. They could see each other more plainly now. They sat holding hands, clinging to one another in an ecstasy.

“Darling, darling hand!” Delia lifted it to her lips and held it there.

“My darling child, I hadn’t a ghost of an idea that you were coming.” Jim took Delia’s chin in his free hand and turned her face up to his. “Kiss me!” he said.

“Oh!——” After a little silence Delia let her head fall a little backwards. “Oh!——” she breathed, and her soft lips fell apart.

“Like it?” Jim had found the soft hollow of her throat.

Delia let her hand wander over his dark head. “Like it?” she said. “I could die, I am so happy.” And then recollection came back to her and she opened her half-closed eyes. “Why! she read me your cable saying that you wanted me to come,” she exclaimed.

“Did she?” But Jim was in no mood to bother with the thought of Maude. “She invented any cable that said anything like that,” he said. “Don’t bother about that now. Kiss me: Delia, I could kiss you for ever. Would you like me to?”

“Oh, I should!” Delia was still whispering. “Nothing to eat, ever,” she said; “and no one else ever there, either. Only you and me, kissing and kissing and kissing for ever till we died.”

“What a life!” Jim laughed as he held her to him. It was odd, he thought vaguely, to be able to laugh like that again. Just a laugh of pure delight because he had got her close to him. Nothing else mattered; nothing else was ever going to matter, he told himself savagely.

“Look here, we shall have to go back.” He whispered it after another breathless pause. “We mustn’t give the enemy cause to blaspheme, must we, my sweet? We’ll dance another couple of dances and then go home. What do you say to that?”

“Oh! but I shall never get you alone any more.” Delia rose lingeringly, still clinging to his hand. “Jim, be alone with me sometimes, or I shall die—I shall die, I tell you.”

“Trust me.” Jim spoke a little grimly, and as he stood up he caught her close to him again. “And now, my precious, your darling hair,” he said, “and mine. Have you a comb anywhere about you?”

“Yes, in my waist-belt,” said Delia. “Oh, let me do yours!” Groping, she found the comb and drew his dark head down to her. “A heavenly parting,” she said, and kissed it again and again.

“I bet it’s crooked!” Jim was laughing like a boy. What was this ecstasy of joy? he wondered. As it ought to be; everything fun because they were sharing it.

“Now you do mine!” Delia bent her dark head obediently. “Kiss it—oh, kiss it!” she breathed.

“You needn’t ask me to do that.” Jim again spoke a little grimly. It was time they got back to the others, he thought, lifting his mouth from hers after a breathless interval. “Come along, and mind the step,” he said.

They danced one more dance and then went home. They got the car easily, as Hari Pershad had parked it near the end. They sat in the darkness holding one another’s hands under the rug. The fierce headlights flashed along the road ahead of them, turning it to silver. Jim’s conscience just began to bestir itself a very little bit. What was going to be the end of it? He had already begun to ask himself that. But Delia sat still in a delicious dream. She had got him again; nothing else mattered. Something would make it all right; she knew it would.

They got home to the bungalow just before one o’clock. It was all lighted up. Delia leaned forward. “Why, nobody’s gone to bed,” she said.

“Haven’t they?” Jim released her hand with a long, lingering pressure. “Here we are,” he said, and he shot a quick glance at the bungalow. His instant thought was for Brian. Delia would never forgive herself if anything had happened to him while she had been out. “Sleep well, little sweet!” he said.

“Oh, I shall!” Delia’s heart was in her eyes. She drew her coat round her as she stepped out and as Wali Mohammed got up from his crouching position on the verandah.

“Sahib!” Wali Mohammed was excited, as Jim could see. His black eyes were glancing under the white swathings of his huge pugaree. “Sahib!”

“What the hell is the matter?” Jim’s overwrought nerves sought relief in impatience. His eyes flung to the end of the verandah. Someone was howling there: there was something the matter with the child.

“Oh, it must be Brian!” Delia had rushed along the verandah. “Mary!” She dragged aside the hanging curtain.

“Miss sahib, miss sahib!” Mary was pacing about the room with Brian held close to her. “Miss sahib, miss sahib, memsahib very much devil!” she cried.

“Oh, what is the matter with him?” Delia, sick with terror, had taken off her coat and flung it on the floor. “Give him to me, Mary. What has happened? Oh!——-” The tears began to flow as Brian turned his face out of Mary’s capacious bosom and gave her an affable smile of welcome. He was having the time of his life, he tried to convey to her, being carried about the room instead of having to he monotonously in his cot.

“Memsahib very much devil! My giving littly littly honey on finger, like you told me, miss sahib. And memsahib creeping. ‘You drugging my baby, you very wicked womans. I telling sahib and him beating and sacking.’” Mary’s voice rose in a scream.

“Don’t scream, Mary. Oh dear! Oh, Maude!” Delia turned to see Maude standing behind her—Maude very red and excited, in a blue satin dressing-gown.

“Well, I like the way you allow this woman to look after our son, I must say, Delia,” she said, “giving him opium on her finger to keep him quiet. I caught her at it, and she has the impudence to deny it.”

“My not!” Mary, with true Oriental fury, was yelling at Maude over the baby’s head. “You very wicked womans. My leaving you! Miss sahib, miss sahib!” Mary broke into renewed sobs.

“I know she didn’t give him opium; it was honey. I told her to if he was at all restless. I believe he’s cutting a tooth, and it settles him off,” said Delia looking indignantly at Maude. Ah! here was Jim; he would put it all right, thought Delia with a throb of relief, as Jim Chester walked through the curtain, followed by Wali Mohammed.

“What’s it all about?” Jim had already heard a rapid and coherent account of the evening’s happenings from his bearer. “Giving Brian opium, Maude? Don’t be so ridiculous. Of course she wasn’t. Stop howling, Mary.” And as the ayah went on telling her tale of woe and fear he spoke again. “No one’s going either to sack you or beat you,” he said; “get that out of your head at once. Put the baba into his cot and everyone go to bed. Come along, Maude.”

But Maude had had a thoroughly unpleasant evening. She detested the ayah; she hated the bearer, and more than anything she loathed Delia. It was Delia who was setting everyone against her. Instead of throwing her into Jim’s company and catching them out that way, she would get rid of her, she decided.

“So you accept the word of a native against mine?” she said, glaring furiously at Jim.

“In a matter of this kind, certainly.” Jim, with his rasped nerves, was also very angry. To come back to this sort of thing after that enchanting evening! It was more than even he could stand with equanimity. “Come along back to your room,” he said again.

“You’re all alike.” Maude began to get hysterical. “You’re all in league against me,” she screamed. “You and Delia in love with each other and the whole compound egging you on!”

“Be quiet.” Jim had clapped his hand over Maude’s wide-open shrewish mouth, and with a grip far from gentle was impelling her out of the room. And Delia, left alone, stood and stared after them. How ghastly—how utterly, fearfully ghastly!

Long after silence had fallen on the squat bungalow, lying quiet under the stars, Mary, with her bundle of bedding hunched round her, Wali Mohammed, with his purple chuddar swathed round his shoulders, and Ahmed the cook with his glancing black eyes, conferred together in the little brick kitchen. It was a very dark little kitchen, lighted only by a vilely smelling lamp without a chimney. And the little spiral of smoke from it wavered and cast queer shadows on the ceiling, and even eventually smoked a couple of musk-rats out of the corner that they had selected for their night’s rest. And the dawn was breaking as Mary eventually padded across the compound to her own quarters, leaving Wali Mohammed and Ahmed where they had been most of the evening conferring, crouching, mysterious, over their bubbling hookah.

Chapter XVI

Mrs. Kemp was the first to feel that something really must be done about the Chester ménage, and she said so to her husband.

“Oh my God, Kitty, don’t put your foot in there!” Mr. Kemp, who had just come in from his early morning ride, was wiping the top of his forehead where the inside rim of his topi had rubbed it a little. “My dear girl, keep out of that, for Heaven’s sake,” he said.

“I can’t.” Mrs. Kemp had just been to the store cupboard and she was swinging her bunch of keys by the scarlet ribbon tied to the ring of them; it was only the scarlet ribbon that ever told Mrs. Kemp where her keys were. Mr. Kemp said it was a farce. Even with the ribbon, Kitty hardly ever knew where they were, but Nazir Ali, the bearer, always did. “I can’t. You see, I know Jim awfully well. He would listen to me when perhaps he wouldn’t listen to anyone else.” Mrs. Kemp was looking at her husband with a little pucker between her eyes. “I don’t for one moment believe that there is anything in all this gossip, mind you; I believe that Jim has too much respect for himself, and certainly too much respect for Delia, if he really loves her, to involve her in a sordid intrigue under his own roof. But still, of course there is a fearful amount of gossip, and Jim ought to know it. And with the General out of the station, of course I am the senior memsahib. I am the one to do something, if anything is going to be done.”

“Well, my dear——” Mr. Kemp threw his topi to the bearer, who suddenly appeared in a doorway. Yes; get my bath ready, Nazir Ali, please. Well, my dear, as I said before, I don’t advise you to butt in. But if you really feel it your duty, do so—— Only don’t expect me to get you out of any hobble you may land yourself in.”

“I won’t.” Mrs. Kemp smiled cheerfully at her husband. “The point is, George, when will you be next dining out? I’ll ask Jim to come in here and have a quiet dinner with me. We can talk then to our heart’s content. And I’ll put the whole thing before him as outsiders see it. A man in his condition is as blind as a bat; he always is.”

“You seem to know all about it!” Mr. Kemp smiled broadly. “I shall be out to-morrow, my dear,” he said. “The Government Inspector is coming in, and has asked me to dine at the Circuit House with him.”

“All right; then I’ll ask Jim to-morrow.” Mrs. Kemp walked up to her husband and caught quietly hold of his hand. “You know I’m right,” she said.

“Well, perhaps I do.” Mr. Kemp smiled down at his wife. “Anyhow, if anyone has to do it, Kitty, you’re the best person. But I’m jolly glad it’s not got to be my job”; and with a quiet kiss on his wife’s greying hair, Mr. Kemp walked off down the verandah.

Jim got the note early that afternoon. The bungalow lay very silent under the midday sun. Very cold in the early morning and very cold also in the evenings, the middle of the winter days in Garapore was hot. Jim was lying at full length in a long chair on the verandah; he saw the Collector’s scarlet-coated chaprassie coming up the rough gravel drive. “Here you are, chaprassie!” he called out from his long chair.

“Salaam, sahib!” The chaprassie quickened his steps, and shuffling off his heavy native slippers at the foot of the little flight of steps that led up on to the verandah, he came towards Jim, salaaming deeply as he came, and holding out the note with extreme deference.

“Thanks.” Jim made a little gesture with his free hand and the chaprassie scuttled down the steps and settled himself in a large scarlet bundle on the ground until Jim should deign to make any further sign. Jim tore open the envelope. Mrs. Kemp had very large handwriting, nice and easy to read.

Dear Jim (she wrote),

I shall be quite alone to-morrow night. George has some show on at the Circuit House. Do come and dine with me at eight. Short coat, of course.

“Hmn!” Jim’s eyes were inscrutable as he got up from his chair and walked into his bedroom. But he sat down at his writing-table and scribbled an acceptance. Mrs. Kemp was a dear; he would take from her what he would take from no one else. He handed the note, hurriedly written and sealed, to the chaprassie, who, exuding deference, got up, assuming human shape again, and with another, even more profound, salaam shuffled into his slippers and disappeared.

But although Jim settled himself again in his long chair, all thought or possibility of sleep was gone. Mrs. Kemp was quite wrong when she said that Jim did not know that the station was ringing with gossip about himself and his domestic affairs. He did. But he did not care, because his conscience was clear. With the exception of that night at the dance a week before, not one single word of love had passed between him and Delia since she arrived in India. In fact, he had barely seen her; he had been out as much as possible.

And it had not been easy. Her eyes were appealing. She did not understand his attitude. The meaning in her eyes was clear. “But I adore and worship you,” they said, “and you, wonder of wonders, love me back. Well, then of course we belong to each other. Nothing else will do but that. Kiss me—oh, oh! I beseech you to.”

Which was all very well. And Jim smiled a little tender smile as he remembered that Delia had never been anything if not primitive. But that sort of attitude would not do. At any rate, not yet. There were many things to be settled first—her engagement, among them. Then there was Maude—his son. Everything had to be taken into account before any decisive step could be taken. And as a matter of fact, for the moment Jim did not even contemplate taking any decisive step. The rapture of having Delia near to him was so acute. To see her sitting at his table, knowing that she loved him as she did; to see her looking after his child, knowing that the tremendous love that she bore for the child was because it was his—all this was enough for him at the moment. And he knew also that for the moment it was enough for Delia too. He understood her better than she understood herself, he thought tenderly. Any physical expression of their love would be rapture, because of the intense spiritual completeness underlying it all. But it could be done without, and must be. There must be nothing sordid or squalid about this one great love of both their lives. Which was all very well, so far as it went. But Mrs. Kemp struck a blow at this idealistic attitude of Jim’s when, after a very delightful and dainty little dîner à deux, she leaned across to draw the dipping flame from the match that Jim held out to her.

“Don’t be foolish, Jim,” she said, and she leaned back in her low chair and blew a soft cloud of blue smoke towards him. “You and Delia love one another. How long do you suppose you can keep up this exalted attitude? It’s wrong of you even to contemplate it. It’s more wrong for that poor little girl than it is for you. Her life is badly damaged as it is; surely you, if you love her, don’t want to damage it anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Jim’s dark eyes were suddenly steady.

“Why, it’s obvious. The whole of Garapore is talking about you both. And can you wonder? Delia is practically invisible until you bring her to that dance, and then you monopolize her entirely—have eyes and attention for nobody else. Well, of course you know what everyone is saying; and to my mind it is a marvel that it hasn’t been said long ago. Garapore is only like all other Indian stations. You must know that you can’t do a thing like that and not have it talked about. Don’t be so wilfully blind, Jim.”

“I wouldn’t let anyone else say that to me.” Jim moved in his chair.

“No, I know you wouldn’t, and that’s why I had you here this evening to talk to you about it. I spoke to George first, and he, manlike, told me not to butt in. But I must butt in,” said Mrs. Kemp, and she flushed deeply.

“What do you want me to do?” said Jim, and, without moving, he levelled his gaze on the woman sitting opposite to him.

“I want you to send Delia over to us,” said Mrs. Kemp briefly. “We shall be going out into Camp at the end of next week, and that will get her finally and definitely away from the station. You can have the Mackenzies’ very excellent English nurse in her place. They are transferred to Karachi and the nurse does not want to go with them, as her young man is stationed here. So you see that settles Brian. While Delia is with us she can finally settle things up with the young man to whom she is supposed to be engaged, but as both George and I happen to know Guy Martin, I should say that the best thing that could possibly happen would be that the engagement should be broken off. Besides, as Delia is, at any rate at the moment, desperately in love with you, she has no business to marry any other man. When she has got over that a little, it will be a different thing altogether. She is a very beautiful girl, and judging by what I have heard and seen, a very sweet one into the bargain.”

“And suppose I say that I won’t let Delia go out of my house?” said Jim, and he suddenly sat forward in his chair and stuffed the end of his cigarette in between the glowing bars of the grate.

“You won’t say anything so monstrous.” Mrs. Kemp spoke vigorously. “Jim, do you love her at all, that you can want to keep her in such an anomalous position? Think what people are saying.”

“They can say what they damned well like!” Jim suddenly got up out of his chair. “There’s not a word of truth in it. I won’t say to you that I didn’t tell Delia that I loved her at that dance, because I did. But I have hardly spoken to her since. She’s perfectly safe with me. I—I——”

“Yes, but what is it going to end in?” Mrs. Kemp also started to get up, but then, thinking better of it, sat down again. “Two people like you underneath the same roof. Jim, you’re asking for trouble. Do be guided by me, there’s a dear man.”

“You actually sit there and ask me to give up the only thing I have ever loved or wanted in the whole of my life,” said Jim, and he came over and stood close to Mrs. Kemp, towering over her. “You ask an impossibility. I m not going to do it,” and Jim sat quietly down in his seat again.

“You must.”

“I will not.” Jim had got out his pipe and was looking down into the bowl of it. “Do you mind this?”

“No; of course I don’t.”

“Well—there we are!” Jim had stuffed the tobacco down with a careful finger and was now stooping his well-brushed head to the blue flame of the match. “Ah!” He lifted his head again and blew out a cloud of smoke.

“Jim, listen to me, there’s a dear boy. You must let me have Delia.” Mrs. Kemp had finished her cigarette, and she dropped the charred end of it into the fire.

“Why?” Jim’s wretched eyes suddenly lightened a little in laughter.

“Oh, Jim!” Mrs. Kemp, too, laughed a little; “you know,” she said.

“I don’t,” and then Jim put his pipe down on the little table at his side. “I can’t—I can’t!” he said, and he let his face drop suddenly into his hands.

“Oh, Jim, don’t!” Mrs. Kemp’s heart was wrung. She watched, with her own eyes filling with tears, the brown hand groping for the silk handkerchief. She had been too hard perhaps. “Jim, I spoke too hardly,” she said; “I am sorry—my very dear friend, I am sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry; you are perfectly right.” Jim was blowing his nose vigorously and winking a little. He put his handkerchief back into his pocket. “I won’t apologize,” he said, “because you are such a dear you will understand. I must do something, of course. I know I must, and it’s the knowledge of it that is almost killing me. You’ve just put the lid on it— I mean, it just shows how necessary it is to do something, that you’ve swallowed your feelings sufficiently to tackle me about it. But, oh my God! how can I part with her? You don’t know—you don’t know.” Jim dropped his head in his hands with a groan.

“I do; at least I can guess.” Mrs. Kemp’s kind eyes were full of pity. “But you know, Jim, although I suppose I ought not to say it, sometimes things like this do get put right. One day, you and Delia——” Mrs. Kemp hesitated. Why was it, in cases like this, that one couldn’t put one’s real feelings into words? Maude was so utterly useless; rumour had it that she was not even kind to her own child. Well, surely——

But Jim was standing up. “Well, I must go,” he said; “it’s getting fearfully late.” He took Mrs. Kemp’s soft hand closely into his. “You’ve been a perfect brick,” he said, “and I shall never forget it.”

“Oh, Jim!” And then Mrs. Kemp let go of the hard, muscular hand and watched Jim going off down the verandah steps with tears in her eyes. He was such a dear, and so was Delia. Had she done any good by what she had said? Probably not, and what was going to happen to them both?

Chapter XVII

But Mrs. Kemp had done good. After a practically sleepless night, Jim got up, put on his dressing-gown, and scribbled a note to his wife. Would she be kind enough to come into his room after she had had her bath and dressed, before she went out to give the orders for the day? “And bring my bath at once, Wali Mohammed,” said Jim as he handed the note to the bearer.

“Attcha, sahib,” and Wali Mohammed went off with the note. And in about three-quarters of an hour’s time Maude presented herself outside the curtain that separated Jim’s bedroom from the verandah. She herself looked sulky and ill at ease. Had Jim found out that she had been corresponding with Geoffry Armitage? The servants in this place were such beasts; probably Wali Mohammed had intercepted the letters and given them to Jim before they even came near her.

“Come in.” Jim had heard Maude’s footsteps on the matting, and he got up and held the curtain back for her. “Excuse my asking you in here,” he said, “but we are less likely to be disturbed. Sit down. Have the Roorkee chair—it’s more comfortable.” He drew it courteously forward.

“Oh, thanks!” Maude sat down a little awkwardly. If he started about Geoffry, she would give it him, she thought. Who was he to talk?

But Jim did not even know Geoffry Armitage’s name. And his first words put Maude’s mind at rest on that point. “I want to speak to you about Delia,” he said, and as he spoke he pulled a chair towards him and sat down on it a little sideways. “It’s time she stopped being Brian’s nurse,” he said. “People are talking, and I don’t like it. Will you tell her that she must go, or shall I?”

“What? Oh, you can do that!” Maude spoke with a short laugh. “I’m not going to tell her. Besides, I don’t know that she can go. What an idea! Who’s going to look after Brian? I can’t, I can’t follow Mary about all day; I hate the woman.”

“It wouldn’t be necessary to follow Mary about,” said Jim coldly. “The Mackenzies are transferred to Karachi, and their nurse doesn’t want to go with them. She could come to us in place of Delia.”

“You seem to have talked it all over with somebody,” said Maude spitefully; “I notice you don’t consult me.”

“I talked it over with Mrs. Kemp, because it was she who first pointed out to me that Delia’s position in this house is an anomalous one,” said Jim. “People are evidently talking, and as we are the people being talked about, we naturally hear it last. It can’t go on, and with your permission I will have Delia in here too and tell her this. She will understand.”

“Yes; I expect she’ll understand all right.” Maude’s voice was contemptuous. “And pray what is going to happen to her?” she asked. “Don’t forget that we brought her out here and are therefore responsible for her.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Jim’s voice was quiet. “Mrs. Kemp wants her to go out into Camp with them,” he said; “they go out next week and are keen to take her with them. It is a great chance for her.” Jim suddenly got up and walked over to the little side window that gave on to the compound.

“I see.” Maude was watching her husband’s back. She was thoroughly disgusted at the turn that things were taking. Geoffry Armitage was beginning to write far more affectionately. As a matter of fact, Geoffry Armitage had found out that Maude had a good deal of money of her own, only Maude did not know that. He was coming in to Camp quite near Garapore and quite soon. He hinted at all sorts of fun that they might have together. Picnics—moonlight picnics; no end of sport. And Maude had been busy concocting plans on her own account. She would throw Jim and Delia together more and more. She would go to dances with Geoffry and leave them—Jim and Delia—alone in the evenings. And then, of course—poor Maude had not a very exalted opinion of human nature—and then she could get her freedom, and then who knew what might not happen!

So this was a setback. And Maude began to ferret about in her mind for arguments against Delia leaving them. Perhaps if she took her about more, people would not say anything if she and Delia went about and showed themselves together.

But Jim made short work of any suggestion of the kind. Sickening and overwhelming as the temptation was, he was determined not to parley with it. Delia must go, and at once; and now it only remained for him to tell her so. Send her in here, will you?” he said, and he had not the least idea how white he had got as he said it.

“Very well.” And Maude went rather sulkily out of the bare whitewashed room. “Jim wants you,” she said, and she thrust her neat head round the side of the curtain of the nursery. “He’s in his bedroom. He told me to tell you to go there.”

“Wants me!” Delia was writing a letter to Timothy. She stood up and turned very pale. Maude had already gone. “Mary, the sahib wants me,” she said.

“Yes, miss sahib.” Mary spoke easily. Maude had gone; Delia could see out into the compound. “Going, miss sahib,” said Mary encouragingly.

“Yes.” And then Delia went out on to the verandah and along it till she came to his door. “You wanted me,” she said, and she stood just outside the curtain.

“Yes.” Jim got up from his writing-table and went over to the curtain. “Come in,” he said, holding it back. “Sit down here”—he pushed forward the Roorkee chair that Maude had only just vacated.

“No, thank you; I’d rather stand up.” Delia was as pale as Jim was. She had a sudden awful prescience of what was coming. “No!” She almost shouted the word as he told her.

“Yes; but you must. I’ve thought it well over, and it is the only way. For your sake, Delia, as well as mine. More for your sake than mine, as a matter of fact. Mrs. Kemp is a dear, and so is he; they will make you most awfully happy. It is a tremendous chance for you to go out into Camp with them. You will travel in the greatest luxury and see India at its very best.”

“But what about Brian?” Delia was determined to make a fight for it. She would emphasize that side of the question. “You always said that you wouldn’t have him looked after by an ayah,” she gasped.

“Nor shall I. The Mackenzies’ nurse is leaving them; Mrs. Kemp says that she would probably be glad to come to us,” said Jim.

“You don’t care—you don’t care that I shall die if I go away from you.” Delia was suddenly heedless, reckless of what she said. “You tell me that you love me, and then you actually turn me out of your house. I call it cruel—ghastly, murderously cruel,” sobbed Delia, turning her face away.

“It is because I love you that I am doing it,” said Jim, and he said it with his lips absolutely white. “If I didn’t love you as frightfully as I do I might descend to carrying on a horrible intrigue with you under this very roof. But I am not going to do it. I love you and value you far too much. Our only safety lies in being separated.” Jim took out his gaily coloured silk handkerchief and mechanically rubbed his hands on it.

“But I don’t want to be safe in that way,” said Delia. She was frantic and imploring. “I would rather live with you, anyhow, than go away from you. What does it matter what people say—what does it matter what we do? I love you, I want to be all yours. Jim, Jim, take me!” Delia, weeping, was trying to catch hold of his hands.

“My darling, we can’t.” Jim’s voice was hoarse, and, not caring a button who saw him, he took Delia in his arms. What did it matter? This was the end, anyhow. He would go away that night. Somebody from the battery had to go to Poona; he would ask the Colonel if he could be the one. Then he would not be back until Delia had gone. She would forget him in time; and what did it matter if his own heart was broken? It had been his fault from the very beginning. He laid his face very gently on her hair. “We must do the right thing,” he said, and he said it very quietly.

Delia tore herself out of his arms. She rushed back into the nursery and flung herself face downwards on the floor. Everything taken away from her—first her lover, and then Brian, and now her lover again! She would die—she would die!

And Mary watched her with the fullest comprehension, and her Oriental heart was pitiful. But she said nothing, and only crooned quietly over Brian’s soft head. Mary guessed what had just happened, and she was looking forward to her twelve o’clock dinner-hour, when she could tell Wali Mohammed all about it.

Chapter XVIII

But Wali Mohammed knew; native servants have a queer way of finding out things, and it was not news that Mary brought to the little brick kitchen when at twelve o’clock that day she slopped across the pathway that divided it from the bungalow, Wali Mohammed, engaged in putting on a clean pugaree, was sitting there, intent on the careful swathing of the yards of snowy muslin.

“Wah, wah!” Ahmed the cook was depressed. Without the miss sahib the shaitan would probably be worse than she was already. And she was bad enough as it was. She shouted at him when he wanted more charcoal, saying that he had used it in his own quarter. He had, but it was not for the memsahib to tell him so. Cooks had their privileges, and on the whole Ahmed was a careful and conscientious old man. He began to plan that one of his relations should die suddenly. They should send him a telegram announcing the decease. He would then leave for his country village and not come back any more. Ahmed went on stirring with a cloud on his brow. He had been with the sahib off and on since he was quite a young man, and he did not like the idea of taking naukri with someone else.

But Wali Mohammed was cheerful. He bound and twisted his pugaree with deft olive-coloured fingers. His sahib was going away, he announced. To Poona for a week. Wali Mohammed was not going with him, as the sahib wished him to remain in charge of the bungalow during his absence. But now he must go and pack for him. Wali Mohammed unhooked his dark blue serge coat from the door, settled his pugaree over his arched eyebrows, and vanished.

The packing did not take long. Wali Mohammed packed beautifully and had done it many times before. He knew exactly what Jim would need for an absence of this particular length of time. All was ready by two o’clock that afternoon and at that time he stood in front of his sahib salaaming. Might he have a couple of hours’ leave that afternoon? he prayed. He would be back in time to serve his sahib with his early dinner before the train started.

“Oh yes.” Jim spoke with a sort of heavy lack of interest. What did anything matter? He went and sat down at his writing-table. A chit to Kemp; a couple of cheques to write. Anything to pass the time before he had to start. And when he had got to his writing-table all he could do was to sit down and bury his head in his hands and wish that he was dead. Delia so near to him and yet as far away as if she had been on the other side of the world, and sobbing herself sick—he knew she was; she had not come in to lunch. And yet he could not go near her or comfort her. God! was any man ever so brutally tortured as he was?

Meanwhile Wali Mohammed, with his huge pugaree replaced by a little red fez, was hurrying. The bazaar of Garapore lay right away to the east of Cantonments, down by the heavily flowing Ganges. The banks of the river were muddy, and marked with the stampeding feet of the sacred cattle that wandered about at will there. Wali Mohammed had a long way to go even to reach the bazaar. But when he was there he knew his way about it well. He padded along the narrow, evil-smelling streets without even stopping to look in at the funny little dark shops. Shops of all kinds, full of everything that you could possibly want, and kept by fat greasy bunnias, who lolled on thick feather mattresses with more or less grimy pillows at the end of them and gazed slumbrously out at the crowds of jostling natives passing by, not caring a button whether they bought anything or not.

But Wali Mohammed’s errand was to a more distant spot still. And when he got to the funny little dark shop that he was looking for, he went straight into it and out through an open courtyard at the back; then through another door and into a small room, absolutely dark except for a tiny smoking lamp set down on the floor.

“Salaam, bhai!” Someone spoke from the corner. A heavy figure stirred on a mattress and in highflown Hindustani bade the visitor sit down and make himself at home. Wali Mohammed did so, and then made known, in equally good Hindustani, the purpose for which he had come.

“Wah, wah!” There was a certain amount of rather excited talk from the corner. The huge figure heaved itself up and came nearer to Wah Mohammed. The pan-stained mouth was greedy in the large dark face. The remuneration was not sufficient! Wali Mohammed’s rupees were shoved clinkingly back across the mud floor.

“Tchaa!” Wali Mohammed made a noise of angry impatience. He pushed his fez back from his forehead and made a speedy calculation. He would have to send so much to his home, keep so much for his own food; barely ten rupees of his pay would be left. But still—was not his sahib as dear to him as his own son? Wah Mohammed groped again in the pocket of his baggy trousers.

Ten minutes later he was out of the shop again, and the fat, heavy figure in the little dark room was settling itself anew on the mattress. Snortingly it took a pinch of snuff from a little enamel box and stuffed it up its heavy nostrils. Good work, and profitable! Fazul Khan rolled himself on to his side and slept again.

Wali Mohammed served Jim with his early dinner that night with all his usual imperturbability. And as the car circled round the little lawn and eventually vanished winkingly out of the gate, he went back into his sahib’s bedroom and tidied it all up. And then he went out to the back verandah to await Mary’s arrival. He had much to relate to her, although, being a woman, he must relate it with care.

But Mary did not come out until very late that night. How could she leave the miss sahib in such sore distress of spirit? “Mary, Mary, he did not even say good-bye to me!” Delia clung to the old ayah and sobbed and sobbed again.

“Coming back, miss sahib.” Desperately Mary comforted. Shrilly she called over Delia’s head to Maude that the miss sahib had a bad headache and could not come out again that night. Tenderly she held Delia to her old breast and tried to rock her like a baby.

But Delia would not be comforted. “He will never, never come back! I shall never, never see him again!” She turned her streaming face to the white moonlight and prayed to be allowed to die.

Chapter XIX

Jim being well off the scene, Mrs. Kemp really got seriously to work. Before a week was over she had Delia under her own roof, and the nice, sensible Scotch Nannie installed as nurse to Brian. And there was a certain amount of tragedy in the way that Brian took the change. He adored Mary, and Mary was to stay. Therefore he did not care a button what happened to anyone else.

Maude took the change very well, too. She was enjoying her time of freedom. Geoffry Armitage was actually in the neighbourhood; he had arrived abruptly and explosively on his motor-bicycle on the very afternoon Delia left. And it was much nicer to be able to entertain him without Delia always about the bungalow. The new nurse had meals in the nursery and did not have to be talked to. And Mrs. Kemp, too, had managed the whole thing very tactfully; after her brief and very pleasant call on Maude, when she had chatted about their time together at Biarritz, Maude was left with a comfortable feeling that she had really conferred more or less of a favour on the senior memsahib in the station by allowing her ex-nurse to go and stay with her.

So all was well. And Maude began to get that jolly interested feeling in her head. Geoffry Armitage had to be away for the next two days, but after that he would be in Garapore for at least a week. And Maude hoped and prayed that Jim would stay where he was for a bit. Then she really could enjoy herself for a change!

She came home that evening from tennis feeling jolly and elated. Certainly she had only been playing in rather a dull four at the Kemps’, but still—— In a way, it had rather cheered her up to see how jaded and out of spirits Delia looked, and there had certainly been satisfaction in seeing also how, in that short time, she had gone off.

So Maude came in cheerful. But at once there was a setback. Wali Mohammed, explaining with great deference, said that the memsahib could not have a bath before dinner, as she usually did. The water was not hot enough. He would prepare it for her at about nine o’clock.

“You suer ki batcha”² Maude had heard Geoffry say that to his servant, and it had rather amused her. To give Maude her due, she did not realize the deadly insult that it conveyed to the Mohammedan standing respectfully in front of her. He just glanced at her and turned on his heel. Maude threw down her tennis racket on to a chair and went slamming into her room. She would get rid of Wali Mohammed and the cook too. They were in league, the beasts! She would get Geoffry to find her some Hindu servants the next time he went to Calcutta. It was no use complaining to Jim; he thought both Wali Mohammed and Ahmed perfect. Maude was in a thoroughly bad temper as she changed for dinner.

And dinner did not improve matters very much. Maude was hungry, and she drank her thick tomato soup without bothering about it very much. But at the last two mouthfuls she did pause. “It’s disgusting,” she said, throwing down her spoon. “Tell Ahmed that I shall fine him two annas for that.”

“Attcha, memsahib.” Wali Mohammed stepped forward from behind Maude’s chair and removed the plate with his usual dexterity. But it was some time before he came back. Mary had been ready, but he had had to give very explicit directions. The plate and spoon must be buried right out in the field at the back; otherwise the dhobi’s dog would dig them up.

“Do be quick, can’t you?” Maude was beginning to feel pleasantly sleepy. She ate the beautifully cooked pigeon and the fruit salad that followed it, with a sort of luxurious pleasure. That was the best of tennis, she thought; it gave you that jolly all-over feeling. “Give me my coffee here,” she said; “then I think I’ll have a bath and go straight to bed.”

This was excellent. Wali Mohammed brought the coffee almost at a run, and stood there watching Maude drink it. And then he was out again on the back verandah with the empty cup. “Quick,” he said to Mary, who was eagerly waiting. “And now for the bath; there is but little time to lose.”

“Attcha.” Mary in her excitement broke into Hindustani. Generally she spoke atrocious broken English. She padded away with the cup, and was back too late to see what Wali Mohammed and Ahmed had both immensely enjoyed. They had stood with their two dark faces very close pressed together, squashed in the tiny window of the kitchen that gave on to the back verandah. Maude had only just been able to walk to her bedroom; they had seen her outlined against the curtains, feeling her way, her head every now and then falling sleepily on to her chest.

But, praise be to Allah, she had been able to get as far as her bathroom and lock herself into it! Wali Mohammed was congratulating himself on that as he padded to the Kemps’ bungalow at five o’clock the next morning. The memsahib had instructed him to call her early, so that she might ride, he told Mr. Kemp, who had emerged sleepily from his room at the sound of the excited voice shouting on the front verandah. But the memsahib was not in her room, and the bathroom door, so reported the nurse miss sahib, was securely locked on the inside.

“Oh, my God!” Mr. Kemp was sleepy and perturbed. “Don’t make any fuss,” he said, to Wali Mohammed, who stood there shivering in the cold of the keen morning air. “Wait here while I telephone to the doctor sahib.”

“I’ll go round at once.” The regimental surgeon, who was congratulating himself on the prospect of a few hours’ sleep, spoke cheerfully through the telephone. He was a busy man; everyone had babies in Garapore at the beginning of the cold weather, and generally in the very early morning. But still—mercifully, he was good-tempered. He started off at once in his little two-seater. But what he saw when he arrived at the thatched bungalow made him frown and draw down his mouth. With the nice Scotch nurse beside him, he kicked open the rather rickety door of the bathroom. And there was Maude, still in her bath, sunk right down under the water of it, staring up through the water with clogged and dulled blue eyes.

“Hmn!” And together they lifted her out and carried her to her bed. And then, after a short questioning of the nurse, who answered all the doctor’s rather searching questions with the greatest simplicity and candour, he sent her back to the nursery and telephoned for the Commissioner of Police.

By the time the latter arrived with a European sergeant, Mr. Kemp had also arrived with Wali Mohammed sitting grandly at the back of the car. And the three senior men, standing in Jim’s bedroom, catechized all the hurriedly rounded-up and staring servants, standing there in a neat row in the charge of the sergeant.

But none of them knew anything. Yes, the nurse sahib had also had tomato soup, said Ahmed. Was there some left in the degchie? Yes, Ahmed thought that there was; he turned obediently to go and fetch it.

“Go with him.” The Police Commissioner made a sign to the sergeant, who followed close on Ahmed’s heels. But all was in order there. Back again, the Commissioner fixed his eyes on Wali Mohammed. “Will you drink it?” he said.

“Hain, sahib,” and without hesitation Wali Mohammed politely turned his back on the company, and, lifting the aluminium degchie to his lips, he drained it dry.

“Hmn!” The Police Commissioner was still watching Wali Mohammed. “Where are the plates that were used last night?” he said.

And at this Wali Mohammed began to speak excitedly. The musalchi was a villain and a laggard, he explained volubly. What was his, Wali Mohammed’s, horror and indignation when on emerging from his quarter early that morning he had beheld all the dishes where they had been left the night before, unwashed and unclean. And there they still reposed, he said gloomily.

“All the better; we’ll go round and have a look at them,” said the Commissioner dryly. And round they all went, Wali Mohammed and Ahmed and Mary bringing up the rear, with the sergeant of police walking smartly behind them.

But there was nothing there to lay hold of; and after a great deal of sniffing and scrutinizing, the three men walked back to the front of the bungalow, leaving the servants to stay where they were in charge of the sergeant. All three men, with one accord, got out their pipes, and then they sat down facing one another on the verandah.

“Well, what do you think?” The Commissioner of Police spoke first, and he spoke to the regimental surgeon.

“I think,” said Major Metcalfe, and he answered at once, although with a certain amount of deliberation, “that we may conclude that it is a case of accidental death. Mrs. Chester went straight from her dinner to her bath. She probably had it too hot—women always have their baths too hot. She faints in it, sinks down under the water, and cannot recover herself sufficiently to struggle up again. There I think we have it in a nutshell.” The regimental surgeon stopped speaking.

There was a little silence. Mr. Kemp fidgeted and cleared his throat. Major Metcalfe then went on:

“We can, of course, hold an inquest, if the Commissioner thinks it advisable,” he said; “but in my opinion it would be superfluous. Of course, in a case like this one cannot disregard the possibility of foul play. But the Commissioner knows as well as I do that, in this country especially, it is almost impossible to bring the real culprit to book. They lie like fiends, and will never give one another away.”

The Commissioner nodded quietly. He glanced across at the man sitting opposite to him. “What do you say, Kemp?” he remarked.

“I say that I entirely agree with Metcalfe,” said Mr. Kemp quietly.

“Very well, then, we’ll have it so,” said the Commissioner of Police. “We need not trouble you further then, Kemp; we’ll make all the arrangements for the funeral. It must be this evening, of course; I’ll ring up Cursetjee, and the doctor will tell the padre. And perhaps your memsahib could manage to take the nurse and child for a couple of nights, Kemp? They can’t very well stay here, can they?”

“Of course she could.” Mr. Kemp was getting up and was quietly shaking the remains of the tobacco out of the bowl of his pipe. “And oh! by the way, I’ll wire Chester,” he said. “Now; on my way back to the bungalow. And in about a couple of hours’ time I’ll be back for the nurse and child.”

“Thanks very much, Kemp. Yes; if we can leave the sending of the wire to you it will help a lot. Then Metcalfe and I can carry on here”; and with a quiet nod the Commissioner turned back to follow the doctor into the big bedroom where Maude lay on her little iron bed in the middle of the room with her face turned up to the high ceiling. The doctor looked at her for a moment, and then very gently drew up the sheet and covered the face. And then he turned to the Commissioner and spoke quietly. “I have the certificate here ready to fill in,” he said, “if you’ll be kind enough to witness it. And for the other signatory, we’ll get the nurse.”

“Yes, certainly.” The Commissioner fumbled in his pocket for his Swan pen. “That’s it,” he said, unscrewing the top and scribbling quickly. “And now for the nurse. Shall I get her to come along here?”

“Not necessary,” said Major Metcalfe. “Take it along to her, will you? Women sometimes make a scene in a death-chamber, although I must say she doesn’t look that type. I’d rather have the ayah; she’s a Christian—there’s nothing incongruous about it. Oh! by the way, though, she’s under police supervision, isn’t she?”

“No; that’s all over,” said the Commissioner, and he got up from Maude’s littered writing-table, speaking rather dryly. “I’ll take the certificate along to the nurse, then. Anything else I can do for you, Metcalfe?”

“No, nothing, thanks,” said Major Metcalfe, “except just to send the ayah along to me if you will.”

Chapter XX

Mr. Kemp sent a long and very explicit wire to Jim. And he got it at about twelve o’clock on the same evening, just at the time that the last of the earth was being shovelled on to Maude’s grave. Garapore had turned out in force to go to Maude’s funeral. Death brings everyone together, and nobody remembered that she had been extraordinarily unpopular while she had been alive. She was dead now, and Death, in India, waits round the corner for everyone. So everyone was sorry, and they showed it by doing what no one likes doing, namely, standing round an open grave wondering when it will be your own turn.

Jim tore the telegram open, standing just as he was, on the verandah of the Poona Club rolled up in a sweater, after having played two very strenuous chukkers of polo. Two men watched him read it and then go and sit abruptly down in a chair set far away from all the others. Bad news, they concluded, going considerately off so that he should be all by himself.

Jim read it again. Kemp had been a perfect brick to wire to him like that, he thought; otherwise what tortures would he not have had to go through before he got home to hear full details?

Delia has been with us for the last three days (wired Mr. Kemp), but I very much regret to have to tell you that your wife died suddenly at your bungalow last night. The funeral is this evening, and nurse and Brian are with us till your return.

Jim crumpled up the telegram and put it in his blazer pocket. He must go back to-night, of course; he would speak to the General—he had just seen him go into the bridge-room. And ten minutes later he was on his way to his hotel: he could catch the Punjab mail that night if he hurried.

And as Jim, settled in the corner of a comfortable first-class carriage, which he had mercifully got to himself, stared sleeplessly out of the window of it as the long mail train roared its way northward, Mr. and Mrs. Kemp sat by a glorious fire in their beautiful drawing-room and talked over the events of the day. Delia had gone early to bed, and the nurse and child were comfortably settled in the big bedroom that was only used for very important visitors indeed. Mary was highly delighted with it, accepting its grandeur as a rightful tribute to the baba that she adored.

“Well, that’s over.” Mr. Kemp was lighting a cheroot. He spat the end that he had bitten off, a little inelegantly, into the fire.

“Yes,” Mrs. Kemp’s face showed signs of recent tears. “Isn’t it awful?” she said.

“Tcha!” Mr. Kemp made a little impatient sound with his tongue. “You women are the most extraordinary creatures,” he said. “Look at you, for instance: here you are—for months—years—you’ve been lamenting over that marriage of Jim’s. And now that the poor wretch is free to marry the woman he loves, you carry on as you are doing. Incomprehensible!”

“Yes; but——” Mrs. Kemp was doing some cross work on canvas. She bent more closely over it.

“There isn’t any ‘but’ about it,” said Mr. Kemp. His day had begun before five o’clock that morning, and he was tired and more than a little cross. “It’s just rank hypocrisy,” he said. “On your own showing, Jim and his wife were not in the least suited to one another; you know perfectly well that she caught him in the most flagrant way; and you know also equally well that they have both been profoundly wretched ever since they married. And now that the poor woman is got quietly out of the way by dying an absolutely painless death, you lament. Personally, I think that the——” Mr. Kemp stopped abruptly, and cast an apprehensive glance at his wife.

But Mrs. Kemp was apparently not listening. Cross work is an absorbing thing; you have to count the squares all the time, otherwise you get it all wrong. Mrs. Kemp was counting the squares then with more vigour than she had ever counted them before.

Conclusion

Yes, but what about Timothy? He was a dear. Let us just hear what happened to him, and then make an end of this very long story. And it won’t take long to tell. It was one of those fine nights in June, and Knightsbridge so packed that people going westwards to the theatres were afraid they would not get there in time. For all around the Albert Hall were long queues of waiting motors and taxis; if you wanted to get up West at all, you had to take your chance and cut through the Park. And in one of the cars, and almost one of the nicest of them, sat Delia and Jim and Mrs. Browne—going to hear Timothy sing, and not for the first time, either. Timothy had justified Marcus Stoneham’s faith in him and had become famous.

And when in about half an hour’s time Timothy walked on to the great platform under the organ, just standing there quite unconcerned staring about him, his hair a little tidier certainly, but his head just as large, he caught sight of Delia watching him and suddenly grinned. He knew where she would be sitting, funny old girl!

And with that grin of cheerful recognition from the brother that she loved, Delia felt that her cup was quite full. She had all the loves that the world held for her very, very own, she thought, feeling out cautiously for the hand that she knew would be lying very close to her own. Because Jim knew that Delia always felt inclined to cry when she saw Timothy going to sing, and he told her that he would not have her do it in public.

“It’s not done, darling,” he said; “and when you feel you re going to begin, just hang on to me and remember that I shall be very cross if you do.”

So Delia hung obediently on, and only shut her eyes very quietly as Timothy, tipping back his large head a very little, and opening his young mouth very wide, just fixed his eyes on the farthest corner of the huge hall and began to sing.

The End