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_By the Same Author:_

     WYMPS: Fairy Tales. With eight coloured illustrations by Mrs.
     Percy Dearmer.

     AT THE RELTON ARMS: A Novel.

     THE MAKING OF A SCHOOL-GIRL.




     THE
     MAKING OF A PRIG

     BY
     EVELYN SHARP

     JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
     NEW YORK AND LONDON
     1897




     _Copyright, 1897_,
     BY JOHN LANE.

     _All rights reserved._

     University Press:
     JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




The Making of a Prig




CHAPTER I


It was supper time at the Rectory, and the Rector had not come in.
There were two conflicting elements at the Rectory, the Rector's
disregard of details and his sister's sense of their importance. There
was only one will, however, and that was his sister's. So the meals
were always punctual, and the Rector was always late; a fact that by
its very recurrence would have long ceased to be important, had not
Miss Esther loved to accentuate it by a certain formula of complaint
that varied as little as the offence itself. This evening, however, he
was later than usual; and Miss Esther did not attempt to conceal her
impatience as she glanced from the old clock in the corner down to the
fire-place, where another familiar grievance awaited her.

"Katharine, how often have I told you not to lie on the rug like a
great boy?" she said querulously, in the tone of one who has not the
courage or the character to be really angry. She added immediately, "I
want you to ring the bell for the soup."

The girl on the floor rolled over lazily, and shut her book with a
bang.

"Daddy hasn't come in yet," she said, sitting up on her heels and
shaking the hair out of her eyes. A latent spirit of revolt was in her
tone, although she spoke half absently, as if her thoughts were still
with her book. Miss Esther tapped her foot on the ground impatiently.

"It is exactly two minutes to eight," she said sharply. "I asked you
to ring the bell, Katharine."

The girl walked across the room in a leisurely manner, and did as she
was told with a great assumption of doing as she wished. Then she sat
on the arm of the nearest chair, and the rebellious look returned to
her face.

"How do you know it is daddy's fault, Aunt Esther? The Stoke road is
awfully bad, and it's blowing hard from the north-west. He may have
been kept, and cold soup's beastly. I think it's a shame."

"I really wish," complained Miss Esther, "that you would try and
control your expressions, Katharine. It all comes of your romping so
much with young Morton. Of course I am a mere cipher in my own house;
but some day your father will be sorry that he did not listen to me in
time. Can you never remember that you are not a boy?"

"I am not likely to forget," muttered Katharine. "I should not be
sticking in this stupid old place if I were. I should be working hard
for daddy, so that he could live with his books and be happy, instead
of grinding his life away for people who only want to get all they can
out of him. What's the use of being a girl? Things are so stupidly
arranged, it seems to me!"

"My dear," said Miss Esther, who had only caught the end of her
speech, "it is difficult to believe that your father is one of God's
chosen ministers."

"But he isn't," objected Katharine. "That's just it. They made him go
into the church because there was a family living; so how on earth
could he have been chosen? Why, you told me so yourself, Aunt Esther!
It's all rubbish about being chosen, isn't it?"

"Don't chatter so much," said Miss Esther, who was counting her
stitches; and Katharine sighed petulantly.

"I can't think," she went on to herself, "how he was ever weak enough
to give in. He must have been absent-minded when they ordained him,
and never discovered it until afterwards! Don't you think so, Dorcas?"

But Dorcas, who had only just brought in the soup, was hardly in a
position to make the necessary reply; and Katharine had to content
herself with laughing softly at her own joke. The meal passed almost
in silence, and they had nearly finished before they heard the sound
of wheels on the wet gravel outside. Miss Esther looked up, and
listened with her chronic air of disapproval.

"Dear me," she sighed, "your father has driven round to the stable
again by mistake. What are you doing, Katharine? I was just going to
say grace."

But Katharine had already dispensed with the ceremony by vanishing
through the door that led into the kitchen; and Miss Esther hurried
over it alone, and managed to be seated in her chair near the
reading-lamp, upright and occupied, by the time her brother came into
the room. There was something pathetic in the way she elaborated her
little methods of reproach for the sake of one on whom the small
things in life made no impression at all. And when the Rector entered,
smiling happily, with Katharine hanging on his arm and whispering
eager questions into his ear, it was easy to see that his mind was
occupied by something far more engrossing than the fact that he was
late for supper. But Miss Esther preserved her look of injury, and the
Rector, who was making futile efforts to produce a paper parcel from
the pocket in his coat tails, suddenly gave up the attempt as he
caught sight of her, and began to smooth his sleek white hair with a
nervous hand.

"Yes, Esther," he said, although she had not spoken a word.

"We have sent away the soup, but there is some cold meat on the side,
I believe. Katharine, do be seated instead of romping round the room
like that! Your father can see to himself," was all that Miss Esther
said.

"Yes, Esther," said the Rector submissively; and he helped himself to
some apple pie, and sat thoughtfully with the knife in his hand until
Katharine came and replaced it with a fork. "It is a windy night," he
continued, as no one seemed inclined to say anything. Miss Esther was
waiting for her opportunity, and Katharine had caught the infection
of her mood, and was again absorbed in her book on the hearthrug.

"Tom Eldridge came up about his dying wife, and Jones's baby is no
better," said Miss Esther, presently.

"Dear, dear! how very unfortunate!" observed the Rector, smiling.

"I said you must have been detained unexpectedly," continued Miss
Esther, with more emphasis. "They seemed very much in want of a little
counsel."

"I'm certain they weren't," said Katharine audibly. "Eldridge wanted
some more port wine, and Mrs. Jones came to see what she could get.
And I don't fancy either of them got it."

"Very unfortunate!" said the Rector again. "I was certainly detained,
Esther, as you cleverly divined,--unavoidably detained."

"People," said Miss Esther, very distinctly, "who have spiritual
brothers and sisters depending upon them, have no right to be
detained."

"I never can think," put in Katharine, "how any one has the courage to
be a clergyman. It simply means having crowds of relations, dull,
sordid, grasping relations, who come and rob you systematically in
the name of the Lord."

"A spiritual man," continued Miss Esther, without heeding the
interruption, "is not--"

"Oh, auntie," implored Katharine, "do let daddy eat his supper in
peace."

"My child," interposed the Rector gently, "I have finished my supper.
Does Eldridge expect me to do anything to-night, Esther? Or Mrs.
Jones?"

"My dear Cyril," said Miss Esther sternly, "if your own instincts do
not prompt you to do anything, I should say they had better go
untended."

The Rector sighed, and played with his knife. He was looking like a
schoolboy in disgrace. Katharine gave a scornful little laugh.

"What _is_ the good of making all that fuss over a trifle? Just as
though the cough of Jones's baby were half as important as the genuine
rat-tail daddy has picked up at Walker's!"

The murder was out, and Miss Esther put down her knitting and prepared
for a characteristic outburst. But the Rector had already unwrapped
his treasure and placed it on the table before him, and her bitterest
reproaches fell unheeded on his ears.

"Genuine sixteenth century," he murmured, as he stroked it reverently
with his long, thin fingers.

"Only yesterday," said the strident voice of his sister, "you were
telling me you had no money for a soup kitchen. It was a poor living,
you said; and now-- How can you set such an example,--you with a
mission in life?"

"I vow I'll never have a mission in life," said Katharine, "if it
means giving up everything that makes one happy. Poor daddy!"

"One of Christ's elect," continued Miss Esther, "to be turned aside
for a bit of tawdry pewter! For what you can see in a tarnished,
old-fashioned thing like that, is more than I can understand."

The Rector looked up for the first time.

"Indeed, Esther," he said in a hurt tone, "it is a fine piece of
sixteenth century silver." Katharine cast a wrathful look at the stern
figure near the reading-lamp, and came over to her father's side. The
rebellious note had gone from her voice altogether as she spoke to
him.

"Let me look, daddy, may I?" she asked. Cyril Austen pulled her on to
his knee, and they bent together over the old spoon. Miss Esther
knitted silently.

"Let me see," said the Rector presently, turning an unruffled
countenance towards his sister, "what were we saying? About some
parishioners, wasn't it?"

"Parishioners? How can you talk of parishioners, when the first
trivial temptation draws you from the right path and--and makes you
late for meals? Isn't it enough to neglect your sacred duty, without
upsetting the household as well? Coming in at this time of--what is it
now, Cyril?"

For a worried look had suddenly crossed the Rector's face. He pulled
out his watch, and consulted it with the nervous haste of a man who is
constantly haunted by having forgotten something.

"Let me see,--how very stupid of me," he said, laughing slightly. "I
fancy there was something else, now; whatever could it have been, I
wonder? It was not the spoon, Esther, that made me late. Kitty, my
child, what did I say to you when I came in, just now?"

"You said, 'I have picked up a genuine rat-tail at Walker's;' and then
you gave your hat to Jim, and hung up the whip on the hat peg!"

"Bad child!" said the Rector, still looking uneasily about him. "I
wonder if Jim would know?"

But here a light was thrown on the matter by the entrance of Dorcas,
who brought the ambiguous message from Jim that the pony was ready to
start again, if the Rector was "going to do anything about the poor
creature down agin the chalk pit."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the Rector. "To be sure, that was it.
Esther, brandy and blankets, my dear,--anything you've got! We must
bring him home at once, of course. I knew there was something. Esther,
will you--? Ah, she always understands."

For, to do her credit, Miss Esther never wasted her time in reproaches
when there was really something to be done; and in the bustle that
followed, while the pony carriage was being filled with everything
that could be of use in case of an accident, Katharine found herself
left in the hall, with the intolerable feeling of being neglected, and
burning with curiosity as to the cause of it all.

"Daddy, daddy, what is it? Is any one hurt? Mayn't I come too?" she
pleaded, as the Rector came out to look for his coat.

"Eh, what? Oh, a poor fellow broken his leg in the chalk pit. Doctor's
with him now. What is he like? Kind of tourist, I should fancy;
evidently didn't see his way in the dark. There, run off to bed,
Kitty; you'll hear all about it in the morning."

"But I want to hear _now_," said the child, quivering with impatience.
"What sort of man is he, daddy? Shall I like him, do you think? Oh, do
tell, daddy!"

"My child, I hardly noticed. My hat--ah, thanks! He had a black beard,
I fancy,--quite young though, I should say,--and a sallow face--"

"How unhealthy it sounds; and I hate unhealthy people! I don't think I
want to go now," said Katharine, in an altered tone.

Nevertheless, when the unwilling pony was being urged again into the
storm and the darkness, some one slipped through the little group in
the porch, and sprang into the carriage beside the Rector. And the
Rector, who was incapable of a decided action himself and never
disputed one on the part of others, threw the rug over her knees, and
they drove off together to the scene of the accident. It was a wild,
black night; and the Rector shivered as he bent his head to the
furious gusts of wind, and allowed the pony to struggle on feebly at
its own pace. But Katharine sat upright with her head thrown back,
and would have liked to laugh aloud as the wind caught her long loose
hair and lashed it, wet with rain, across her face.

The chalk pit was situated at the further end of the village; on a
fine day, it might have been reached in a ten minutes' drive, but
to-night it was nearly half an hour before the pony managed to bring
its load to a standstill beside the group of men who had been waiting
there since dusk. Katharine recognised all the village familiars who
came forward at their approach,--the doctor, who had tended her
childish maladies; the schoolmaster, who had taught her to read; the
churchwarden, who still loved to tell her stories that she had long
ago learnt to know by heart. But she had no eyes for any of these
to-night; she looked beyond them all, as she jumped lightly out of the
carriage, at the man who lay on the ground with his eyes closed. A
lantern hung from the branch above, and swung to and fro in the wind,
casting intermittent gleams of light across his face.

He opened his eyes wearily as the Rector came forward, and they rested
at once upon Katharine, who stood bending over him with the rather
heartless curiosity of a very young girl.

"Kitty, move out of the way, my child," the Rector's voice was saying.

"I don't think he looks unhealthy at all," said Katharine dreamily.




CHAPTER II


The sun rose, the following morning, on a scene of devastation. The
storm of the previous night had come at the end of a month's hard
frost, and everything was in a state of partial thaw. Glistening pools
of water lay in the fields on the top of the still frozen ground,
looking like patches of snow in the pale sunshine; and a curious
phenomenon was discernible in the brooks and the ditches, where a
layer of calm water covered the ice that still bound the flowing
stream below. The only trace of last night's gale was a distant
moaning in the tree-tops; while above was a deepening blueness of sky
and a growing warmth in the sunshine. There was winter still on the
ground, and the beginning of spring in the air.

Two women had met under the beech-trees at the edge of the chalk pit.
Early as it was they had already collected large bundles of sticks;
for the beauty of the morning was nothing to them, and the storm, as
far as they were concerned, merely meant the acquisition of firewood.
They had matter for conversation enough, however; and it was this that
was making them loiter so early in the morning near the scene of
yesterday's accident.

"Is it the poor thing what fell down yonder, you be a-talkin' of, Mrs.
Jones? 'Cause I see Jim hisself this blessed morning, I did, and you
can't tell me nothing I doan't know already, you can't, Mrs. Jones,"
said Widow Priest with fine scorn.

There was a jealousy of long standing between the two neighbours. Mrs.
Jones was the sturdy wife of the sexton, and her family was both large
and increasing,--a fact which she attributed entirely to Providence;
though, when three of them succumbed to insufficient food and care,
she put down their loss to the same convenient cause, and extracted as
much consolation as she could out of three visits to the churchyard.
Widow Priest, on the other hand, had buried no one in the little
churchyard on the hill. For her husband had committed suicide, and
they had laid him to an uneasy rest without the sedative of a
religious ceremony; and his widow was thus robbed even of the triumph
of alluding to his funeral. So her widowhood did not bring her its
usual compensations; and she felt bitter towards the wife of the
sexton, who had buried her three and kept five others, and would
probably replace the lost ones in time.

"I bain't so fond o' gossiping nor what you be, Widow Priest,"
returned Mrs. Jones in loud, hearty tones. "I got no time for talking
wi' strangers here an' strangers there, wi' my man an' five little
'uns to do for. An' then there's always the three graves of a Saturday
to tidy up, which you ain't got, poor thing; not but what I'm saying
it be your fault, in course, Widow Priest."

Widow Priest gave a contemptuous sniff as she sat down to tie up her
fagots, and Mrs. Jones remained standing in front of her, with one arm
thrown round her bundle of sticks, and the other placed akimbo, an
effective picture of triumphant woman.

"Touching the poor thing what broke his back yonder," she continued
cheerfully: "I was putting the baby to bed at the time, I was, and I
see the whole thing happen from my top window, I did. He jumped the
fence, all careless like, jest as though he didn't know the pit were
there for sure. An' straightway he tripped up, he did, an' down he
went. God help him, I says! An' I puts the baby down, an' I says to
our Liz, 'Here, my child,' I says, 'stand by your precious brother
while I goes across to the pit,' I says. An' jest as I says that, up
comes the Rector an' the doctor with him, driving friendly like
together they was. So I says to our Liz, 'It's Providence,' I says,
'what sent they two blessed creatures here this day,' I says. An' I
caught up my shawl, I did, an' went hollerin' after them. 'What is it,
Mrs. Jones?' says the Rector, 'is it the baby again?'--'Baby?' I says,
'no, sir; not but what it racks me to hear that child cough, it do.
There be a man yonder,' I says, 'jest broke his neck down agin the
chalk pit.' Lord! it were a sight to see they two men turn that pony
round! An' the rain were that bad, it give me lumbago all down my
back, that did. Not but what I soon got back to baby again, poor
little angel, with a cough that makes my heart ache, to hear it going
jest like the others did afore they died. But ye didn't see him fall
in, now; did ye, Widow Priest?"

The widow shouldered her fagots grimly, and stalked off with dignity.
When she reached the bend of the road, she turned round and shouted a
parting word in a tone of unmitigated contempt.

"It bain't his neck, _nor_ his back, Mrs. Jones. It be both his legs,
an' he be at the Rectory now, in the best bedroom, he be; an' there
he'll likely stop a month or two, Jim says, he do. But Jim didn't give
ye a call perhaps, Mrs. Jones?"

"Bless ye, Widow Priest, I ain't told ye half what I know," cried Mrs.
Jones. "You be a poor thing, you be, if ye can't stand to hear a
body's tale; an' you that's so lonesome too, an' got no one to do for,
like I have. Lord, what a hurry some folk do be in, for sure! Eh, but
that be Miss Katharine yonder, blest if it ain't; an' Widow Priest be
out o' sight, too! I reckon as Miss Katharine knows more nor Jim, an'
I be going--"

But a wail from the cottage opposite awakened the mother's sense of
duty, and she hastened across the road and forgot all about the
accident in an immediate necessity for castigation.

Katharine came over the brow of the hill that sloped down towards the
chalk pit, scaled the wooden fence at the bottom, and skirted the edge
of the little chasm until she came to the line of beech-trees. Here
she paused for a moment, pecked a hole in the soft ground with her
heel, and peered thoughtfully down into the pit. Then she turned
abruptly away again, and struck across the fields to the further side
of the village, where she sped down a grassy lane that was for the
most part under water, and stopped at last before a gap in the hedge
that was hardly large enough to be noticeable. She squeezed adroitly
through it, however, and came in view of an ugly modern house standing
in a neglected looking garden, with an untidy farmyard and some stable
buildings at the back. Here she was careful to keep a clump of
box-trees between herself and the front of the house, until she could
come out with safety into the open and approach the iron fence that
separated the paddock from the lawn. This she vaulted easily, dropping
lightly on the grass beyond, and managed to arrive at last unnoticed,
under a small oriel window at the corner of the house. She picked up a
handful of small stones, and swung them with a sure aim at the little
glass panes, and called, "Coo-ey," as loudly as she dared.

"Lazy toad!" she muttered impatiently. "On a morning like this, too!
And just when I had got a real adventure to tell him, that he knows
absolutely nothing about, not anything at all!"

She did not throw up any more stones, but mounted the iron railings
instead, and sat there with her feet dangling and her eyes fixed on
the oriel window.

"It's the biggest score I've ever had over him," she chuckled to
herself. "I think I shall _explode_ soon, if he doesn't wake up. I'm
getting so awfully hungry, too; it must be eight o'clock."

She called again presently, without changing her position; and this
time there was a sign of life behind the oriel window, and the
curtains were drawn aside. Katharine forgot all her previous caution,
and gave a loud "whoop" of satisfaction. The lattice flew open, and
some one with rumpled hair and flushed cheeks looked out and yawned.

"Don't make such a shindy, Kit; you'll wake the mother," he grumbled.
"Why the dickens have you come so beastly early?"

"Because Aunt Esther was asleep, of course," answered Katharine
promptly. "Hurry up, Ted, and have your bath; it'll make you feel
piles better. And you'll have to get me some food; I could eat my
boots."

"Don't do that," said Ted. "Last night's steak will do just as well."

"How is _she_?" asked Katharine, with a jerk of her head towards the
front of the house.

"Awful. She's getting worse. She docks the pudding course at supper
now. Don't go, Kitty; I'll be down directly."

He was not long, but she was full of impatient reproaches by the time
he joined her at the fence.

"I believe you'd like to give the world a shove to make it go round
quicker," he retorted, swinging himself up beside her.

"Well, you surely don't think it moves very fast now, do you?" she
said. "At all events, Ivingdon doesn't," she added emphatically.

"Well, what did you come for, old chum?" he asked, smiting her
shoulder with rough friendliness. "Not to complain of this slow old
hole, I bet?"

"Get me something to eat, and I'll tell you."

"Oh, hang, Kitty! I can't. Cook will swear, or go to the mother, or
something. Can't you wait till you get home?"

"No, I can't. And I didn't tell you to go to cook, or to _her_; did I,
stupid? Isn't there a pantry window, and isn't the larder next to the
pantry, and aren't the servants having breakfast in the kitchen, out
of the way? Eh?"

"Well, I'm bothered! But I can't get up to that window, anyhow."

"There's a loose brick just below, and you _know_ it, you lazy boy!
What's the use of being exactly six foot, if you can't climb into a
window on the ground floor? _I_ can, and I'm only five foot four. Oh,
you needn't bother, if you're afraid! I can keep my news, for that
matter."

"I don't believe there is any news. Why, I only saw you yesterday
afternoon. And nothing ever happens in Ivingdon. You are only rotting,
aren't you, Kit?"

"All right; I don't want to tell you, I'm sure. Good-bye," said
Katharine, without moving a step.

He called himself a fool, and told her she was a beastly nuisance, and
that of course there wasn't any news, and he didn't want to hear it if
there was. And he finally strolled round to the pantry window, as she
knew he would, and returned with a medley of provisions in his hands.
They laughed together at the odd selection he had made,--at the cold
pie he was balancing on a slice of bread, and the jam tart that
crowned the jug of milk; and they fought over everything like two
young animals, and drank out of the same jug and spilled half its
contents, and ended in chasing one another round the paddock for no
reason whatever.

"Walk home with me, and I'll tell you the news. Come on, Ted!" she
cried.

"Guess I will, and chance it. If she doesn't like my being late for
breakfast she'll have to do the other thing. Through with you, Kitty,
and don't make the hole any larger! There's always the chance that she
might have it mended, in a spasm of extravagance, and that would be so
bally awkward for us."

She told her news as they went swinging along side by side over the
wet fields, leaping the pools of standing water, and switching the wet
twigs in each other's face. But they grew quieter as the interest of
the tale deepened; and by the time Katharine had reached the episode
of the chalk pit, Ted was walking gloomily along with his hands in his
pockets and his eyes bent on the ground.

"You always have all the luck, Kitty," he said mournfully. "Why wasn't
I there? Think of the use I should have been in helping him into the
carriage; only think of it, Kitty!"

"You wouldn't have been a bit of good," she returned cruelly. "You're
much too clumsy. They wouldn't even let Jim or daddy help. _I_ held
his head, so there!"

"Well, I suppose I could have held his beastly head, too, couldn't I?"
roared Ted.

"It wasn't a beastly head; it was awfully nice,--hair all silky, not
baby's curls like yours," said Katharine scornfully. "And wasn't he
plucky, too! His leg must have hurt frightfully, but he just didn't
say a word or utter a sound. All the way home, whenever the thing
jolted him, he just screwed up his mouth and looked at me, and that
was all. It was the finest thing I've ever seen."

"But you haven't seen much," said Ted.

"No, I haven't. But I've seen you squirm when you had toothache. And
you're not fit to speak to if you have an ordinary headache," laughed
Katharine.

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

"That is where he lies now," said Katharine, with a dramatic gesture
towards the spare-room window. Her cheeks were red with excitement,
and she never noticed the look on Ted's face as he shrugged his
shoulders and made a great pretence of whistling carelessly.

"What sort of a chap is he? Some tourist bounder, I suppose," he
condescended to say.

"He isn't a bounder. He has awfully nice hands,--white, and thin, and
soft. He's rather pale, with a lot of black hair and a curly beard."

"What a played-out chap to make such a fuss about!" said Ted, turning
away contemptuously. "Sounds more like a monkey than anything else.
Good-bye. I wish you joy of him!"

"I suppose I'll see you again some time?" she called after him.

"Oh, yes; I suppose so."

"And it _was_ news, wasn't it, Ted?"

"You seem to think so, anyway."

"Poor Ted!" She laughed, and ran indoors. But he had hardly crossed
the first field before she had caught him up again, breathless and
penitent.

"I didn't mean it, Ted; I didn't, _really_, old boy. It wasn't news,
and he _is_ a monkey, and I'm a horrid pig. Come up after lunch, won't
you, Ted? I promise not to talk about him once, and I want to show you
something. You will come, Ted, won't you?"

She flung her arms round him in her impulsive way, and gave him one of
her rough, playful hugs. But for the first time in his life, Ted
shook her off stiffly, and hastened on.

"What's the matter?" asked Katharine, more perplexed than annoyed.

"Oh, all right; I'll come. Don't be a fool, Kitty!" he jerked over his
shoulder; and she turned away, only half satisfied, and went slowly
into the house. It was characteristic of her that the smallest lack of
response from some one else would change her mood immediately; and
when she entered the dining-room a few minutes later, her vivacity was
all gone, and the first words she caught of the conversation at the
breakfast-table only helped to irritate her still further.

"Oh, bother Mr. Wilton!" she said crossly. "The whole house seems to
have gone mad over Mr. Wilton. I am tired of hearing his name."

The Rector seemed unconscious of her remark, and only pulled her hair
softly as she slipped into the chair beside him. But Miss Esther
stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and cast a meaning
glance towards Katharine which her father did not see, though she of
course did.

"My dear," said Mr. Austen, in reply to his sister, "I am sure you are
quite competent to do it. Nancy always said you were a born nurse;
and Nancy knew, bless her! Besides, the poor young man has been sent
to us in his affliction, and there is nothing else to be done, is
there? My child, it will not interest you; we were only saying that
Mr.--Wilton, is it?--would require careful nursing; and your aunt--"

"Really, Katharine, there is no necessity for you to interfere. You
know too much as it is, and this question is not one that concerns you
at all. Perhaps you will keep to the matter in hand until it is
settled, Cyril!"

"My dear, I thought it was settled," said the old man mildly. "The
poor young fellow has to be nursed, and you are the best person to do
it. So there is nothing else, is there, Esther, that need detain me? I
am rather anxious--that is, I would like to finish my paper on the
antiquities of the county, and it is already ten minutes past--"

"It is a most extraordinary thing," interrupted Miss Esther irritably,
"that you never will give your attention to anything that really
matters. You totally misunderstand my meaning, Cyril. How can I, your
sister and a single woman, with due propriety--Katharine, you can go
and feed the chickens."

Katharine did not move, and the Rector got up from his chair.

"My dear," he remonstrated, "I think you over-estimate the difficulty.
It is the duty of the woman to look after the sufferer, is it not? I
really think there is nothing more to be said about it. Meanwhile--"

"I don't know why you are in such a hurry, Cyril; it is the day for
the library to be cleaned, so you cannot use it yet. The whole
business is most inopportune; why should he break his leg in Ivingdon,
when he might have done it quite conveniently in the county town, and
been taken to the infirmary like any one else?"

The Rector wondered vaguely why his room was cleaned more than once a
week; but he sat down again and folded his hands, and said that he was
of the same opinion as before and saw no reason why the unfortunate
young man should not be nursed by Miss Esther.

"No more do I," said Katharine. "What's the difference between nursing
Shepherd Horne through bronchitis and nursing Mr. Wilton with a broken
leg, except that Mr. Wilton is presumably not so unwashed? I never can
see why the poor people should have the monopoly of impropriety, as
well as of the Scriptures. Besides, you can easily reduce him to the
level of a villager by reading the Psalms to him every day. That would
make you feel quite proper, wouldn't it, auntie? And I dare say he
wouldn't mind it much, when he got used to it."

"Your profanity," said her aunt severely, "is becoming perfectly
outrageous. If you were sometimes to say a few words of reproof to
your own daughter, Cyril, instead of dreaming your life away--but
there, I must go and look after poor Mr. Wilton! I wonder whether he
likes his eggs boiled or scrambled?" she added doubtfully. For Miss
Esther was one of those women who reserve the best side of their
nature for the people who have no real claim upon them; and she took
little interest in any one who was neither poor nor afflicted. The
unpractical temperament of the Rector both astonished and chafed her,
and she had nothing but a fretful endurance for her high-spirited
niece, in whom a natural longing for action and an inordinate sense of
humour were fast producing a spirit of revolt and cynicism. But an
invalid, who was thus thrown suddenly into her power, appealed
strongly to the Rector's sister; and her diffidence had entirely
disappeared by the time she had gone through all the objections that
propriety impelled her to raise.

"I feel quite thankful," she said, smiling blandly, "that the poor
fellow has fallen into such good hands."

"So do I," remarked Katharine, as the door closed. "It will be all the
better for your paper on the local antiquities, won't it, daddy? Daddy
_dear_, just think of all the time we shall have to ourselves, now
that she's got Mr. Wilton on her hands! Poor Mr. Wilton! Let's come
and clear Dorcas out of the library and look at what you've done,
shall we? Come along, daddy, _quick_!"

The Rector stroked her long hair, with a doubtful look on his face.

"I am afraid, Kitty, I do not look after you as I should," he said. "I
am a bad old sinner, eh?"

"That's why I love you so. You are a brick!" exclaimed Katharine.

And she dragged him impetuously out of the room.




CHAPTER III


Meanwhile, Paul Wilton lay wearily in the old-fashioned guest-room
over the porch. The pain of his broken limb had kept him awake most of
the night; and now that the suffering was less the discomfort
remained, and he felt no more inclined to sleep than before. With a
kind of mechanical interest he had watched the pale light on his
striped blind grow deep and red, and then again pale and bright, as
the sun came up over the hills. His restlessness increased as the time
wore on; the sensation of being unable to move began to grate on his
nerves, and he wished impatiently that something would break the
stillness of the house, and awaken the people in it who were sleeping
so unreasonably. He raised himself on his elbow as a light step came
along the passage outside, and sank back again with a feeling of
disappointment when it passed his door, and went downstairs into the
garden. In reality it was much earlier than he thought; and it was
still some time longer before the usual early morning sounds
testified to the existence of a maid. He heard the stairs being swept,
and suffered silently as the broom was struck clumsily against his
wall in its downward course. Then the front door, was unbolted with a
good deal of noise, and a few mats were banged together in the open
air, and something was done with the door scraper. A conversation,
held across the lawn with Jim, had the effect of an altercation,
though it was in reality only an inquiry on the subject of milk,
shouted shrilly in broad dialect. Later on, came the welcome crackle
of a fire and the clatter of teacups; and a smell of hot bacon began
to pervade the air.

"At all events, that means breakfast," muttered Paul. "It is not to be
hoped that it will be worth eating, but at least it will bring a human
being into the room. I wonder why ordinary people never have any ideas
for breakfast beyond hot bacon! It is sure to be in thick chunks, too,
and salt, oh, very salt! Don't I know it? It recalls my childhood.
There will be eggs, too,--there always were eggs when we had visitors;
and bad coffee made by unaccustomed hands, also because there is a
visitor. I know that coffee too. On the whole, it is wiser to keep to
tea in strange places of this sort, although one knows beforehand
that it will be thick, and black, and flavourless. I know the tea,
best of all. In quite decent houses, one gets that tea."

Nobody came to him, although there were other voices about the house
now; and he turned from his dissertation on food to a study of the
pictures on the wall. They were of the class that had also been known
to him in his childhood; and he smiled sardonically as he glanced at
the two texts hidden in a maze of illumination, and the German print
of John the Baptist standing in layers of solid water, and the faded
photograph of a baby girl with tangled curls and a saucy mouth.
Something in the shape of that mouth suggested the shadowy events of
last night to his mind, and brought with them the vague recollection
of a girl's face looking curiously down at him, and the pleasurable
sensation of being supported by two firm, soft hands. He rather liked
dwelling on that part of last night's adventures, until a real twinge
of pain in his leg recalled also the less pleasant episodes, and he
shuddered as he remembered the horrors of his transit from the chalk
pit to the Rectory.

"I hate being in pain; it is so vulgar," he muttered distastefully;
and a dread crossed his mind lest his suffering should become more
than he could bear with dignity.

A timid knock came outside the door, and the maid entered to draw up
the blind. She looked clumsy, and Paul sighed. She sidled along the
wall to the door again as soon as she could, and asked shyly when he
would have his breakfast.

"As soon as you like; and--er--Mary, would you kindly give me that
coat? What's the time? And is it a fine day?" asked Paul hurriedly. He
was almost childish in his anxiety to keep her in the room for another
moment. But to be called by the cook's name so far confused her that
she vanished precipitately; and Paul smiled, a little more cynically
than before, and returned to his observations of the pictures. Just
then he heard the end of the conversation between the boy and girl,
under his window, and was amused at his own share in their quarrel.

"Anyhow, if that young woman is going to be about, it may not be so
bad, after all," he reflected.

He was reduced to despondency again, however, by the arrival of the
breakfast, which fully realised his expectations. For one who
professed to have a wide grasp of life, Paul Wilton was singularly
affected by trifles. His spirits were not raised when he found who his
nurse was to be; and, competent as Miss Esther soon proved herself, he
remained convinced that the child with the joyous laugh who made so
much merriment about the house, would have suited him far better. And
again, he was amused at his interest in some one whom he had hardly
seen, and who would probably turn out to be an undeveloped schoolgirl,
some one who would ride roughshod over his susceptibilities, and even
fail to understand his feelings about things. It seemed impossible to
him that he should be able to endure any one who did not understand
his feelings about things. She might be plain, too; women with
fascinating voices were often extremely plain. And if she were neither
mature nor attractive, there could be no object in giving her another
thought; for woman, to Paul Wilton, was merely an interesting
necessity,--like his food; something to fill up the gaps that were not
occupied by work, or art, or any of the real things of life; and
something, therefore, to be taken in as delicate a manner as possible.
He liked to talk to beautiful women in picturesque surroundings,--to
play on their emotions, and to dally with their wit; but the women
had to be beautiful, and their setting had to be appropriate.

"Please do not trouble to wait," he said to Miss Esther in the
afternoon, when he found her preparing to sit with him. "I shall be
quite happy if you will have the goodness to give me the paper and the
cigarette case. Thanks."

When she had gone, having lacked the courage to tell him that tobacco
smoke had never yet polluted the sacred mustiness of the best spare
room, Paul lay back with a sense of relief, and began to review his
situation gloomily.

"How I could have made such an ass of myself, I don't know," he
murmured. "Foisting myself on complete strangers for six or seven
weeks at least! And such strangers, too! Good Lord, how shocked the
dear lady looked when I said I hadn't a relation left who cared a hang
whether I was alive or dead. I must tell her, as an antidote, that my
father was a parson; I have known that to take effect in the most
ungodly circles. Perhaps, if I could swear I should feel better. But I
am not a swearing man; besides, she might leave me to that painfully
dull maid if I did. And that would be a pity," he added reflectively;
"for, at least, she does know how to make a fellow as comfortable as a
fractured leg will let him be."

A sudden shoot of pain made him turn his head wearily on one side. He
had told the doctor, only that morning, that it was nothing, and that
he did not suffer much; and then had been unreasonably disappointed at
the professional verdict that it was a simple fracture, and presented
no complications. He would have liked to be an interesting case, at
least.

"I wonder if I am likely to get a glimpse of that jolly little girl,"
he went on, looking idly at the faded photograph opposite. "It is
probably the one who steadied my head in the dark, last night; the one
who laughs, too. A Philistine place like this could never produce two
of them. However, I shall never find out as long as I am nursed by
that dragon. And after all, why trouble about it? It shows what a
baleful effect idleness can have upon a man, when an unsophisticated
parson's daughter with a jolly laugh can--hullo!"

He heard voices on the landing, and listened eagerly. There was the
sound of a scuffle and a stifled laugh, and some one shook the door by
falling clumsily against it.

"Come in, do!" shouted Paul desperately, and the door opened with a
jerk.

"I say, did we disturb you, or anything? I'm beastly sorry; but Kitty
would rot so, and I couldn't help it, really. And, I say, I'm awfully
sorry you're so hit up."

It was Ted, apologetic and self-conscious. Paul smiled encouragingly;
it was at least some one to talk to, even if it was a boy under
twenty, for whose kind he had as a rule little sympathy. He could see
there was some one else too, on the landing outside; so he smiled a
little more. It pleased him to have his curiosity satisfied, though
perhaps he would not have liked it to be called curiosity.

"You see, Kitty will play so poorly," pursued Ted, plunging his hands
in his pockets to give himself more confidence. "I shouldn't have
dreamt of bothering you like this, if it hadn't been for Kitty."

"I am quite content to believe that it was the fault of Miss Kitty,
whose acquaintance I have not the honour of possessing," said Paul
gravely. "But won't you come in a little further, and explain
matters?"

Ted came in a good deal further, just then, assisted by an unexpected
push between his shoulders.

"It's so poor of Kitty; and it isn't my fault, I swear it isn't!" said
Ted, in an injured tone. "You see, she wants me to say--Oh, hang, Kit,
do let a fellow explain! Well, she says that--that--well, she wants to
come in too, don't you see? She doesn't see why she should have to go
and talk to horrid old men in the village, when they won't let her
come in and talk to you; at least, that's what she says. And she says
it's all rotten humbug-- Well, you know you did! But Miss Esther will
about kill me when she finds it out. Kitty never thinks of that, she's
so poor."

Paul smiled again, partly at himself for being young enough to
appreciate the childishness of the situation.

"Where is Miss Esther?" he asked, like a man, wisely.

"Oh, she's out right enough; but still--"

"Yes," said Paul reflectively, "I recognise that there are still
difficulties in the way. But don't you think, as I am decidedly as
much afflicted as the other horrid old men you mentioned, and as Miss
Esther is out, that--we might all agree to vote it rotten humbug? Just
for a few minutes, you know!"

And Katharine, who had been listening anxiously to every word,
slipped into the room at this point of the negotiations, and closed
the door; nodded cheerfully to Paul as though she had known him all
her life, and dropped sideways on the chair at the end of his bed.

"I knew you wouldn't mind," she said. "Ted declared you would; but
Ted's so awfully dense sometimes, isn't he?"

Paul was willing to admit that, on this occasion, Ted had been
remarkably dense; but he only murmured some commonplace about the
correctness of her judgment, and the honour he felt at her
discrimination.

"Oh, I _knew_!" said Katharine confidently. "I am never wrong about
people. Ted is. He makes fearful hashes about people; I always have to
tell him who is to be trusted, and who isn't."

"I should like to know," observed Paul, "how you manage to know so
much about people whom you have never seen before,--myself, for
instance!"

"But I have seen you before! Oh, I forgot; of course, you didn't know.
I was with daddy last night when he came to fetch you. Don't you
remember? I suppose you were too bad to notice much."

"That must have been it," assented Paul. "I just remember some one
supporting my head, or it may have been my shoulders--"

"It was your head. That was me!" cried Katharine, with animation.
"Wasn't Ted jealous when I told him,--that's all!"

"I wasn't," said Ted. "But it was just like Kitty. Girls always do
have all the luck."

"I am glad," said Paul drily, "that at least one of you was fortunate
enough to view my discomfiture."

Ted laughed, but Katharine became suddenly thoughtful.

"I was very sorry for you, I was really," she said.

"Oh, no, excuse me,--merely interested," said Paul.

Katharine reflected again.

"Perhaps I was; how caddish of me!" she said, and looked at him
doubtfully. Paul raised his eyebrows; to be taken seriously by a
woman, at such an early stage of her acquaintance, was a new
experience to him.

"Oh, please," he exclaimed, laughing, "don't be truthful whatever you
are! It's much more charming to think that you _were_ sorry for me."

Katharine still seemed puzzled. She turned to Ted instinctively, and
he came to her rescue.

"She thought you were awfully plucky and all that; she told me so. I
was rather sick about it, of course; but, after all, it wasn't really
worth minding because you were hit up so completely, you see."

"You are a singularly brutal pair of young people," observed Paul,
glancing from one to the other. "I should like you to have the feel of
my leg for half an hour. I fancy you would find yourselves 'hit up,'
as you are pleased to call it."

"Oh, but we're not a bit brutal," objected Katharine. "Ted never can
help saying what he thinks at the moment,--that's how it is. It's
because he shows all his feelings, don't you see?"

"You mustn't think Kitty is unfeeling because she doesn't say things,"
continued Ted. "She hates spoofing people, and she never says things
she doesn't mean. She doesn't always say them when she does mean them;
it's rather rough on a fellow sometimes, I think," he added feelingly.

The garden gate swung to, and they sprang to their feet
simultaneously.

"Shall we scoot?" asked Ted, who seemed the more apprehensive of the
two.

"I suppose so. Bother!" said Katharine regretfully. Ted was already
gone, but she still lingered. The flying visit to Paul, instead of
satisfying her curiosity about him, had only roused it still more; and
she sauntered half absently towards him, without the least pretence of
being in a hurry to go.

"Good-bye," she said, and put her hand into his. It was the first time
she had shown any signs of shyness, and Paul began to like her better.

"Not good-bye," he said lightly. "You will come in again, won't you?
We shall have a good lot to tell each other."

"Shall we?"

"Well, don't you think so?" He dropped her hand and laughed. It seemed
absurd that this child, who behaved generally like a charming tomboy,
should persist in taking him seriously when he merely wanted to
frivol.

"I'll come if it won't bore you," said Katharine shortly. She was
wondering what there was to laugh at.

"Can you write a tolerable hand?" he asked.

"I write all daddy's things for him."

"Then we'll see if something can't be arranged," he began. He
congratulated himself on his tact in helping to gratify her evident
wish to see him again; but she baffled him once more by suddenly
brightening up, and seizing upon his suggestion before he had half
formed it.

"Could I be your secretary, do you mean? Why, of course I could. What
fun! Aunt Esther? Oh, that's nothing. _I_ will manage Aunt Esther.
Good-bye."

She managed Aunt Esther very effectually at supper time, by calmly
announcing her intention of becoming Mr. Wilton's secretary. And the
Rector's sister, who was a curious compound of conventional dogma and
worldly ignorance, and knew into the bargain that it was of no use to
withstand her headstrong niece, gave in to her newest whim with a bad
grace.

"Do as you like; I am no longer the head of the house, I suppose," she
observed fretfully.

"Oh, yes, you are, Aunt Esther!" retorted Katharine with provoking
cheerfulness. "_I_ only want to be Mr. Wilton's secretary."

Paul was not so elated as she had expected to find him, when she
walked into his room in Miss Esther's wake on the following day, and
told him that she had gained her point and was ready to become his
secretary. Being such a responsive creature herself, she always
expected every one else to share her emotions.

"Aren't you glad?" she asked him anxiously.

Not being able to explain that what he wanted was not so much a
secretary as a pretty girl to amuse him, he said with his usual smile
that he was delighted, and proceeded to dictate various uninteresting
letters of a business-like character.

"So you live in the Temple," she observed, as she folded up a letter
to his housekeeper. "Isn't it a gloriously romantic place to live in?"

"It is convenient," said Paul briefly. And that was all the
conversation they had that day.

He wanted no letters written the next day, and she read the paper to
him instead. But Miss Esther stayed in the room all the time, with her
knitting, and there was no conversation that day either. On the third
day, however, her aunt was wanted in the parish; and she deputed the
Rector to take her place in the sick room. She might have known that
he would forget all about it, directly she was gone; but Miss Esther
always acted on the assumption that her brother possessed all the
excellent qualities she wished him to have, and it never occurred to
her that he would spend the afternoon in finishing his paper on the
antiquities of the county.

"Aunt Esther has gone to see a poor woman who has lost her baby. I
never can imagine why a woman who has lost her baby should be visited
just because she is poor. Can you?" said Katharine, as she settled
herself on the spare-room window-seat with her writing materials.

"No," said Paul, concealing his satisfaction that Miss Esther was of a
different opinion. "You needn't bother about writing any letters
to-day, thanks," he continued carelessly; "and I don't think I want to
hear the paper, either."

"Don't you? oh!" said Katharine, looking disappointed. "Then there's
nothing I can do for you?"

"Oh, yes. You can talk, if you will," said Paul, smiling. "Come and
sit on the chair at the end of the bed, where you sat the first day
you came in. I can see you, then."

"It is ever so much nicer to see the person you are talking to, isn't
it?" observed Katharine, as she obeyed his suggestion.

"Much nicer," assented Paul, though it had never occurred to him to
suggest that Miss Esther should occupy that particular chair. "Now
then, talk, please!"

Katharine made a sign of dismay.

"I can't," she said. "You begin."

"Who is your favourite poet?" asked Paul solemnly. She disconcerted
him by taking his question seriously, and he had to listen to her
enthusiastic eulogies of several favourite poets, before he had an
opportunity of explaining himself.

She detected him in the act of suppressing a yawn, and she stopped
suddenly, in the middle of a sentence.

"I believe I am boring you dreadfully. Shall I go?" she asked. The
colour had come into her cheeks, and her voice had a note of distress
in it.

"I want you to tell me something, first," was his unexpected reply.
"Do you talk about poetry to young Morton?"

"Ted? Why, no, of course not. What an awful reflection! Ted isn't a
bit poetic, not a little bit; and he would scoff like anything. I have
never talked about the things I really like to anybody before; not
even to daddy, much."

This was a little dangerous, and the tomboy daughter of the parson was
not the kind of personality that was likely to make the danger
fascinating. And Paul's first impulse was to wince at the unstudied
frankness of her remark; but four days of seclusion had been
exceedingly chastening, and the flattery that underlay her words was
not unpleasing to him.

"Then what made you suppose _I_ cared about poetry, eh?" he asked
deliberately.

"Why," said Katharine, staring at him, "you began it, don't you
remember? I thought you wanted me to tell you what I thought."

"Yes, yes; I am aware of that. But don't you think we have talked
enough about poetry for one day?" said Paul, half closing his eyes. He
was already regretting his stupidity in expecting her to understand
him.

"How awfully funny you are! First you say--"

"Yes," said Paul, as patiently as he could, "I know. Don't let us say
any more about it. Supposing you were to talk to me now as you would
talk to young Morton, for instance!"

Katharine shook her head doubtfully.

"I don't think I could. You're not like Ted; you don't like the same
sort of things. You're not like me, either."

Paul smiled grimly.

"We're both the same in reality, Miss Kitty. Only, you are focussing
it from one end, and I from another. I mean, you are too abominably
young and I am too abominably old, for conversation. We shall have to
keep to the favourite poets, after all."

Katharine had come round to the side of the bed, and was regarding him
critically, with a very serious look on her face.

"What is the matter?" she asked abruptly. "I hate people to say they
are old--when they are nice people. It makes me feel horrid; I don't
like it. I never let daddy talk about growing old; it gives me a sort
of cold feel, don't you know? I wish you wouldn't. Besides, I am not
young, either; I am nearly nineteen. I know I look much younger,
because I won't put my hair up; but my skirts are nearly to the
ground. What makes you say I am too young to be talked to?"

"I said you were too young for conversation. It is not quite the same
thing, is it?"

"Isn't it?" said Katharine, and she looked away out of the window for
a full minute. What she saw there she could not have told, but it was
something that had never been there before. When she brought her eyes
round again to his face, the serious look had gone out of them, and
they were twinkling with fun. "I know!" she laughed. "Let's talk
without any conversation."

"She's the same woman, after all," was Paul's reflection.

They did not mention the favourite poets again; but they had no
difficulty for the rest of the afternoon in finding something to talk
about. It was getting late when the garden gate gave its usual
warning, and Katharine got up with a sigh.

"When shall I see you again?" he asked. They had not gone through the
formality of shaking hands, this time.

"When Aunt Esther has _not_ gone to see a poor woman who has lost her
baby," said Katharine, laughing.

"Nonsense! we will keep the letters and the newspaper for that kind of
visit. Won't some one else die, don't you think, so that we can have
another talk?"

"I'll see," said Katharine, which could not strictly be called an
answer to his question. But it fully satisfied Paul.




CHAPTER IV


The weeks crept on; and Paul Wilton, from being merely an object of
interest and pity, gradually became the greatest mystery in the
neighbourhood. Such a reputation was entirely unsought on his part,
although, had he been aware of it, the probability is that it would
not have been wholly unpleasing to him. For it had been his pose
through life to mystify people,--not by deliberately assuming to be
what he was not, but by strenuously avoiding any appearance of what he
was; and his indifference, which was what people first noticed in him,
was entirely feigned for the purpose of concealing that his real
attitude towards life was a critical one. It was not unreasonable that
a man of this calibre, suddenly placed in a quiet country parish,
should end in making some sort of a sensation there. Miss Esther from
the beginning had suffered much, and silently; but a man who had a
father in Crockford and a mother in Debrett, was to be forgiven a
good deal, and she felt compelled to overlook even the ash of his
cigarettes, and his French novels, when she found them both on the
chaste counterpane of the best spare-room bed. But there were others
in Ivingdon who, not having much of a pedigree themselves, were
inclined to undervalue the importance of one; and some of these, the
doctor, for instance, and Peter Bunce the churchwarden, came to the
Rector for enlightenment.

"Eh, but he doan't give hisself away much, do he, now?" said the
churchwarden, jerking his thumb in the direction of the lame man, who
had just swung himself past the window on his crutches. "He be proper
close, I reckon, eh?"

"He is a very intelligent young man," said the Rector vaguely. "He has
quite an appreciation of Oriental china."

It was Sunday afternoon, and the Rector was dispensing whiskey and
cigars to his guests, with a prodigality that might have been
attributed to Miss Esther's absence at the Sunday school. There was an
ease, too, about their manners and their conversation, which was to be
traced to the same cause.

"I suppose he's beastly clever, and all that, isn't he?" asked Ted
morosely. He was sitting on the window ledge, a convenient position
which allowed him to shout occasional answers to the questions that
came from Katharine on the other side of the lawn. Just then, however,
she was joined by Paul; and Ted knew instinctively that he would have
no more questions to answer after that.

"It is difficult to say what he is," observed the doctor. "You can't
get him to talk; at least, not much. Generally, when I've done all the
professional business, he relapses into total silence, and I just have
to go; but sometimes he is inclined to be chatty, and then he makes a
delightful companion. But the odd thing is, that I know no more about
the man himself at the end of a conversation than I did at the
beginning. A barrister, did you say he was? That accounts for the
judicial manner, then; but the question is, what is there behind it
all?"

No one seemed to have an answer ready to the doctor's question; but
Peter Bunce took a long pull at the whiskey, and brushed the cigar ash
from his capacious waistcoat, and attacked the subject with fresh
vigour.

"There ain't no finding out anything about no one, without you take a
bit o' trouble," he remarked wisely. "Mayhap Mr. Austen, yonder,
might know a something more than us folk. Hasn't he got never a
father, now? There's a won'erful lot to be gathered from knowing of a
man's father, there is. Like enough he's one o' they London folk, as
daren't speak aloud for fear of its getting into the newspapers.
London folk is mighty well watched, so I've heard; there's never a
moment's peace or safety in London, some say. Mayhap Mr. Wilton's
father is a London gen'leman, now!"

"His father?" said the Rector, with sudden enthusiasm. "His father was
something short of a genius, sir! He is the best authority we have on
the numismatics of his neighbourhood. Have you never heard of Wilton's
'Copper Tokens'?"

"Guess we have, sir, pretty often," laughed Ted.

The Rector looked pathetic, and handed him another cigar, with an
apprehension that arose from the distant clang of the garden gate.

"They all laugh at me," he said in a cheery tone that evoked no one's
pity. "I'm an old fool; oh, yes, we know all about that. But if you
had read Wilton's 'Copper Tokens,' you wouldn't want to know who this
man's father was. Let me see,--what did I do with my Crockford?"

"I expect you thought it was a hymn-book and carted it up to church
this morning," said Ted, in a tone of forced merriment. He still had
one eye on the lawn, and what he saw there did not raise his spirits.

"Died at the age of fifty-eight, when his son was a lad of eighteen,
he tells me," continued the Rector. "That was the same date that the
fifth edition of the 'Copper Tokens' was issued, some ten or fifteen
years ago now. Bless me, how time flies when we're not growing any
younger!"

For the space of a moment or two, everybody present was occupied with
a mental calculation. The churchwarden was the first to give up the
attempt, and he returned doggedly to the original topic.

"Age ain't got nothing to do with it," he began, heaving a sigh of
relief as he substituted his pipe for the unusual cigar. "'Cause why?
Some folk's old when they're young, and other folk's young when
they're old; that's where it lays, you see."

Nobody did see; but Ted threw in a vicious comment.

"The Lord only knows how old he is, but he's as played out as they
make them," he said.

The churchwarden smiled, without understanding, and Cyril Austen was
too deep in his Crockford to hear what was passing; but the doctor had
been young himself, not so long ago, and he understood.

"Does he talk about leaving?" he asked in a casual manner, directing
his remark to the boy on the window ledge. "There's nothing to keep
him here now, as far as I can see."

"Don't know anything about him," said Ted, with a studied
indifference. "I should have thought, from the way Kitty speaks of
him, that London couldn't do without him for another moment. What they
all see in him, I don't know. I suppose it's because I'm such a rotten
ass, but he seems just like anybody else to me as far as brains are
concerned. And he can't talk for nuts. But Miss Esther says his family
is all square; and that's enough for the women, I suppose."

The doctor nodded sympathetically, and Ted laughed as if he were a
little ashamed of taking himself so seriously.

"He's going to make himself scarce on Wednesday," he continued, rather
more cordially. "He's got a pal of his coming down on business
to-morrow, and they're going off together. Good thing, too, eh? Don't
know anything about the pal--he's not any great shakes, I expect; but
Wilton swears he knows a lot about coins, and of course that will
fetch the Rector. Fact is, this place is getting too clever for me.
There's Kitty, who rots about poetry and things till it makes you
sick. She never used to; and it's no good her trying to spoof you that
she isn't altered, because she is,--and all for the sake of a chap
like Wilton, who hardly ever opens his mouth! It's so poor, isn't it?"

But here the arrival of Miss Esther postponed any further discussion
of the Rectory guest. The doctor suddenly remembered that he had a
patient to visit, and took an abrupt departure; and the churchwarden
refused a curt invitation to tea, and went hastily after him. Ted
lingered a moment or two, without being noticed at all; and Miss
Esther, having successfully routed her brother's guests, went into the
garden to disturb the conversation on the other side of the lawn.

Some two days later, Paul Wilton and his friend from London were
pacing up and down the narrow strip of gravel path that skirted the
house on the south side. In the absence of Katharine, who had induced
him to prolong the period of helplessness, as he would have wished to
prolong any other pleasurable sensation, Paul had no reason to play
the invalid; and, except for an occasional limp, there was nothing in
his walk to indicate lameness. There was the usual inexplicable smile
on his face, however, as he listened to the bantering conversation of
the man at his side, and occasionally interrupted it with one of his
dry, terse remarks. His companion was a little elderly man, with small
features and a fresh complexion, whose geniality was the result of
temperament rather than of principle, and whose conversation was toned
with a personal refrain that made it naïvely amusing.

"That's a pretty child, by the way," he was saying, with the air of a
connoisseur. Katharine had just left them, and they could hear her
laughing with her father indoors. Paul murmured an assent, and went on
smoking. His companion glanced at him sideways, and smiled gently.

"Very pretty," he repeated, "but ridiculously young. And who is the
charming boy who is so gone on her? She doesn't see it a bit, and he
hasn't the pluck to tell her. I'm quite sorry for that boy; I've been
in his shoes many a time, and I know what it feels like. He's got a
lot to teach her, that's certain, eh? Doesn't interest you, I suppose!
If it had been me, now, chained here with a broken leg and nothing to
do, with an idyllic love story going on under my eyes--ah, well! you
are not made that way, and I am too old, I suppose. Besides, in spite
of her charm, she isn't exactly my style."

"No," said Paul; "she is not your style."

"All the same, she's remarkably pretty, and I'm not too old to admire
a pretty woman," chuckled his companion. "'Pon my word, I'm quite
inclined to envy that boy. Just imagine a veritable woman, still
thinking herself a child, with a delightful boy for her only
companion, and no one to stand between them! I'd have given worlds for
such a chance when I was his age."

"But, you see, you are not his age; so it is no use trying to cut him
out. Besides, you ought to know better, Heaton, at your time of life,"
said Paul, in a jesting manner that was a little strained. Heaton took
his remark rather as a compliment than otherwise.

"You won't alter me, my boy; you'll find me the same to the end of the
chapter,--so make up your mind to that. I'm not ashamed of it either,
not I! Seriously, though, I'm quite interested in our little love
story yonder. I should like to help that boy. Silly ass! why doesn't
he make a plunge for it? He isn't likely to have a rival."

"Perhaps that is why he doesn't," observed Paul. "But I don't see why
we should trouble ourselves about it."

"That's where you're so cynical," complained Heaton. "These little
affairs always interest me intensely; they bring back my youth to me,
and remind me of my lost happiness. Oh, life! what you once held for
me! And now it is all gone, buried with my two sweet wives, and I am
left alone with no one to care what becomes of me."

His eyes were moist as he finished speaking, and Paul walked along at
his side without offering any consolation. He would have found it
difficult to explain why he had chosen Laurence Heaton for a friend.
It would be more correct to say, perhaps, that Heaton had chosen him,
and that he had lacked the energy or the power to shake him off. It
was generally true that his sentimental egotism bored Paul
excessively, and yet he found something to like in a nature that was
so unlike his own; and he was so secretive himself that the artless
confidences of Heaton, if a little wearisome, at least relieved him of
the necessity of adding to the conversation. Besides this, he was a
man who never willingly sought the friendship of others, and the
obvious preference that the good-natured idler, who was so many years
his elder, had shown for him when they first met at a public dinner,
had secretly flattered him not a little, and their acquaintance had
grown after that as a matter of course.

"All the same," resumed Heaton in his ordinary manner, "an outsider
never can do much in these cases. Perhaps it would be better to leave
them alone; and yet, if the boy were to come to me for the benefit of
my larger experience--"

"Don't you think," interrupted Paul, "that we have talked about a
couple of children as much as we need? It's all very well for an old
reprobate like yourself to spend your time in reviving your lost
youth, but I haven't so much leisure as you have, and I want to hear
about those shares you mentioned in your letter last week."

Heaton laughed good-humouredly.

"You don't realise, my dear fellow, how anything like that always
interests me. But you wait until your time comes; at present you are
too cynical to understand what I mean."

"Or too romantic," suggested Paul.

"Oh, no!" said Heaton. "Romance is only an equivalent for
inexperience; I think you're a cold-hearted beggar who lets the best
things in life go by, but I shouldn't call you inexperienced. You've
got a finished way with women that always appeals to them; women love
a little humbug, if it's well done. I'm too obvious for them, too
simple-minded, and that always frightens them off."

"Does it?" smiled Paul.

"Now, you ought to marry," continued Heaton briskly. "I believe in
marriage, hanged if I don't! and it's been the making of me.
Everything that is good in me I owe to my married life."

"Did it really take two marriages?" murmured Paul. His companion
smiled at the joke against himself, and they stood for a moment in
silence, looking over the lawn that had just acquired its fresh bloom
of green. Katharine's voice came out to them again through the open
window, this time raised in indignant dispute with her aunt.

"She is a curious mixture of hardness and sentiment," said Paul
involuntarily, "and her surroundings have made her a prig; but she
interests me rather."

"Ah," said Heaton, "I quite agree with you. There _is_ a touch of the
prig about her. But can you wonder? She is the only bit of life and
prettiness about the place, and she never meets her equal. They think
a good lot of her, too. And the parson's daughter generally thinks a
good lot of herself."

"She does it rather charmingly," said Paul, in a dispassionate tone,
"and she is fairly well read, and knows how to express herself. For a
woman, she has quite a sense of criticism."

"That's bad," said Heaton decidedly, "very bad. A woman should have no
sense of criticism. That is what makes her a prig. In fact, as I have
often said to you before, a prig is made in three ways. First of all,
she is made by her own people, if she happens to be clever; and
secondly, by the world, if she happens to be successful; and thirdly,
by her lover, if she isn't in love with him. But of course if she _is_
in love with him he may be the cause of her unmaking."

Some one in a light-coloured print frock jumped out of a side window
and disappeared in the direction of the summer-house. The two men
stood and looked after her without being noticed.

"As you say," remarked Heaton blandly, "she does it rather
charmingly."

Paul roused himself with an effort.

"Half-past three," he said, looking at his watch. "Didn't you promise
to go and look at the Rector's coins some time this afternoon?"

And in another five minutes he had joined Katharine in the
summer-house.




CHAPTER V


The summer house was set far back in the shrubbery, and although
hidden from the house by laurels and box-trees, was open at the front
to a stretch of brightly coloured flower beds and trimly cut grass. It
was a glorious day in May, and spring in its fulness was come. The
white fruit blossoms had given place to crumpled green leaves, and the
early summer flowers were in bud. Paul Wilton lay on a low basket
chair, where he had flung himself down after making his escape from
his garrulous friend; and at his feet, with an open book on her lap,
sat Katharine. Obviously, a great many poor women had lost a great
many babies, since the day she had sat on the chair at the end of his
bed and talked about her favourite poets, for the book on her lap was
only a pretence to which neither of them paid the least attention, and
their conversation was of a purely personal nature, the kind of
conversation that has no subject and no epigrams, and is carried on in
half-finished sentences.

"I am beginning to understand why you don't paint or write or do
things, although you know such a lot about them," observed Katharine,
half closing her eyes and making a picture of the square of sunlit
garden as she saw it framed in the woodwork of the summer-house door.

Paul smiled. It was very pleasant to be told by this child of Nature
that he knew "such a lot about things."

"Tell me why," was all he said, however.

"I think it is because it puts you in a position to criticise every
one else. It makes you so superior, in a sort of way. Oh, bother! I
never can explain things. But don't you see, if you were a painter
yourself, you couldn't say that there was only one painter living, as
you do now. Could you?"

"Perhaps I could," said Paul, and laughed gently at her look of
surprise.

"Of course I know you are only laughing at me," she said in an injured
tone. "You never think I am serious about anything."

"My dear Miss Katharine," he assured her, "on the contrary, I think
you are most terribly serious about everything. I have never had so
much serious conversation since I was nineteen myself. You will have
to grow older, before you learn to be young and frivolous."

"But _you_ are not frivolous," she protested. "You know you are not.
You only say that to tease me."

"I only say it to convince you. It is not my fault if you do not
understand, is it?"

"I do understand, I am certain I do. At least"--she paused suddenly,
and looked at him with one of her long critical looks. "Perhaps you
are right, and I don't understand you a bit. How queer! I don't think
I like the feel of it." She ended with a little gesture of distaste.

"I shouldn't bother about it, if I were you," said Paul calmly. "You
will understand better when you are older--and younger. Meanwhile, it
is very pleasant, don't you think?"

She was leaning forward with her hands folded under her chin, and did
not answer him.

"What made you choose to be a barrister?" she asked suddenly.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Merely because it presented greater opportunities for idleness than
any other profession, I suppose."

Katharine swung herself round on her low stool, and looked at him
incredulously.

"But don't you ever want to _do_ anything,--you with all your brains
and your talents?" she cried impatiently. "Surely you must have some
ambition?"

"Oh, no," replied Paul, arranging the cushions at the back of his head
and sinking down on them again. "I hope I shall always be comfortable,
that's all; and I have enough money for that, thank the Lord!"

"Supposing you had been poor?"

"Don't suppose it," rejoined Paul; and her puzzled features relaxed
into a smile.

"I can't think why you have a face like that, then," she said
reflectively.

"What's the matter with my face? Does it suggest possibilities? To
think that I might have been a minor poet all these years, without
knowing it!"

Katharine returned to her examination of the flower beds; and Paul lay
back, and blew rings of smoke into the air, and watched her through
them with an amused look on his face. He recalled some casual words of
Heaton's which had annoyed him very much at the time,--"If I'm not in
love with a woman, I don't want to give her another thought;" and he
glanced at her slim waist as she sat there, and tried lazily to
analyse his own feelings towards her.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked, turning round again.

"About you," he said, and brought his feet lightly to the ground and
sat up and stretched himself.

"What about me?" she asked curiously.

"I am wondering if you will miss me very much when I am gone," he
said, and slid slowly along the chair until he sat behind her, where
he could just see her rounded profile as she turned her face away from
him.

"Oh, yes, awfully! I wish, I do wish you were not going!" She was
looking very hard at the flower beds now.

"So do I, Miss Katharine. It has been quite delightful; I shall never
forget your sweet care of me. But you will soon forget all about me.
And besides, there is Ted."

"What has that got to do with it?" she asked swiftly.

"Oh, nothing, surely! It was merely an inconsequent reflection on my
part."

There was a pause for a few moments.

"Talk," he said suddenly, and put his hand gently against her cheek.
It warmed under his touch, and he heard the tremor in her voice as
she spoke.

"I--I can't talk. Oh, please don't!"

"Can't you? Try."

She put her hand up to his, and he caught hold of her fingers, and
dropped a light kiss on them as they lay crumpled up on his palm. Then
he pressed them slightly, and let them go, and walked away to the
house without looking at her again. His countenance was as unmoved as
if he had just been talking archæology to the Rector; but his
reflections seemed absorbing, and he hardly roused himself to move
aside when Ted came lounging out of the house and ran against him in
the porch.

"Hullo!" said Ted. "I'm awfully sorry; I didn't see you, really."

"Oh, no matter!" said Paul, who, never being guilty of a clumsy action
himself, could afford to remain undisturbed. "Miss Katharine's in the
summer house," he added, in answer to Ted's disconsolate look. "We've
been reading Browning. At least, Miss Katharine out of her goodness
has been trying to make a convert of me. I am afraid I was an
unappreciative listener."

Ted glanced inquiringly at him. Somehow, it was not so easy to
disapprove of Paul to his face as it was behind his back.

"How poor!" he said sympathetically. "Kitty does play so cheap,
sometimes, doesn't she? Browning is enough to give you the hump, I
should think. But she never does that to me."

"Probably," said Paul, disengaging a cigarette paper; "she would not
feel the same necessity in your case. You would have greater
facilities for conversation, I mean. Won't you have a cigarette?"

Ted looked towards the shrubbery, but lingered as though the
invitation commended itself to him.

"I think I'll have a pipe, if it's all the same to you. May I try that
'baccy of yours? Thanks, awfully!"

They sat down on opposite sides of the little porch, and puffed away
in silence.

"You haven't been over much, lately," observed Paul presently.

Ted glanced at him again, but was disarmed by his tone of
friendliness.

"No," he said. "At least, I was over once or twice last week, but I
never got a look in with Kitty. I mean," he added hastily, "she was
out, or something."

"Ah!" said Paul indifferently; "that was unfortunate."

"It was a howling nuisance," said Ted, his troubled look returning.
"The truth is," he went on, feeling a desire for a confidant to be
stronger than his distrust of Paul, "there's something I've been
trying to tell Kit for a whole week, and for the life of me I can't
get it out."

"Going to make a fool of himself at the very start," thought Paul.

"You see," continued Ted with an effort, "_she_ has been playing up
so, lately."

"Your mother?" questioned Paul.

Ted nodded.

"And now she's got me a confounded berth in some place in the
city,--candles, or grocery, or something beastly. It's the poorest
thing I ever heard. And I've got to start on Thursday, so I must leave
home to-morrow. And Kitty doesn't know; that's the devil, you see."

"I'm sorry," said Paul gravely.

"Got it through some cousin of my father's," Ted went on in his
aggrieved voice. "No one but a cousin of one's father ever hears of
such rotten jobs. Said it would be the making of me, or some rot. I've
heard that before; the men who never did a stroke of work themselves
always talk that sort of cheapness. Have to be there at half-past
eight in the morning, too, blow it!"

"I'm sorry," said Paul again. He began to feel a vague interest in the
boy as he sat opposite and stretched his long legs out to their full
length, and jerked out his complaints with the brier between his
teeth.

"_She_ thinks it such great shakes, too; just because she won't have
to keep me any longer. She ought never to have had a son like me; I
wasn't meant for such beastly work. Why was I born? Why was I?"

"The parents of the human animal are never selected," said Paul, for
the sake of saying something.

"I know I'm a fool,--_she's_ told me that often enough; so I don't
expect to get anything awfully decent. But why did they educate me as
a gentleman? They should have sent me to a board school, and then I
should have been a bounder myself, and nothing would have mattered.
What's the use of being a gentleman and a fool? That's what I am; and
Kit's the only person in the world who doesn't make me feel it, bless
her!"

Paul threw away his cigarette, and made a sudden resolve. He was
amused, in spite of himself, at the very youthful pessimism in Ted's
remarks; and for a moment he felt almost anxious that the boy should
not spoil his career by a false start. There was something novel, too,
in his playing the part of counsellor, and Paul Wilton was never
averse to a new sensation. So he leaned forward and tapped his
companion on the knee with his long, pointed forefinger.

"You may send me to the devil, if you like," he said with his placid
smile, "but I should like to give you a word of advice first. May I?"

Ted looked more depressed than before, but he did not seem surprised.

"Fire ahead!" he said sadly. "I can stand an awful lot. People have
always given me advice, ever since I was a kid; it's the only thing
they ever have given me."

"I don't suppose it is my business at all," said Paul, making another
cigarette with the elaborate precision he always spent on trifles;
"but I've seen so many nice chaps ruined through a mistake in early
life, and I know one or two things, and I'm older than you, too. Now,
how do you mean to tell that child over there that you are going
away?"

Ted started.

"What do you mean?" he asked. But his lower lip was twitching
nervously, and his colour had deepened.

"Well, this is what I mean. Given an emotional creature like that, who
has never seen any man but you, and a young, impetuous fellow like
yourself, going to say good-bye to her for an indefinite
period,--well, you are both extremely likely to arrive at one
conclusion; and my advice to you is,--Don't."

Ted said nothing, but continued to stare at the tesselated floor. The
elder man rose to his feet, and restored the match box to his pocket.

"I nearly did it myself once," he said; "but I didn't."

Ted looked him thoughtfully up and down.

"I shouldn't think you did," he said, with unconscious sarcasm. Then
he too rose slowly to his feet, and stood on the doorstep for a
moment, with his hands in his pockets. "I think you're a confounded
cynical brute," he said rather breathlessly, "but I believe you're
right, and I won't."

And he walked across the lawn to the shrubbery with the air of a man
on whose decision depends the fate of nations.

Paul frowned slightly, as he always did when he was thinking deeply,
and then threw off his preoccupation with a laugh. Even when he was
alone, he liked to preserve his attitude of nonchalance.

"How have I contrived to fall among such an appallingly serious set of
infants?" he muttered. "Hey-day! here's for London and life!" And he
turned indoors to look for a time-table.

Ted stalked straight into the summer house, with his head in the air
and his mind filled with high-souled resolutions. Any one less
occupied with his own reflections would have seen that Katharine was
sitting with an absent look in her eyes, while the book she held in
her hand was open at the index-page. But Ted only saw in her the woman
he had just sworn within him to respect; and he took the book
reverently out of her hand, and sat down, also just behind her, on the
end of the basket chair. It was the same basket chair.

"Kitty, I say," he began, clearing his throat, "I've come to tell you
something."

Katharine glanced at his solemn face, and looked away again. She
wished he had not sat just there.

"It must have something to do with a funeral, then," she said, with a
flippancy that would have aroused the suspicions of a more observant
person. But Ted was still absorbed in his high-souled resolutions, and
her abstraction failed to make any impression on him.

"No, it hasn't," he rejoined gloomily. "I wish it had! I shouldn't
mind being dead, not I! It would cure this hump, anyhow. Perhaps some
one would be sorry, then; don't know who would, though! _She_'d only
complain of the expense of burying me."

"Poor old man, who has been bullying you now?" asked Katharine, in a
dreamy voice that she strove to make interested. "Has _she_ been doing
anything fresh?"

"Has she, that's all! She's been doing something to some purpose, this
time. Got me a beastly job, in a beastly city place; a pound a week;
soap, or wholesale clothing, or something poor. Says I ought to be
thankful to get anything. Thankful indeed! _She_ never shows a spark
of gratitude for her bally seven hundred a year, I know."

"Oh, Ted! every one is going away. What shall I do?" The words escaped
her involuntarily. But he was still too full of his own troubles to
notice anything except that she seemed distressed; and this, of
course, was only natural.

"I knew you'd be cut up," he said, kicking savagely at the leg of the
chair. "You're the only chap who cares; and you'll forget when I've
been gone a week. Oh, yes, you will! I ought never to have been born.
They're sure to be rank outsiders, too; and I can stand anything
sooner than bounders. It's too beastly caddish for words, and I'd like
to kill him for his rotten advice. What does he know about anything, a
played-out chap like that?"

Ted's conversation was apt to become involved when he was agitated;
but on this occasion Katharine made no attempt to unravel it.

"Poor Ted," she murmured tonelessly, and continued to think about
something else.

"I don't know why you are so cut up about it. I'm such a rotten ass,
and you're so infernally smart! I haven't any right to expect you to
care a hang about me; I won't even ask you to write to me, when I'm
gone," cried Ted, making desperate efforts to keep his high-souled
resolutions. "It's a rotten, caddish world, and I'm the rottenest fool
in it."

He waited for the contradiction that always came from Katharine at
this point of his self-abasement; but when she said nothing, and only
went on staring in the opposite direction, he felt that there was
something unusually wrong, and came hastily round to the front of her
chair and repeated his last remark with emphasis.

"You may say what you like, but I am. All the same, I would sooner
chuck the whole show than make you unhappy. I'll be hanged if I don't
go away to-morrow without a single--" He stopped abruptly; for she was
looking up at him piteously, and his high-souled resolutions suddenly
melted into oblivion. "Kitty, old chum, don't cry! I'm not worth
it,--on my soul I'm not; blowed if I've ever seen you cry before! Good
old Kit, I say, don't. Oh, the devil! Do you really mind so much?"

"Please, Ted, go away; you don't understand; go away; it isn't that at
all! Don't, Ted, don't! Oh, dear, whatever made me cry?" gasped
Katharine. But Ted would take no denial: a woman's tears would have
disarmed him, even if he had not been in love with her; and Katharine,
the tomboyish companion of years, appeared to him in a strangely
lovable light as she sobbed into her hands and made the feeblest
efforts to keep him away. His arms were round her in a moment, and
her head was pulled down on his shoulder, and he poured a medley of
broken sentences into her ear.

"How was I to know you cared, old chum? Of course I have always cared;
but I never thought about it until that played-out London chap turned
up and put it into my head. Dear old Kitty! Why, do you know, I was
half afraid you were going to like him, one time; wasn't I a rotten
ass? But, you see, you're so bally clever, and all that; and I
supposed he was, too, and so I thought,--don't you see? And all the
while, it was me! Buck up, Kit! I won't split that you cried, on my
honour I won't. Oh, I say, I'm the most confoundedly lucky chap-- But,
oh, that infernal office in the city!"

Katharine disengaged herself at last. His kisses seemed to burn into
her cheeks. She pushed back the basket chair into the corner of the
summer-house, and put her fingers over her eyes to shut out the flower
beds and the sunlight.

"Stop, Ted! I don't know what you mean. You must not think those
things of me; they are simply not true. I can't let you kiss me like
that. Has the world gone suddenly mad, this afternoon? I don't
understand what has happened to every one. I don't understand
anything. Will you go, please, Ted? If you won't, I--I must."

She forced out the disjointed sentences in hard, passionless tones.
Ted stood absolutely still where she left him, and watched her stumble
through the doorway and disappear among the laurel bushes and the old
box-trees. Then he rumpled up his thick hair with both his hands, and
laughed aloud.

"I ought never to have been born," he said, and his voice broke.




CHAPTER VI


On a foggy morning in the beginning of the following January, Ted
Morton strolled out of his bedroom shortly before eight o'clock, and
rang the bell for breakfast. He yawned as though he were only half
awake, and swore gently at the weather as he stirred up the fire to
make a blaze.

"What an infernal day!" he muttered, and pulled down the blind and
lighted the gas. The housekeeper brought in his breakfast and his
letters, and wisely withdrew without saying anything. Ted took the lid
off the teapot, and examined the three envelopes in turn. His face
brightened a little as he came to the third, and he buttered some
toast and ate it standing.

"Well, I'm hanged! Not a single bill, and one from Kit, good old Kit!
That'll wait, and that. Well, I can stand hers; it's sure to be funny,
at all events."

He put on one boot, and then stood up again and read her letter, with
a large cup of tea in his right hand. The smile on his face faded
gradually as he read, and he looked almost thoughtful when he folded
it up again and placed it in his breast-pocket. He was staunch in his
belief that Katharine could do no wrong, but her latest idea went far
to shake his conviction.

"You see, it is like this," her letter ran.

     "There is plenty of money, really, but we have to behave as
     though there were none; so the effect is the same, it seems to
     me. I never thought about it before; I only found it out by
     accident, when I overheard Aunt Esther abusing daddy for
     buying some old architectural books. It seems as though he
     really does spend a good lot, without knowing it; but then,
     why shouldn't he? I won't have daddy bullied, so that I should
     have enough bread and butter to eat; it is sordid and
     horrible. They don't say a word about my earning my own
     living, but that is what they are driving me to do; it seems
     ridiculous that I should make other people uncomfortable by
     being here, when there is plenty of money in the world waiting
     to be earned by some one. Don't you think so? But when I said
     I would come up to London and give lessons, Aunt Esther had
     heroics, and said I should kill her. She didn't say how, and
     I'm sure I did not feel particularly murderous; I only wanted
     to laugh, while she lay on the sofa and said I was undutiful
     for trying to save her anxiety! I don't understand parents.
     They hide everything from you, and behave as if they were
     wealthy; then they abuse you for costing so much to keep; and
     then, when you say you will keep yourself, they call you
     undutiful. There is no doubt that if we were to send away one
     of the servants, I should be able to stay at home; but Aunt
     Esther would have a fit at the idea. It seems to me that we
     spend half our income in trying to persuade people of the
     existence of the other half. Anyhow, I am coming up at once to
     look for work. I haven't told daddy yet, and don't know how I
     am going to; he will be so dreadfully cut up at losing me. But
     I am sure he will understand; he is the one person who always
     has understood. And won't it be glorious when I have earned
     enough money to give him everything he wants? About rooms: I
     saw an advertisement of some, a few doors from you. Do you
     know them? I thought it would be rather nice to be near you,"
     etc., etc.

Ted answered her letter the same evening. Writing letters was always a
labour to him, but he toiled over this one more than usual.

     "Of course you know what you are playing at," he wrote, "but I
     believe it is awfully hard to get anything to do. London is
     packed with people trying to find work; and most of them don't
     find it. As to the rooms, it would be beastly jolly to have
     you so close, but I don't advise your coming here; this street
     pals on to Regent Street, you know, and it isn't supposed to
     be pleasant for a girl. I will explain more fully when I see
     you. Let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm a rotten
     ass at expressing myself, as you know; but it will be awfully
     decent to have you to take about. Only I don't like the idea
     of your grinding away alone; it's rotten enough for a man, but
     it's miles worse for a woman. Write again soon. It _is_ a
     life, isn't it?"

It was nearly a fortnight before he heard from her again, and he felt
guiltily conscious of not having encouraged her as much as she
expected. Then came another letter, in her small, firm handwriting;
and he tore it open anxiously.

     "I am coming up by the 4.55 on Wednesday," she wrote. "Will
     you meet me? I thought perhaps you might, as it is a late
     train. Oh, Ted, I feel so old and different somehow; I don't
     believe I _could_ climb into that pantry window now! Daddy
     took it so strangely; he hardly said anything at all. Do you
     think it is possible that he really does not love me as much
     as I love him? And I mind leaving him so much that it quite
     hurts every time he asks me to do anything for him. Why was I
     made to like people more than they like me? Why, I believe
     daddy was rather relieved than otherwise. And I thought he
     would never be able to do without me! Am I very conceited, I
     wonder? But indeed, I do believe he will miss me dreadfully
     when I am gone. Aunt Esther won't speak to me at all; I feel
     in disgrace, without having done anything wrong. Parents are
     inexplicable; they seem to grow tired of us as we grow up,
     just like birds! And they persist in treating us like
     children, while they are forcing us to behave as if we were
     grown up; I can't understand them, or anything. Things seem to
     be going all wrong, everywhere. I have heard of a sort of home
     for working gentlewomen, near Edgware Road; it seems
     respectable, and it is certainly cheap. They have left me to
     arrange everything, just as though I were going to do
     something wicked. And I thought all the while I was doing
     something so splendid and heroic! You will meet me, won't you?
     I feel so forlorn and miserable."

Ted wrote back immediately:--

     "It is a beastly rotten world. Neither of us ought to have
     been born. I will cut the office and meet you. Buck up."

And the following Wednesday saw him on the platform at Euston, trying
to find Katharine in the crowd of passengers who were pouring out of
the 4.55 train. It was not long before he discovered her, looking very
unlike her surroundings, and pointing out her luggage, half
apologetically, to a porter who seemed inclined to patronise her.
There was an exaggerated air of self-possession in her bearing, which
did not conceal her provincial look and rather showed that she felt
less composed than she wished to appear. Ted examined her for a moment
doubtfully, and then made his way towards her. He had not seen her
once since she left him in the summer-house, eight months ago; and he
was amazed at himself for not feeling more disturbed at meeting her
again now. Perhaps her prosaic winter clothing helped to rob the
occasion of romance; for, in his mind, he had vaguely expected to find
her wearing the garden hat and print frock in which he had last seen
her. But when she turned round and saw him, the frank pleasure in her
face was the same as it had always been, and the episode that had been
enacted in the summer-house seemed all at once to be blotted out of
their past.

"You dear old boy, I knew you'd come! I feel so awfully out of it, in
this noise! Do make that porter understand I want to get across to
Gower Street, will you? He seems confused. I don't speak a different
language, do I? Just look at that glorious pair of bays; but, oh, what
a shame to give them bearing-reins! Why, Ted, what a swell you are in
that frock coat; you look just like the vet. at Stoke on Sundays! Oh,
I'm so sorry; I forgot! I want to get to Edgware Road, you see, and I
thought--"

"Oh, we'll cab it, then! Nonsense! it isn't a bit cheaper, only
nastier. Girls never understand these things. Hadn't you better get
in, instead of examining the points of the horse? It won't stand any
quieter than that, if that's your idea."

The porter went off with a handsome gratuity, and Katharine settled
herself in her corner of the cab, and began to examine her companion.

"You've altered a little bit, Ted," she observed. "You're not so
afraid of unimportant people as you used to be. I believe you would go
into the post office at Stoke for your own stamps, now, instead of
sending me because the girl laughed at you. Do you remember? You are
such a swell, too; how you must be getting on at that place!"

"Oh, I don't think so. I don't want to get on there; no decent chap
would," said Ted, and Katharine changed the conversation.

"The streets seem very full," she said, as they came to a block in the
traffic.

"Up to the brim," said Ted laconically. "I always wonder the horses
don't tread on one another's toes, don't you?"

She laughed in her old joyous manner, and he leaned back contentedly
and looked at her.

"At all events, you haven't altered much," he observed.

"I've grown an inch, and my dresses are quite long now. Besides, I
have put up my hair. Didn't you notice?"

"I thought there was something. Turn your head round. About time you
did, wasn't it? But why don't you make it stick out more? Other girls
do, don't they?"

Katharine had not seen any other girls, and said so; whereupon Ted
supposed it was all right, if she thought it was, and added
conciliatingly, that at all events her new coat was "all there." They
chattered in the same trivial manner all the rest of the way; it was
like the old days, when they had never thought of making up a quarrel
formally, but had just resumed matters where they had been broken off.

"Do you feel bad?" he asked, in his sympathetic way, when they stood
at last on the well-worn doorstep of number ten, Queen's Crescent,
Marylebone.

"Oh, I don't know! I've got to go through with it now, haven't I? It's
just like you and me not to have touched on anything really important
all the way; isn't it? And I've got such a heap of things to tell
you," said Katharine, in a nervous tone; and she gave a little shiver
as an east wind came rushing up the street and blew dirty pieces of
paper against the dingy iron railings, whence they fluttered down into
the area.

"Never mind; I'll look you up some evening soon. Let me know if you
want bucking up or anything. Good-bye, old chum."

And she found herself inside a dimly lighted, distempered hall, face
to face with a kindly looking maid, who was greeting her with the air
of conventional welcome she had been told to assume towards strangers.
It was supposed to support the advertisement that this was a home.

"Miss Jennings? No, miss; she won't be in, not before supper. And the
lady what's in your cubicle ain't cleared out yet, miss, so I can't
take your box up, neither. Will you come and have your tea, miss? This
way, if you please."

Katharine followed her mechanically. The heroic notions that had
sustained her for weeks were vanishing before this pleasant-faced maid
and the dreary, distempered hall. For the first time in her life a
feeling of shyness suddenly overwhelmed her, as the servant held open
a door, and a hum of voices and clatter of plates came out into the
passage. For the moment, she hardly knew where to look or what to do.
The room into which she had been ushered was a bare-looking one,
though clean enough, and better lighted than the hall outside. Long
tables were placed across it, and around these, on wooden chairs, sat
some twenty or thirty girls of various ages, some of whom were talking
and others reading, as they occupied themselves with their tea. They
all looked up when Katharine came into the room, but the spectacle did
not present enough novelty to interest them long, and they soon looked
away again and went on with their several occupations. "_She_ won't be
here long,--not the sort," Katharine overheard one of them saying to
another, and the casual remark brought the colour to her cheeks, and
made her assume desperately some show of courage.

"May I take this chair?" she asked, moving towards a vacant place as
she spoke.

"It isn't anybody's; none of them are unless the plate is turned
upside down," volunteered the girl in the next chair. She was reading
"Pitman's Phonetic Journal," and eating bread and treacle.

"You have to get your own tea from the urn over there, and collect
your food from all the other tables," she added in the same brusque
manner, as Katharine sat down and looked helplessly about her.
However, by following out the instructions thus thrown at her, she
managed, with a little difficulty, to procure what she wanted from the
food that was scattered incidentally about the room, and then returned
to her seat by the girl who was eating bread and treacle.

"Isn't it rather late for tea?" she asked of her neighbour, who at
least seemed friendly in a raw sort of way.

"It always goes on till seven; most of them don't get back from the
office before this, you see."

"What office?" asked Katharine, who did not see.

"Any office," returned the girl, staring round at her. "Post office
generally, or a place in the city, or something like that. Some of
them are shorthand clerks, like me,--it's shorter hours and better
paid as a rule; but it's getting overcrowded, like everything else."

"Do you like it?" asked Katharine. The girl stared again. The
possibility of liking one's work had never occurred to her before.

"Of course not; but we have to grin and bear it, like the food here
and everything else. I'm sorry for you if you mean to stop here long;
you don't look as though you could stand it. I've seen your sort
before, and they never stop long."

"Oh, I mean to stop," said Katharine decidedly. But her heroic mood
had been completely dissipated by the leaden atmosphere of the place,
and she could not repress a sigh.

"Butter bad?" asked her neighbour cheerfully. "Try the treacle; it's
safer. You can't go far wrong with treacle. The jam's always
suspicious; you find plum stones in the strawberries, and so on."

Katharine was obliged to laugh, and the shorthand clerk, who had not
meant to make a joke, seemed hurt.

"I beg your pardon," said Katharine, "but your cynical view of the
food is so awfully funny."

"Wait till you've been here three years, like I have," said the
shorthand clerk, and she returned to her newspaper.

Katharine tried to stay the sinking at her heart, and made a critical
review of the room. What impressed her most was the twang of the
girls' voices. Not that they were noisy,--for they seemed a quiet set
on the whole; either daily routine or respectability had succeeded in
subduing their spirits; but for all that they did not look unhappy,
and Katharine supposed, as her neighbour had remarked, that it was
possible to get used to it after a time.

"And the room is certainly clean," she reflected, as she made an
effort to see the brighter side of things; "and the girls don't stare,
or ask questions, or do anything unpleasant. I _couldn't_ tell them
anything about myself if they did. And I do wish, though I know it's
awfully snobbish, that some of them were ladies."

Her neighbour broke in upon her thoughts, and Katharine came to
herself with a start.

"Whose cuby are you going to have?" she was asking.

"I--I don't know. The servant said it was not empty yet. I should
rather like to unpack."

"I don't suppose you will get a permanent one yet awhile," said the
shorthand clerk, in the cheerful way with which she imparted all her
unpleasant revelations; "they always move you about for a week or two
first. I expect you are coming into our room for the present; Miss
King is going up to Scotland by the night mail. Jenny will tell you
when she comes in. Supper is at nine," she added, pushing back her
chair and folding up her paper, "and there are two reception rooms
upstairs, if you want to sit somewhere till your cubicle is empty."

Katharine thanked her, and felt more forlorn than ever when the
shorthand clerk had gone. But the servant came to her rescue a few
minutes later, and offered to take her to her room which was now
empty.

"Is it Miss King's?" asked Katharine, and felt a little happier when
she learned that it was. She would have one acquaintance in the same
room at all events. But her heart sank again, when she found herself
alone with her two boxes in a curtained corner of a dingy room, the
corner that was the farthest from the window and the smallest of the
four compartments. There was hardly room to move; and when she tried
to unpack her boxes, she found that most of the drawers in the tiny
chest were already occupied, and that there were no pegs for her
dresses.

"Could anything be more dreary?" she said aloud. "And the curtains are
just horribly dirty, and I don't feel as though I _could_ get into
that bed. And what a tiny jug and basin!"

"Hullo, is that you?" said the voice of the shorthand clerk, who had
come into her part of the room unobserved. "I guessed you'd feel
pretty bad when you saw what it was like. They all do. But you might
as well turn up the gas, and make it as cheerful as possible. That's
better. Well, it's not much like the prospectus, is it?"

Katharine remembered the plausible statements of the prospectus, and
broke into a laugh. There was a grim humour in her situation that
appealed to her, though it seemed to be lost on her companion.

"Well, I'm glad you can laugh, though I never found it funny myself,"
she called out. "But don't stay moping here; come into the
drawing-room until the bell rings for supper, won't you?"

Katharine followed her advice, and allowed herself to be taken into
another bare looking room, over the dining-room. This was furnished
with a horsehair sofa and three basket chairs, which were all
occupied, several cane chairs, and two square tables, at which some
girls sat writing. One of them looked up as the door opened, and asked
the shorthand clerk to come and help her with her arithmetic.

"You know I'm no good, Polly. Where's Miss Browne?" asked the
shorthand clerk, pushing a chair towards Katharine, and taking one
herself.

"She's out; I think you might try," said the girl who had spoken to
her, in a peevish tone. "I have got to finish this paper to-night; and
I'm fagged now."

"Can I help?" asked Katharine. The other two looked at her, and seemed
surprised.

"This is some one new," explained her first friend. "Let me introduce
you: Miss Polly Newland, Miss-- Why, I don't even know your name, do
I?"

"Austen," said Katharine. "Won't you tell me yours?"

The girl said her name was Hyam,--Phyllis Hyam; and they returned to
the subject of the arithmetic.

"Let's look at it, Polly," said Phyllis Hyam, and Miss Newland passed
the paper across the table. The two girls bent over it, and Phyllis
shook her head.

"I never understood stocks,--too badly taught!" she said, and tilted
her chair and began to whistle.

"Shall I try?" said Katharine, taking out a pencil. She worked out the
sum to the satisfaction of Polly Newland, who then unbent a little,
and explained that she was going up for the Civil Service examination
in March.

"I say, you're clever, aren't you? Do you teach?" asked Phyllis Hyam,
bringing the front legs of her chair down again with a bang.

"That is what I want to do; but I never have," replied Katharine. The
other two looked at her pityingly.

"Any friends in London?" they asked.

"Only relations; and they won't help me."

"Of course not. Relations never do. Hope you'll get some work," said
the shorthand clerk dubiously. Katharine changed the conversation, to
hide her own growing apprehension.

"Where are the newspapers?" she asked, looking round.

"In the prospectus; never saw them anywhere else!" said Phyllis, with
a short laugh.

"Did you expect to find any?" asked Polly Newland. "They all do," she
added gravely. "It's like the baths, and the boots, and everything
else."

"Surely, the bath-room is not a fallacy?" exclaimed Katharine in
dismay.

"Oh, there is one down in the basement; but all the water has to be
boiled for it, so only three people can have a bath every evening. You
have to put your name down in a book; and your turn comes in about a
fortnight."

"And the boots?" said Katharine, suppressing a sigh.

"You have to clean your own, that's all. They are supposed to provide
the blacking and the brushes; but, my eye, what brushes! Of course you
get used to it after a bit. When you get to your worst, you will
probably wear them dirty."

"When does one get to one's worst?" asked Katharine.

"That depends," said Polly Newland, sucking the end of her pencil, and
staring across in a curious manner at Katharine. "I should say you
would get to it pretty soon, if you stop long enough."

"Of course I shall stop!" cried Katharine, a little impatiently. "Why
do you both say that?"

The two girls glanced at one another.

"You're not the sort," said Phyllis shortly; and Polly returned to her
arithmetic.

Katharine relapsed into a dream. All her aspirations, all her hopes of
making her father a rich man, had only landed her in number ten,
Queen's Crescent, Marylebone! She looked round at the silent occupants
of the room,--some of them too tired to do anything but lounge about,
some of them reading novelettes, some of them mending stockings. She
wondered if her existence would simply become like theirs,--a daily
routine, with just enough money to support life, and not enough to buy
its pleasures; enough energy to get through its toil, and not enough
to enjoy its leisure. Ivingdon, with its recent troubles, its more
distant happiness, seemed separated from this rude moment of
disillusionment by a long stretch of years. A passionate instinct of
rebellion against the circumstances that were answerable for her
present situation made her unhappiness seem still more pitiable to
her; and a tragic picture of herself, martyred and forgotten, ten
years hence, brought sympathetic tears to her own eyes.

A piano began a cheerful accompaniment in the next room, and some one
sang a ballad in a fresh, untrained soprano. The piano was out of
tune, and the song was of the cheapest and most popular nature; but it
made an interruption in the sound of the traffic outside on the
cobble-stones, and Katharine glanced round the room characteristically,
in search of an answering smile. But the other girls were as
unaffected by the music as they had been by the dreariness that
preceded it; and nobody looked up from what she was doing. Only one of
them made a comment; it was Phyllis Hyam. "How that girl does thump!"
she said.

But on Katharine the effect had been instantaneous. She was not
cultured in music: with her it was an emotion, not an art; and the
little jingling tune had already turned her thoughts into a happier
channel. Her spirits rose insensibly, and the spell that the dingy
surroundings had cast over her was broken. Why should she believe what
these two girls told her? Surely, her conviction that she would make
something of her life was not going to wear itself out in a miserable
struggle to keep alive! She was worth something more than that: she
was intellectual beyond her years; every one had told her so, until
she had come to believe it was true; and her future was in her own
hands. She would be a teacher of a new school; she would make a name
for herself by her lectures; and then, some day, when she had acquired
a fortune, and all the world was talking of her talent, and her
goodness, and her beauty,--she was going to be very beautiful, too, in
her dream,--these girls would remember that they had doubted her
powers of endurance. She was even rehearsing what she would say to
them in the hour of her triumph, when a touch on her shoulder brought
her back abruptly to her present surroundings, and she looked up to
see a little white-haired lady at her side, in a lace cap and a black
silk apron.

"Miss Austen? Come down with me, and let us have a little chat
together. I was sorry not to be back in time to receive you, my dear."

It was a sudden awakening; but she was able to smile as she followed
her guide downstairs.

"She has the captivating manner of an impostor," she reflected. "She
is just like Widow Priest! But it accounts for the prospectus."




CHAPTER VII


The next day, she began a vigorous search for work. She did everything
that is generally done by women who come up from the country and
expect to find employment waiting for them; she answered
advertisements, she visited agents, she walked over the length and
breadth of London, she neglected no opportunity that seemed to offer
possibilities. But she soon found that she had much to learn. She
discovered that she was not the only girl in London, who thought there
was a future before her because she was more intellectually minded
than the rest of her family; and she found that every agent's office
was full of women, with more experience than herself, who had also
passed the Higher Local Examination with honours, and did not think
very much of it. And she had to learn that an apologetic manner is not
the best one to assume towards strangers, and that omnibus conductors
do not mean to be patronising when they say "missy," and that a
policeman is always open to the flattery of being addressed as
"Constable." But what she did not learn was the extravagance of being
economical; and it was some time yet before she discovered that
walking until she was over-tired, and fasting until she could not eat,
were the two most expensive things she could have done.

But she found no work. Either there was none to be had, or she was too
young; or, as they sometimes implied, too attractive. When this last
objection was made to her by the elderly principal of a girl's school,
Katharine stared in complete bewilderment for a moment or two, and
then broke into an incredulous laugh.

"But, surely, my looking young and--and inexperienced would not affect
my powers of teaching," she remonstrated.

"It would prevent my taking you," replied the principal coldly. "I
must have some one about me whom I can trust, and leave safely with
the children. Besides, what do I know of your capabilities? You say
you have never even tried to teach?"

"But I know I can teach,--I am certain of it; I only want a chance.
Why must I wait until I am old and unsympathetic, and can no longer
feel in touch with the children, before any one will trust me with a
class? It is not reasonable."

The elderly principal remained unmoved.

"The teaching market is overcrowded by such as you," she said. "I
should advise your trying something else."

"I have not been trained to anything else," said Katharine. "That is
where it is so hard. I might have got a secretaryship, if I had known
shorthand. I never knew I should have to earn my own living, or I
should be better qualified to do it. But I know I can teach, if I get
the chance."

"Are you compelled to earn your living?" asked the principal, a little
less indifferently. "Pardon me, but I have heard your tale so often
before from girls who might, with a little forbearance, have remained
at home."

"I am compelled," answered Katharine. "At least--"

A feeling of loyalty to her father, her lovable, faulty old father,
who was so unconscious of her present difficulties, kept her silent
and brought a troubled look into her face. The elderly principal was
not unkindly, when circumstances did not force her to be academic; and
Katharine, when she looked troubled, was very attractive indeed.

"My dear," she said, with a severity that she assumed in order to
justify her weakness in her own mind, "what are your friends thinking
of? Go home; it is the right place for a child like you."

Katharine hurried away to conceal her desire to laugh. She did not go
home, however; she went to a cheap milliner's in the Edgware Road, and
ordered them to make her a severely simple bonnet. And when it came
home the next evening, and she put it on, she hardly knew whether to
laugh or to cry at the reflection of herself in the glass. "Whatever
would daddy say?" she thought, and put it hastily back into the box;
and if the other occupants of her room had happened to come in just
then, they would certainly have modified their opinion of her pride
and her coldness. But, after all, she was no better off than before;
for the contrast of youth and age that her new bonnet made in her
appearance was rather conspicuous than otherwise, and she found that
her old countrified hat suited her purpose far better.

She saw very little of Ted at this time. He asked her to come out with
him, once or twice, but she always refused. She was afraid that he
would ask questions, and she shrank from telling any one, even Ted,
of her failure to get on. On the few occasions that she went down to
speak to him in the hall, she told him that she was getting along
quite well, and would be sure to hear of some work very soon, and that
she would prefer not to come out with him because it unsettled her.
And Ted, in his humble-minded way, thought she had made new friends in
the house and did not care to be bothered with him; and Katharine, who
read him like a book, knew that he thought so, and made fresh efforts
to get on so that she could spend all her leisure time with him. She
wrote home in the same spirit, and said that she was sure of making
her way soon, and that, meanwhile, she had everything she wanted, and
nobody was to be anxious about her. And her father, with the quaint
unworldliness of his nature, wrote back that he was glad to hear she
was happy, and that he had no doubt the ten pounds he had given her
would last until she earned some more, and that he had just picked up
a perfect bargain in an old book shop for thirty shillings.

"Dear daddy," smiled Katharine, without a trace of bitterness. "Could
any one be more economical for other people, and more extravagant for
himself? I wonder if that is what makes me love him so? But, oh, what
would I give for that thirty shillings!"

She counted her little store for the twentieth time, and sat thinking.
Doubtless she had spent her money injudiciously at first; but the fact
remained that, if she went on at her present rate of expenditure, she
would have to return home in a fortnight. If she went without her
midday meal, and economised in every possible way, she might manage to
remain another month.

"That is what I must do," she said. "That will bring me to the middle
of March, and I shall have been in London just nine weeks. And, after
all, the food is so nasty that I sha'n't mind much. Besides, it is
really very romantic to starve a little."

It grew less romantic as another fortnight went by. The food had never
seemed less nasty than it did now; and she had to take long walks at
dinner time to escape the appetising smell of the hot dishes. She had
never realised before what a very healthy appetite she possessed; and
she remembered with some regret how she had been too dainty, at first,
to touch the food at all, and had lived for days almost entirely on
bread and butter. But now she would have eaten any of it with a
relish,--even a certain dish which was said to be stewed rabbit, but
which she had derisively termed "a cat in a pie dish."

One day, she read an alluring advertisement of a new agency. She had
lost her faith in agencies, and she had no more money for fees; but at
least it was an object for a walk, and anything was better than
waiting indoors for something to happen. To be idle in a place like
Queen's Crescent was not an enviable position. And by this time she
knew her London pretty well, and it fascinated her, and spoke to her
of life, and work, and the future; and a walk through any part of it
was always exhilarating. As she turned into the park at the Marble
Arch, a carriage and pair rumbled out with two well-dressed women in
it. Katharine stopped and looked after it, with an amused smile on her
face.

"My aunt and cousin," she murmured aloud. "What would they say, if
they knew? And once they came to stay with us, and they worried daddy
no end, and said I wanted finishing, and ought to go to Paris! It
seems to me that life is always a comedy, but sometimes it drops into
a roaring farce!"

And pleased with the appositeness of her own remark, she continued her
walk in better spirits than her worldly condition would seem to
justify. The agency turned out to be on the top floor of some flats
near Parliament Street; and the porter looked curiously at her as he
took her up in the lift.

"Agency, miss? So they says, I'm told. Don't believe in agencies much
myself, I don't; queerish kind of impostory places, I calls 'em. Don't
you let yourself be took in, missy!"

Katharine remembered the condition of her purse, and felt that it was
not likely. Her destination was marked by a large amount of
information on the wall, headed by the inscription, "Parker's
Universal Scholastic and Commercial Agency." She had not much time to
study it, however, for an office boy hastened to answer her knock, as
though he had been longing for the opportunity to do so for some time,
and said that Mr. Parker was at liberty, if she would kindly step in.
She fancied that he also stared critically at her, and she began to
fear that something was wrong with her personal appearance. This
naturally did not add to her self-possession; and when she found
herself in a small inner room that smelt of stale tobacco and whiskey,
she began to wish she had not come at all. A fair-haired man, with a
moustache and an eyeglass, was sitting with his feet on the
mantel-shelf when she entered the room; but he jumped up with a great
deal of fuss, and offered her a chair, and asked her what he could do
for her. Katharine faltered out her usual inquiry for teaching work;
and the fact that Mr. Parker was adjusting his eyeglass and taking her
in from head to foot all the time, completed her discomfiture.

"Teaching? To be sure," he said with a supercilious smile, and went at
once to the door and told the boy to bring the books.

"There ain't no books, and you knows it," retorted the boy, who seemed
disposed to be rebellious; and Mr. Parker vanished precipitately into
the other room. When he returned, his smile was unaltered; and he sat
down again, and twirled his drooping moustache.

"I have just looked through the books," he said, "and don't see
anything good enough for you. Would you care to take anything else?"

"I don't quite know what else I could do," said Katharine doubtfully.
She wanted to get away, and did not exactly know how to make a
dignified exit.

"Book-keeping, for instance, or literary work? Have you ever tried
being a secretary? Ah, I am sure you have! You are not the sort of
young lady to lead the life of a humdrum governess, eh?"

"I was my father's secretary," said Katharine. Mr. Parker was leaning
across the table and playing with the pens in the ink-stand, so that
his hand almost touched her elbow.

"Of course you were. So I was right about you, wasn't I? Don't you
think that was very clever of me, now?"

He leaned a little nearer to her, and Katharine drew back
instinctively and took her elbow off the table. He found the straight
look of her eyes a little disconcerting, and left off playing with the
penholders.

"Speaking seriously," he said, donning an official air with alacrity,
"would you care to take a post as secretary?"

He had dropped his eyeglass and his supercilious manner, and Katharine
took courage.

"I should, immensely. But they are so hard to get."

"Of course they are not easy to pick up, but in an agency like ours we
often hear of something good. Let me see, would you like to go out to
South Africa? Hardly, I should think."

Katharine said she would not like to go out to South Africa;
whereupon Mr. Parker offered New Zealand as an alternative.

"Your connection seems to lie principally in other quarters of the
globe," Katharine felt obliged to remark; and in an unguarded moment
she began to laugh at the absurdity of his suggestions. Mr. Parker at
once ceased to look official, and laughed with her, and began playing
with the pens in the inkstand again.

"Ah, now we understand each other better," he said, resuming his
familiar tone. "What you want is a snug little berth with some
literary boss, who won't give you too much to do, eh? A nice salary,
and some one charming to play with; isn't that it?"

The sheer vulgarity of the man exposed the real nature of the
situation to her. Her first impulse was to rush out of his sight, at
any cost; but she restrained herself with an effort, and drew a sharp
breath to gain time to collect her resources.

"I am afraid, Mr. Parker, that we don't understand each other at all,"
she said very slowly, trying to conceal the tremble in her voice; "and
as I don't feel inclined to emigrate, I think I had better--"

"Now, now, what a hurry you are in, to be sure!" interrupted Mr.
Parker, getting up and lounging round to her side of the table. "You
haven't even heard what I was going to say. I've been looking out for
a secretary myself, for some time, 'pon my oath I have; but never,
until this blessed moment, have I set eyes upon a young lady who
suited me so well as you. Now, what do you say to that, eh?"

Katharine had risen, too, and was turning imperceptibly towards the
door. She glanced contemptuously round the room, that was so entirely
devoid of the ordinary apparatus of business, and she walked swiftly
to the door and opened it, before he had time to prevent her.

"You are most kind," she said sarcastically, emboldened by the
presence of the office boy, "but I feel that the work would be very
much too hard for me. A large business like yours must need so much
looking after! Good morning."

Outside, while she was waiting for the lift, her composure completely
deserted her, and she found she was trembling all over, and had to
lean against the balusters for support.

"I knowed you wasn't the sort to go a-mixing of yourself up with that
kidney," observed the porter, who detected the tears in her eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me he was such a horrid man?" asked Katharine.
She was thoroughly unnerved, and even the porter's sympathy was better
than none at all.

"It wasn't my business to hinterfere," said the porter, who was merely
curious and not sympathetic at all; and Katharine dried her eyes
hastily, and tried to laugh.

"Of course it is nobody's business," she said drearily, and gave him
twopence for helping her to realise the fact. "And I shouldn't have
cried at all, if I had had any lunch," she added vehemently to
herself.

Some one was waiting to enter the lift as she stepped out of it. She
looked up by chance and caught his eye, and they uttered each other's
name in the same breath.

For a moment they stood silent, as they loosed hands again. Katharine
had blushed, hopelessly and irretrievably; but he was standing a
little away from her, with just the necessary amount of interest in
his look, and the necessary amount of pleasure in his smile. Paul was
a man who prided himself on never straining a situation; and directly
he saw her agitation at meeting him, he assumed the conventional
attitude, entirely for purposes of convenience.

"This is very delightful. Are you staying in town?"

"Yes. At least--"

"Your father well, I hope? And Miss Esther? I am charmed to hear it.
Supposing we move out of the draught; yes, cold, isn't it? Thanks, I
won't go up now--" this to the porter, who was still waiting by the
lift. "Which way are you going? Good! I have a call to pay in
Gloucester Place, and we might go in the same cab."

It was pleasant to be ordered about, after taking care of herself for
seven weeks, and Katharine yielded at once to the masterful tone,
which had always compelled her compliance from the moment she had
first heard it.

"Now, please, I want to hear all about it," he began briskly, as they
drove westwards. His manner was no longer conventional, and his
familiar voice carried her back over the weary months of last year to
the spring when she had still been a child. Somehow she did not feel,
as with Ted, that she could not tell him about her failures: it seemed
as though this man must know all there was to know about her, whether
it was pleasant for him to hear it or not; though, as she told him
about her coming to town and her subsequent career there, she made
her tale so entertaining that Paul was something more than idly
amused, when she finally brought it to an end.

"Do you think I ought not to have done it?" she asked him, anxiously,
as he did not speak. He looked at her before he answered.

"I cannot imagine how they let you do it!"

"Oh, don't! That is what that horrid old lady principal said. What
could possibly happen to me, I should like to know?"

He looked at her again, with his provoking serenity.

"Oh, nothing, of course! At least, not to you."

"Why not to me, particularly?" she asked half petulantly. She did not
know whether to be pleased or annoyed that he should credit her with
the same infallible quality as every one else.

"Because things of that nature do not, I believe, happen to girls of
your nature. But of course I may be wrong; I am quite ignorant in
these matters."

She smiled at his show of humility; it was so characteristic of him to
affect indifference about his own opinions. But she had learnt
something already that day, and she remembered Mr. Parker, and thought
that Paul very possibly was wrong on this occasion.

"Every one tells me that. I can't see how I am different," she said
thoughtfully.

"I shouldn't worry about it, if I were you. You could not be expected
to see. But it is just that little difference that has probably
carried you through."

Katharine remembered Mr. Parker again, and laughed outright.

"I don't think so," she said. "I think it is more likely to have been
my sense of humour."

"You used to laugh like that when I first knew you," he said
involuntarily. She knew that he had spoken without reflection, and she
laughed again with pleasure. It was always a triumph to surprise him
into spontaneity.

"How jolly it was in those days! Do you remember our tea in the
orchard, how we watched Aunt Esther out of the front door, and then
brought the things out through the back door?"

"Yes; and how you spilt the milk, and cook wouldn't let you have any
more, and our second cups were spoilt?"

"Rather! And how you shocked Dorcas--"

"Ah," sighed Paul; "we can never do those delightful things again. We
know one another too well, now."

They allowed themselves to become almost depressed, for the space of
a moment, because they knew one another so well. "All the same,"
observed Katharine, "there is still one joy left to us. We can
quarrel."

He became conventional again as he rang the bell for her at number
ten, Queen's Crescent, Marylebone. He raised his hat, and gently
pressed her hand, and supposed he should see her again soon. And
Katharine, who was occupied in hoping that he did not notice the
squalor of the area, and would not come inside the dull, distempered
hall, only said that she supposed so too; and then blamed herself
hotly, as he drove away, for not responding more warmly.

"He will think I don't want to see him again," she thought wearily, as
she dragged herself up the uncarpeted stairs, and went into her dark
and dingy cubicle. It had never seemed so dark or so dingy before; and
she added miserably to herself, "I had better not see him again,
perhaps. It makes it all so much worse afterwards."

She would have been surprised had she known what Paul really was
thinking about her.

"She is more of a study than ever," he said to the cab horse. "Still
so much of the innocent pose about her, with just that indication of
added knowledge that is so fascinating to a man. She'll do, now she
has got away from her depressing relations; and the touch of weirdness
in her expression is an improvement. Wonder if Heaton would call her a
schoolgirl now? It was quite finished, the careless way she said
good-bye, as though it were of no consequence to her at all. Yes; she
is a study."

About a week later, when Katharine came down to breakfast, Phyllis
Hyam threw her a letter, in her unceremonious fashion.

"Look here!" she said. "I've kept you a chair next to mine, and I've
managed to procure you a clean plate, too; so don't go away to the
other table, as you did yesterday. Polly's gone; and I won't talk
unless you want to. Come on!"

Katharine sat down absently on the hard wooden chair, and began to
read her letter. She never wanted to talk at breakfast time, a fact
which Phyllis good-naturedly recognised without respecting. To-day she
was more silent than usual.

"No, I can't eat any of that stuff," she said to the proffered bacon.
"Get me some tea, will you? I'll make myself some toast."

Phyllis trotted off to the fire instead, and made it herself; and
Katharine returned to her letter without noticing her further. Judging
from the tense look on her face, it was of more than ordinary
interest.

"Dear Miss Katharine," it ran,

     A school in which I have a little influence is in want of a
     junior mistress. I have no idea as to the kind of work you
     want, but if it is of this nature, and you would like to
     consider it further, come up and see me about it in my
     chambers. I shall be in at tea-time, any afternoon this week.
     The best way for you to get here is to come to the Temple
     Station. Do not think any more about it, if you have already
     heard of something else.

          Yours sincerely,

               PAUL WILTON.

"Of course," said Katharine aloud, "I shall go this very afternoon."
Then she paused, and looked smilingly into Phyllis Hyam's hot face.
"No; I mean to-morrow."

"What?" said Phyllis, looking perplexed. "I thought you wanted it now,
and I made it on purpose."

"You dear thing! of course I want it now. You are an angel of
goodness, and I am a cross old bear," exclaimed Katharine, with a
burst of unusual cordiality; and Phyllis was consumed with curiosity
as to the writer of that letter.

It was not difficult to find Paul Wilton's chambers among the quaint
old buildings of Essex Court; and Katharine, as she toiled up the
massive oak staircase, stopping on every landing to read the names
over the doors, felt that she had reached a delightful oasis of
learning in the middle of commercial London.

"How splendid to be a man, and to have brains enough to live in a
place like this," she thought enthusiastically; and then, with the
cynicism that always dogged the steps of her enthusiasm, she added,
"It probably only wants money enough, though."

Paul Wilton opened his own door to her. He looked really glad to see
her, and Katharine flushed with pleasure when he kept hold of her hand
and drew her into his room.

"This is most good of you," he said; and on the impulse of the moment
Katharine let herself be surprised into an indiscretion.

"I was so glad to have your letter; I wanted to see you again
dreadfully," she said, without reflection. She meant what she said,
but she saw from his manner that she ought not to have said it. Any
sentiment that was crudely expressed was always distasteful to him;
and he at once dropped her hand, and pulled forward an arm-chair with
a great show of courtesy.

"Is that comfortable, or do you prefer a high one? I thought you might
come, one day; but I hardly expected you so soon. It is rather wet,
too, isn't it?"

Something impelled her to meet his irritating self-assurance with
ridicule.

"Very wet," she replied demurely. "In fact, now I come to think of it,
there are a great many reasons why I should not have come. But the one
that brought me here, in spite of them all, was a matter of business,
if you remember."

If he minded being laughed at, he certainly did not show it, for his
tone was much more natural when he answered her.

"Oh, yes, about the school! It is not far from you,--near Paddington,
in fact. It is rather a swagger place, I believe; Mrs. Downing is the
widow of an old friend of mine, who was killed out in Africa, and she
started this concern after his death. She knows nothing about
education, but a great deal about etiquette, and as this is also the
position of the mothers of most of her pupils, she has no difficulty
in convincing them of her capabilities. She is quite flourishing now,
I believe. Can you teach arithmetic?"

They discussed the vacant appointment solemnly, with the result that
Katharine agreed to accept it if Mrs. Downing approved of her. The
salary was not large, but she had learnt by now not to be too
particular, and it offered her an opening, at all events.

"I am sure she will like you all right. I told her about your people,
and so on, and a clergyman is always a guarantee in such cases. And
now for tea."

They talked about the historic associations of the Temple while the
housekeeper was bringing in tea; and they talked very little about
anything after she had left. Paul was in one of his unaccountable
silent moods, and they were never conducive to conversation. He roused
himself a little to show her some of his treasures,--an old bit of
tapestry, some Japanese prints, a Bartolozzi; but the afternoon was
not a success, and his depression soon communicated itself to
Katharine.

"I must be going," she said at last, after an awkward pause that he
showed no signs of breaking. They stood for a moment in the middle of
the room.

"It was good of you to come like this," he said, with the slightly
worried look he always wore in his morose moods. "I was afraid,
perhaps, that I ought not to have asked you."

Her questioning look invited him to continue.

"Not being sure what day you would come, I was unable to provide a
chaperon, don't you see? But, of course, if you don't mind, that
doesn't matter."

"Of course I don't mind," she said, with a reassuring smile. "Why
should I? I know you so well, don't I?"

He continued his explanation, as though he had decided to make it
beforehand, and did not mean to be deterred by her unwillingness to
hear it.

"Under the circumstances," he said gravely, "you will see that it
would be wiser for you not to come here again."

Katharine did not see, and she showed it in her face.

"If I were married," he continued, in a lighter tone, "it would be
different; but there are many reasons which have made it impossible
for me to marry, and there are still more now, which will prevent my
ever doing so. And since I am a bachelor, it is obviously better for
you to keep away."

In spite of his assumed carelessness, Katharine felt instinctively
that it was to hear this that he had asked her to come and see him
to-day. And, like many another woman who has to face as embarrassing a
disclosure from a man, her great desire at the moment was to conceal
that she had ever entertained the idea of his marrying her at all.

"But does it matter, so long as I don't mind?" she asked, pulling on
her gloves for the sake of the occupation. He bent down to button them
for her, and their eyes met. "Let me come again," she said
impulsively. "You know I think propriety is all rubbish. Besides, I
want to come. We can go on being friends, can't we? _I_ don't care
what other people think!"

"I only care for your sake, not for my own. No, child, it is safer
not; you are not the sort. Don't think any more about it. I am old
enough to be your father, and have seen more of the world than you. I
would not allow you, if you did wish it."

"It is all rubbish," repeated Katharine. "Why am I not the sort? I
don't understand; I am tired of being told that. If that is all, I--I
wish I were!"

Paul half wished it too, as she stood there in the firelight, with
the glow all over her face and hair; but he laughed away the thought.

"You are an absurd child; you don't know what you are saying. It is
lucky there is no one else to hear you. There, go away, and make it up
with young Morton! Oh, no, I know nothing whatever about it, I swear I
don't; but he won't do you any harm, and he isn't old, and worn out,
and--"

"Don't, please don't!" said Katharine, imploringly. "Ted is only like
my brother; I love him, but it is altogether different. Mayn't I
really see you any more?"

She was threatening to become unpleasantly serious, and Paul switched
on the electric light and fetched his coat hastily.

"Why, surely, lots of times, I expect. What a desperately solemn
person you are! I believe you work too hard, don't you? Now, I am not
going to let you walk to the station alone, so come along."

And Katharine realised, with a hot blush, that she had made a second
blunder.




CHAPTER VIII


The lady principal of the school near Paddington had too high an
opinion of her distinguished and influential friend, Mr. Wilton, to
refuse a teacher who was so warmly recommended by him, more especially
as her junior mistress had left her most inconveniently in the middle
of term; so Katharine found herself installed there, about three weeks
before the Easter holidays, with a class of thirty children in her
sole charge. The teaching was only elementary, but there was plenty to
be done; and she soon found that, although she was ostensibly only
wanted in the mornings, she had to spend most of her afternoons also
in correcting exercises. But the work interested her, and she had no
difficulty in managing the children,--a fact which surprised her as
much as it did Mrs. Downing, who had expected very little from her
youthful looking teacher, in spite of her recommendation by Mr.
Wilton. Mrs. Downing was a well-dressed little woman, with charming
manners and an unbounded belief in herself. By resolutely playing on
the weaknesses of others, she concealed her own shallowness of mind;
and she made up for her lack of brains by contriving to have clever
people always about her. She had chatted herself into a fashionable
and paying connection in that part of Bayswater which calls itself
Hyde Park; and if she employed tact and dissimulation in order to
entrap the mothers of the neighbourhood, she was, to do her justice,
genuine in her love of their children. Katharine would have found it
difficult to like such a woman, had not a two months' sojourn with
working gentlewomen taught her to tolerate weaknesses which would
formerly have excited her contempt; and she endured her smiles and her
blandishments with a stoicism that arose from a knowledge of their
harmlessness. But Mrs. Downing remained in ignorance of the fact that
her youngest teacher, with the serious face and the childish manner,
was able to see right through her; and the impenetrability which saved
her from feeling a snub, also spared her the knowledge that Katharine
was laughing at her.

One morning, about a week after she had begun her work as junior
teacher, Katharine was interrupted in the middle of her first lesson
by the precipitate entrance of the lady principal.

"My dear Miss Austen," she began effusively, and then paused suddenly;
for there was something about Katharine, in spite of her youthful
look, which warned intruders that she was not to be interrupted so
lightly as the other teachers. On this occasion she finished
explaining to the children that saying Mary Howard was "_in_ the
second piano" did not accurately express the fact that Mary Howard was
practising in the second music-room; and then turned to see who had
come in.

"My dear Miss Austen," began Mrs. Downing again, "so good of you to
look after their English; they are apt to be so careless! I am always
telling them of it myself, am I not, dear children? Ah, Carry, what an
exquisite rose; such colouring; beautiful, beautiful! For me? Thanks,
my sweet child; that is so dear of you! My dear Miss Austen, you are
so obliging always, and my literature lecturer has suddenly
disappointed me, and the first class will have nothing to do in the
next hour. So tiresome of Mr. Fletcher! His wife is ill, and he is
such a good husband,--quite a model! So I have set them an essay; I
cannot _bear_ to have the ordinary work interrupted; and would you be
so good as to leave the door open between the two rooms, and give them
a little, just a little supervision? That is so dear of you; it has
taken a load off my mind. Dear children, listen with all your might to
everything Miss Austen has to say, and you will soon be so clever and
so wise--I beg your pardon, Miss Austen?"

"Isn't it rather a pity for them to miss their lecture altogether?"
said Katharine, in the first breathing space. "I mean, I could give
them one if you liked, on something else. My class is being drilled in
the next hour, and I have nothing particular to do."

"But I should be charmed, delighted; nothing could be more opportune!
My dear Miss Austen, I have found a treasure in you. Children, you
must make the most of your teacher while she is with you, for I shall
have to take her away from you, quite soon! Miss Austen, I shall come
and listen to your lecture myself. I will go and prepare the girls--"

"I think, perhaps, something quite different would be best," said
Katharine, detaining her with difficulty. "Would you like it to be on
Gothic architecture?"

Mrs. Downing did not know the difference between a pinnacle and a
buttress, but she hastened to say she would like Gothic architecture
better than anything else in the world, and had, in fact, been on the
point of suggesting it herself; after which, she went to interrupt the
first class also, and Katharine devoted her energies to collecting the
wandering attention of her own pupils.

At the end of her lecture the lady principal hastened up to her.

"How extremely interesting, to be sure! I had no idea those vaults,
and pillars, and things, were so beautiful before. Where did you find
out all that? I should like to learn it up myself in the holidays, and
give a course of lessons on it to the first class next term."

Katharine tried not to smile.

"I have been learning it all my life, from my father. I don't think I
know any textbooks; it would be difficult to read it up in a hurry, I
should think." But the lady principal never allowed herself to be
thwarted, when she had a fresh idea. Besides, Gothic architecture was
quite new, and would be sure to take in the neighbourhood.

"Then you must give a course yourself to the whole school, my dear
Miss Austen," she exclaimed. "I insist upon it; and we will begin the
first Wednesday of next term."

Anything that promised an addition to her salary was sure to be
agreeable to Katharine, and she was only too pleased to agree. But,
meanwhile, her finances were in a deplorable condition. She found
herself with nothing but the change out of half a sovereign, about ten
days before the end of the term; and although she could easily have
asked Miss Jennings to give her credit until she received her salary,
she had all a woman's hyper-sensitiveness of conscience, and all her
disregard of the importance of food as well; and she resolutely set to
work to starve herself during those ten days. Fortunately, she was
constitutionally strong, and she never reached the stage of privation
when food becomes distasteful; but there was little consolation for
her in the fact that she remained healthily hungry all the time, and
had to run past the pastry-cooks' shops to escape their seductive
display. Long walks at supper time did not compensate for a meal that
was satisfying, if it was not very tempting; and the irony of it all
was forced upon her with a somewhat grim significance by something
that occurred, when she came up to bed one evening, tired out and
dispirited. She noticed that the girls stopped talking directly she
entered the room; but this would not have aroused her suspicions, if
Phyllis Hyam had not made a point of conversing vigorously with her
through the curtains, and being more brusque than usual when the
others tried to interrupt her.

"Good old Phyllis," reflected Katharine. "They have evidently been
abusing me. I wonder what I have done!"

Phyllis enlightened her somewhat unwillingly, the next morning, when
the others had gone down to breakfast.

"Don't bother about them; _I_ wouldn't. Mean cats! It's jealousy, of
course. Fact is, Polly saw you in a hansom with a man, some time back;
she came home full of it. Said you were no better than the rest of us,
after all. I said you never pretended to be; it was our own look out,
if we chose to think so. Besides, it was most likely your brother, I
said. Polly said it wasn't; you looked so happy, and he was smiling at
you."

"Conclusive evidence," murmured Katharine, with her mouth full of
hair-pins. "Did she describe the gentleman in question? It might be
useful for future identification."

"Oh, yes, she did! Said he was rather like a corpse with a black
beard; had a flavour of dead loves about him, I think she said; but I
don't quite know what she was driving at. And I'm sure I don't care."

"I do. It is most entertaining. Was that all they said?"

Phyllis hesitated, said she was not going to tell any more, and
finally told every detail.

"I said they were mean, despicable liars, especially Polly,
considering how much you have done for her! And I said that if ever I
had the chance--"

"But what did _they_ say?" interrupted Katharine.

"Oh, bother! what does it matter? They are a pack of mean sneaks. They
said you were never in to lunch now, or supper either; and Polly was
sure she had seen you walking with some one, only yesterday evening,
and that you went into a restaurant with him; and she declares you see
him every day, and that you are going all wrong. I said I should like
to kill her. And they all said you must have gone wrong, because you
are never in to supper now. I said I should like to kill them all for
telling such a false lie, whether it was true or not! It isn't their
business whether you choose to come in to supper or not, is it? And
then you came in, and-- Why, whatever is the joke now? Mercy me; I
thought you would be furious!"

For, of course, it was not to be supposed that she should know why
Katharine was rolling on her bed in a paroxysm of laughter.

But the holidays came at last, and she congratulated herself proudly
on not having given in once. She left school on the last day of the
term with a light heart; everything had made her laugh that morning,
from the children's jubilation at the coming holiday, to Mrs.
Downing's characteristic farewell. "Don't overwork in the holidays, my
dear Miss Austen," she had said, shaking Katharine warmly by both
hands. "You look quite worn out; I am afraid you take things a little
too seriously, do you not? When you have had _my_ experience in school
work, you will think nothing of a class like yours! Perhaps you do not
eat enough? Take my advice, and try maltine; it is an excellent tonic
for the appetite!" And Katharine walked out into the sunshine and the
warm air, with a feeling of joy at the thought of the cheque she was
to receive on the morrow. There was only one more day of privation for
her; and she called herself greedy for thinking about it, and laughed
at her own greediness, all in the same breath. She might easily have
humbled her pride and gone home to lunch like a rational being, now
that she saw her way to paying for it; but such a weakness as that
never entered her head for a moment, and she walked gaily on instead,
weaving a rosy dream of the feast she would have if her pocket were
full of money. But it was nearly empty, and she only found twopence
there when she put her hand in to feel; and she jingled the coppers
together, and laughed again, and hurried on a little faster. At Hyde
Park Corner a beggar pursued her with his studied tale of distress: he
had no home, he whined, and he had eaten nothing for days. "Just my
case," said Katharine cheerfully, and a spirit of recklessness
impelled her to drop the two pennies into his grimy palm, and then
hasten on as before.

"Well met," said a voice behind her. "But what a hurry you are in, to
be sure! Where are you off to, now?"

She looked round and saw Paul Wilton, smiling unaffectedly at her in a
way that recalled the old days at Ivingdon. Perhaps, the fine day had
influenced him too; certainly, he had not been starving for a
fortnight, nor would he have seen the humour of it, probably, if he
had. But these reflections did not occur to Katharine; it was enough
for her that he looked more pleased than usual, and that his manner
had lost its constraint.

"I am not going anywhere. The spring has got into my head, that's all;
and I felt obliged to walk. Besides, it is the first day of my first
holidays!" and she laughed out joyously.

"Yes? You look very jolly over it, any way. Have you lunched yet?"

"Yes,--I mean, no. I don't want any lunch to-day," she said hastily.
"Don't let us talk about lunch; it spoils it so."

"But, my dear child, I really must talk about it. I have had nothing
to eat since supper last night, and I am going to have some lunch now.
You've got to come along, too, so don't make any more objections. I'm
not a healthy young woman like you, and I can't eat my three courses
at breakfast, and then fast until it is time to spoil my digestion by
afternoon tea. Where shall we go? Suppose you stop chuckling for a
moment and make a suggestion."

"But I don't know any places, and I don't really want anything to
eat," protested Katharine. She would not have been so independent, if
she had been a little less hungry. "There's a confectioner's along
here, that always looks rather nice," she added, remembering one she
had often passed lately with a lingering look, at its attractive
contents.

"Nonsense! that's only a shop. Have you ever been in here?"

Katharine confessed that she had never lunched at a restaurant before;
and the savoury smell that greeted them as they entered reminded her
how very hungry she was, and drove away her last impulse to object.

"Never? Why, what has Ted been up to? Now, you have got to say what
you like; this is your merrymaking, you know, because it is the first
day of the holidays."

"Oh, but I can't; you must do all that, _please_. You don't know how
beautiful it is to be taken care of again."

"Is it?" They smiled at each other across the little table, and the
old understanding sprang up between them.

"You're looking very charming," he said, when he had given the waiter
his preliminary instructions. "You may abuse the food at your place as
much as you like, but it certainly seems to agree with you."

"I don't think," said Katharine carelessly, "that it has anything to
do with the food."

"Of course not; my mistake. No doubt it is natural charm triumphing
over difficulties. Try some of this, to begin with; bootlaces or
sardines?"

Katharine looked perplexed.

"What a delightful child you are," he laughed. "It's to give you an
appetite for the rest. I advise the bootlaces. Nonsense! you must do
as you are told, for a change. I am not one of your pupils. Besides,
it is the first day of the holidays."

And Katharine, who had no desire for a larger appetite than she
already possessed, ate the _hors d'oeuvre_ with a relish, and longed
for more, and wondered if she should ever attain to the extreme
culture of her companion, who was playing delicately with the sardine
on his plate.

"Don't you ever feel hungry?" she asked him. "It seems to add to your
isolation that you have none of the ordinary frailties of the flesh. I
really believe it would quite destroy my illusion of you, if I ever
caught you enjoying a penny bun!"

"You may preserve the illusion, if you like, and remember that I am
not a woman. It is only women who-- Well, what is it now, child?"

"Do explain this," she begged him, with a comical expression of
dismay. "Why is it red?"

"I should say because, fundamentally, it is red mullet. It would never
occur to me to inquire more deeply into it; but the rest is probably
accounted for by the carte, if you understand French. Don't you think
you had better approach it, fasting and with faith?"

"Go on about your appetite, please; it is so awfully entertaining,"
resumed Katharine. "I believe, if you found yourself really hungry one
day, force of habit would still make you eat your lunch as though you
didn't want it a bit. Now, wouldn't it?"

"My dear Miss Katharine, you have yet to learn that hunger does not
give you a desire for more food, but merely imparts an element of
pleasure to it. Go on with your fish, or else the entrée will catch
you up."

"I am glad," said Katharine, in the interval between the courses,
"that I'm not a superior person like you. It must be so lonely, isn't
it?"

"What wine will you drink? White or red?" asked Paul severely.

"Living with you," continued Katharine, leaning back and looking
mischievously at what was visible of him over the wine list, "must be
exactly like living with Providence."

"Number five," said Paul to the waiter, laying down the wine list.
Then he looked at her, and shook his head reprovingly.

"You see you don't live with me, do you?" he said drily.

"No," retorted Katharine hastily. "I live with sixty-three working
gentlewomen, and that is a very different matter."

"Very," he assented, looking so searchingly at her that she found
herself beginning to blush. The arrival of the wine made a diversion.

"Oh," said Katharine, "I am quite sure I can't drink any champagne."

"If you had not been so occupied in firing off epigrams, you might
have had some choice in the matter. As it is, you have got to do as
you are told."

He filled her glass, and she felt that it was very pleasant to do as
she was told by him; and her eyes glistened as they met his over the
brimming glasses.

"I am so happy to-day," she felt obliged to tell him.

"That's right. Because it is the first day of the holidays?"

"Because you are so nice to me, I think," she replied softly; and then
was afraid lest she had said too much. But he nodded, and seemed to
understand; and she dropped her eyes suddenly and began crumbling her
bread.

"What makes you so nice to me, I wonder," she continued in the same
tone. This time he became matter-of-fact.

"The natural order of the universe, I suppose. Man was created to look
after woman, and woman to look after man; don't you think so?"

She understood him well enough, by now, to know when to take her tone
from him.

"At all events, it saves Providence a lot of trouble," she said; and
they laughed together.

Their lunch was a success; and Paul smiled at her woe-begone face when
the black coffee had been brought, and she was beginning slowly to
remember that there was still such a place as number ten, Queen's
Crescent, and that it actually existed in the same metropolis as the
one that contained this superb restaurant.

"It is nearly over, and it has been so beautiful," she sighed.

"Nonsense! it has only just begun. It isn't time to be dull yet; I'll
tell you when it is," said Paul briskly; and he called for a daily
paper.

"What do you mean?" gasped Katharine, opening her eyes wide in
anticipation of new joys to come.

"We're going to a matinee, of course. Let's see,--have you any
choice?"

"A theatre? Oh!" cried Katharine. Then she reddened a little. "You
won't laugh if I tell you something?"

"Tell away, you most childish of children!"

"I've never been to a theatre before, either."

They looked at the paper together, and laughed one another's
suggestions to scorn, and then found they had only just time to get to
the theatre before it began. And she sat through the three acts with
her hand lying in his; and to her it was a perfect ending to the most
perfect day in her life. He took her home afterwards, and left her at
the corner of the street.

"I won't come to the door; better not, perhaps," he said, and his
words sent a sudden feeling of chill through her. They seemed to have
fallen back into the conventional attitude again, the most appropriate
one, probably, for Edgware Road, but none the less depressing on that
account.

"You are not going to be sad, now?" he added, half guessing her
thoughts. She looked up in his face and made an effort to be bright.

"It has been beautiful all the time," she said. "I never knew anything
could be so beautiful before."

"Ah," he said, smiling back; "it is the first day of your first
holidays, you see. We will do it again some day." But she knew as he
spoke that they never could do it again.

She saw him occasionally during the Easter holidays. He sent for her
once about a pupil he had managed to procure her, and once about some
drawing-room lectures he tried to arrange for her, and which fell
through. But on both these occasions he was in his silent mood, and
she came away infected by his dulness. Then she met him one day in the
neighbourhood of Queen's Crescent, and they had a few minutes
conversation in the noise and bustle of the street, that left her far
happier than she had been after a tête-à-tête in his chambers.

She went home for a few days at the end of her holidays, but her visit
was not altogether a success. It was a shock to her to find that home
was no longer the same now that she had once left it; and she did not
quite realise that the change was in herself as much as in those she
had left behind her. Her father had grown accustomed to living without
her, and it hurt her pride to find that she was no longer
indispensable to him. Her old occupations seemed gone, and there was
no time to substitute new ones; she told herself bitterly that she had
no place in her own home, and that she had burnt her ships when she
went out to make herself a new place in the world. Ivingdon seemed
narrower in its sympathies and duller than ever; she wondered how
people could go on living with so few ideas in their minds, and so few
topics of conversation; even the Rector irritated her by his want of
interest in her experiences and by his utter absorption in his own
concerns. Miss Esther added to her feeling of strangeness by treating
her with elaborate consideration; she would have given anything to be
scolded instead, for being profane, or for lying on the hearthrug. But
they persisted in regarding her as a child no longer; and she felt
graver and more responsible at home, than she had done all the time
she was working for her living in London.

On the whole, she was glad when school began again; and she grew much
happier when she found herself once more engrossed in the term's work,
which had now increased very materially, owing to her own efforts as
well as to those of Paul. Of him, she only had occasional glimpses
during the next few weeks; but they were enough to keep their
friendship warm, and she soon found herself scribbling little notes to
him, when she had anything to tell,--generally about some small
success of hers which she felt obliged to confide to some one, and
liked best of all to confide to him. Sometimes he did not answer them;
and she sighed, and took the hint to write no more for a time. And
sometimes he wrote back one of his ceremonious replies, which she had
learnt to welcome as the most characteristic thing he could have sent
her; for, in his letters, Paul never lost his formality. It was a very
satisfactory friendship on both sides, with enough familiarity to give
it warmth, and not enough to make it disquieting. But it received an
unexpected check towards the middle of June, through an incident that
was slight enough in itself, though sufficient to set both of them
thinking. And to stop and think in the course of a friendship,
especially when it is between a man and a woman, is generally the
forerunner of a misunderstanding.

It was the first hot weather that year. May had been disappointingly
cold and wet, after the promise of the month before, but June came in
with a burst of sunshine that lasted long enough to justify the papers
in talking about the drought. On one of the first fine days, Paul was
lazily smoking in his arm-chair after a late breakfast, when a knock
at his outer door roused him unpleasantly from a reverie that had
threatened to become a nap; and he rose slowly to his feet with
something like a muttered imprecation. Then he remembered that he had
left the door open for the sake of the draught, and he shouted a brief
"Come in," and sank back again into his chair. A light step crossed
the threshold, and paused close behind him.

"Who's there?" asked Paul, without moving.

"Well, you _are_ cross. And on a morning like this, too!"

Paul got up again, with rather more than his usual show of energy, and
turned and stared at his visitor.

"Really, Katharine," he said, with a slowly dawning smile of
amusement.

"Oh, I know all that," exclaimed Katharine, with an impatient gesture.
"But the sun was shining, and I had to come, and you'll have to put up
with it."

Paul looked as though he should have no difficulty in putting up with
it; and he went outside, and sported his oak.

"Won't you sit down, and tell me why you have come?" he suggested,
when he came back again. Katharine dropped into a chair, and laughed.

"How can you ask? Why, it is my half-term holiday; and the sun's
shining. Look!"

"I believe it is, yes," he said, glancing towards the gently flapping
blind. "Has that got anything to do with it?"

"Of course it has. I believe, I do believe you never would have known
it was a fine day at all, if I had not come to see you!"

"I can hardly believe that you did come to see me for the purpose of
telling me it was a fine day," said Paul.

Katharine leaned over the back of her chair, and nodded at him.

"Guess why I did come," she said. He shook his head lazily. She
imparted the rest of her news in little instalments, to give it more
emphasis. "It's my half-term holiday," she said again, and paused to
watch the effect of her words.

"I think I heard you say that before," he observed.

"And I'm going into the country for the whole day."

"Yes?" said Paul, who did not seem impressed.

"And I want you to come too. There! don't you think it was worth a
visit?" Her laugh rang out, and filled the little room. Paul was
stroking his beard reflectively, but he did not seem vexed.

"Really, Katharine," he said once more.

"Oh, now, don't be musty," she pleaded, resting her chin on her hands.
"I just want to do something jolly to-day; and I've never asked you
anything before, have I? Do, _please_, Mr. Wilton. I won't bother you
again for ever so long; I promise you I won't."

"Are you aware," said Paul, frowning, "that it is not customary to
come and visit a man in his chambers in this uninvited manner?"

"You know quite well," retorted Katharine, "that nothing ever matters,
if I do it."

"Of course I know that you are beyond the taint of scandal, or the--"

She started up impatiently, and came over to the side of his
arm-chair.

"Don't begin to be sarcastic. I never can think of the word I want,
when you get sarcastic. I am not beyond anything, and I am certainly
not above asking you a favour. Now, if you were to stop being superior
for a few minutes--"

"And if you were to stop standing on one leg, and swinging the other
about in that juvenile manner, a catastrophe might be--"

She seized a cushion and tried to smother him with it; but he was too
quick for her, and the cushion went spinning to the other end of the
room, and she found herself pulled on to his knee.

"You dreadful child! It is too hot, and I am too old for romping in
this fashion," he observed lazily.

"Are you coming?" she asked abruptly. She was playing with his watch
chain, and he did not quite know what to make of her face.

"Do you want me to?" he asked gently.

"Of course I do," she said, in a swift little whisper; and her fingers
strayed up to his scarf pin, and touched his beard.

"I am being dreadfully improper," she said.

"You are being very nice," he replied, and weakly kissed her fingers.
She did not move, and he gave her a little shake.

"What a solemn child you are," he complained. "It is impossible to
play with you, because you always take one so seriously."

"I know," said Katharine, rousing herself and looking penitent. "I am
so sorry! I am made that way, I think. It used to annoy Ted. I think
it is because I never had any fun at home, or any one to play with,
except Ted. And then I began to earn my living, and so I never had
time to be frivolous at all. I suppose I am too old to begin, now."

"Much too old," smiled Paul.

A knock came at the outer door. Paul put her away from him almost
roughly, and glanced with a disturbed look round the room.

"You had better stay here," he said shortly, "and keep quiet till I
come back."

"Who is it?" asked Katharine, in some bewilderment.

"I don't know. You don't understand," was all he said; and he went out
and spoke for a few minutes to a man on the landing.

"It was about a brief," he said on his return. He still frowned a
little, and she felt, regretfully, that his genial mood had fled.

"Was that all? Wouldn't he come in?" she asked.

Paul looked at her incredulously.

"It wasn't likely that I should ask him," he said, turning his back to
her, and rummaging among the papers on his desk. The colour came into
her face, and she was conscious of having said something tactless,
without exactly knowing what.

"Shall I go away again?" she asked slowly. The joy seemed suddenly to
have been taken out of her half-term holiday.

"You see, it is not for myself that I mind," he tried to explain
quietly; "but if you were to be seen in here alone, it would do for
your reputation at once, don't you see?"

Katharine looked as though she did not see.

"But, surely, there is no harm in my coming here?" she protested.

"Of course not; no harm at all. It isn't that," said Paul hastily.

"Then," said Katharine, "if there is no harm in it, why should I not
come? It is all rubbish, isn't it? I won't come any more if it bothers
you; but that is another matter."

"My dear child, do be reasonable! It is not a question of my feelings
at all. I like you to come, but I don't want other people to know that
you do, because of what they might say. It is for your sake entirely
that I wish you to be careful. That is why I don't come to see you at
your place. Do you see now?"

Katharine shook her head.

"It is either wrong, or it isn't wrong," she said obstinately. "I
never dreamed that there could be any harm in my coming to see you, or
I should not have come. And it was so pleasant, and you have always
been so nice to me. Why did you not tell me before? I don't see how it
can be wrong, and yet it can't be right, if I have got to pretend to
other people that I don't come. I hate hiding things; I don't like the
feel of it. I wish I could understand what you mean."

"It is quite easy to understand," said Paul, beginning to realise that
his case, as stated baldly by Katharine, was a very lame one. "It is
not wrong, as far as you and I are concerned; but it is a hell of a
world, and people will talk."

It was strong language for him to use; and she felt again that it was
her stupidity that was annoying him. She sighed, and her voice
trembled a little.

"I don't see what it has to do with other people at all. It is quite
enough for me, if you like me to come; and as for my reputation, it
seems to exist solely for the sake of the other people, so they may
as well say what they like about it. _I_ don't care. It is horrible of
you to suggest such a lot of horrible ideas. According to you, I ought
to be feeling ashamed of myself; but-- I don't."

"Of course you don't," said Paul, smiling in spite of himself; and he
put his hand out and drew her towards him. She was only a child, he
told himself, and he was old enough to be her father.

"My dear little puritan," he added softly, "you were never made to
live in the world as it is. If all women were like you, good heavens!
there wouldn't be any sin left."

"And I believe you would be sorry for it, wouldn't you?" said
Katharine suddenly. But when, instead of contradicting her, he tried
to make her explain her meaning, she only shook her head resolutely.

"I don't think I could; I hardly know myself. It was only something
that came into my head at the moment. It was something horrid; don't
let us talk about it any more. Are you coming out with me, or not? Ah,
I know you are not coming, now!"

She was swift to notice the least change in his expression, and it had
grown very dark in the last ten minutes. He held her out at arms'
length, by her two elbows, and smiled rather uncomfortably.

"I think I won't to-day, dear. Another time, eh? This brief must be
looked to at once; and I have some other work, too. Go and enjoy your
holiday, without me for a discordant element."

Katharine flushed up hotly, and loosed herself from his grasp. "I
don't mind your not coming," she said, looking steadily on the ground,
"but I don't think you need bother to invent excuses for _me_."

Paul shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that maddened her.
"All right; I won't, then. Go and find some one else for a companion,
and don't be a young silly. Can't Ted get off for to-day?"

"You have never said so many horrid things to me before," cried
Katharine passionately.

"You have never been so difficult to please before," observed Paul
coolly. "Besides, I was under the impression that I was making rather
a good suggestion."

"You always drag up Ted when you are being particularly unkind! If I
had wanted to go out with Ted, I shouldn't have come to you first."

Paul began to fear a scene; and he had more than a man's horror of
scenes. But he could not help seeing the tears in her eyes as she
walked away to the door, and he caught her up just as she was opening
it.

"Aren't you going to say good-bye? It may be some time before I see
you again." He determined, as he spoke, that it should certainly be a
very long time before he saw her again. But she disarmed him by
turning round swiftly without a trace of her anger left.

"Oh, why must it be some time? You don't mean it, do you? Say you
don't mean it, Mr. Wilton," she implored.

"No, no; I was only joking," he said reassuringly. "Quite soon, of
course." And he dropped a kiss on the little pink ear that was nearest
to him. But when he saw the look on her face, and the quick way in
which her breath was coming and going, he blamed himself for his
indiscretion, and pushed her playfully outside the door.

When Phyllis Hyam came home from the office, that evening, she found
Katharine on the floor of her cubicle, mending stockings; while the
rest of her wardrobe occupied all the available space to be seen.
Katharine never did things by halves, and she very rarely had the
impulse to mend her clothes.

"Hullo! do you mean to say you are back already?" cried Phyllis,
tripping clumsily over the dresses on the floor.

"That hardly demands an answer, does it?" said Katharine, without
looking up. She threaded her needle, and added more graciously, "I
didn't go, after all."

"Oh," said Phyllis wonderingly. "I'm sorry."

"You needn't bother, thanks. I didn't want to go. I stayed at home
instead, and mended my clothes; they seemed to want it, rather. I
shall be quite respectable, now."

"Oh!" said Phyllis again. "I should have left it for a wet day, I
think."

"Perhaps your work allows you to select your holidays according to the
weather. Mine doesn't," said Katharine sarcastically.

Phyllis cleared the chair, and sat down upon it.

"You've been crying," she said, with the bluntness that estranged all
her friends in time. Katharine never minded it; it rather appealed to
her love of truth than otherwise.

"Oh, yes! I was disappointed, that's all. There was nothing really to
cry about. I don't know why I did. Don't sit there and stare,
Phyllis; I know I have made a sight of myself."

"No, you haven't. Poor old dear!" said Phyllis, with ill-timed
affection. "I should like to tell him what I think of him, I know!"
she added emphatically.

"What are you muttering about?" asked Katharine.

"Oh, nothing," said Phyllis. "Have you had any tea?"

"I don't want any tea, thank you. I wish you wouldn't bother. Go down
and have your own."

"Guess I shall bring it up here instead, and then we can talk," said
Phyllis. In about ten minutes she returned, very much out of breath,
with a large tray.

Katharine looked up and frowned. "I said I didn't want any," she said
crossly. However, she added that she believed there was some
shortbread on the book-case, which Phyllis at once annexed; and her
temper began slowly to improve.

"Phyllis," she asked abruptly, after a long pause, "what do you think
of men?"

"That they are luxuries," returned Phyllis, without hesitation. "If
you've nothing to do all day but to play about, you can afford to
have a man or two around you; but if you're busy, you can't do with
them, anyhow."

"Why not?" demanded Katharine. "Don't you think they help one along,
rather?"

"Not a bit of it! First, they draw you on, because you seem to hold
off; and then, when you begin to warm up, they come down with a
quencher, and you feel you've been a sight too bold. And all that kind
of thing is distracting; and it affects your work after a time."

"But surely," said Katharine, "a girl can have a man for a friend
without going through all that!"

"Don't believe in it; never did; it doesn't work."

"I think it does, sometimes," observed Katharine. "Of course it
depends on the girl."

"Entirely," said Phyllis cheerfully. "The man would always spoil it,
if he could--without being found out."

Katharine leaned back on the pillow, with her arms behind her head,
and her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"That's just it," she said thoughtfully; "men are so much more
conventional than women. I am glad I am not a man, after all. There
is no need for a woman to be conventional, is there? She isn't afraid
of being suspected, all the time. I'm certain conventionality was made
for man, and not man for conventionality, and that woman never had a
hand in it at all."

"I don't know about that, though it sounds very fine," said Phyllis.
"But of course men have to be more conventional than we are. It helps
them to make some show of respectability, I guess."

"It is very horrible, if one analyses it," murmured Katharine.
"According to that, the man who is openly bad is preferable to the man
who is conventionally good. Of course Paul is not bad at all; but, oh!
I do wish I didn't see through people, when they try to pretend
things,--it always annoys them."

"Eh?" said Phyllis, looking up. "Your tea is getting cold."

"Never mind about the tea! Tell me, Phyllis, do you think any woman
can attract any man, if she likes?"

"Of course she can, if she is not in love with him."

Katharine winced, and brought her eyes down to look at her unconscious
friend, who was still munching shortbread with an expression of
complete contentment on her face.

"I mean if she _is_ in love with him, very much in love with him."

"Can't say; never was, myself. But I don't believe you can do
anything, if you've got it badly; you have to let yourself go, and
hope for the best."

"I don't believe you know any more about it than I do, Phyllis. I'll
tell you what it is that is attractive to a man in a woman: it is her
imperfections. He likes her to be jealous, and vain, and full of small
deceptions. He hates her to be tolerant, and large-minded, and
truthful; above all, he hates her to be truthful. I don't know why it
is so, but it is."

"It is because she isn't too mighty big to worship him, then; nor cute
enough to see through him," said Phyllis.

"If you can see through a man, you should never fall in love with
him," added Katharine.

"Oh, I don't know!" said Phyllis. "You can always pretend not to see;
they never know."

"A nice man does," said Katharine, smiling for the first time. The tea
had made her feel more charitable; and she took up her pen, and wrote
to her mother's connections, the Keeleys, who did not know she was in
town, to ask them when she could call and see them.

She felt the need of knowing some one, now that she had made up her
mind not to know Paul any more. For he had taught her the desire for
companionship, and she shrank from being left entirely friendless.




CHAPTER IX


At first she was surprised to find that it was so easy to get on
without him. She persuaded herself that her indifference arose from
her annoyance at his having imposed the conventional view of things
upon her; but, in reality, it was due to her conviction that he would
be the first to give in, and would soon write and ask her to go and
see him. And she longed for an opportunity to write and refuse him.
But when a fortnight passed by and no letter came from him, her
righteous scorn deserted her and she became merely angry. The flatness
of being completely ignored was unendurable; and she longed more than
ever for a chance of showing him that her dignity was equal to his,
although she was beginning to fear that he was not going to give her
the necessary occasion. Then came days when she felt reckless, and
determined to cease thinking about him at any cost; and she threw
herself into any distraction that offered itself, and tried to think
that she was quite getting over her desire to see him. It was in one
of these moods that she went to call on the Keeleys, who had written
to tell her that they were always at home on Thursdays. The fact of
putting on her best clothes was in itself some satisfaction; it was a
step towards restoring her self-respect, at all events, and she felt
happier than she had been for some time past as she walked down Park
Lane and found her way to their house in Curzon Street.

The Honourable Mrs. Keeley was the widow of a peer's son who had been
a cabinet minister and had signalised his political career by
supporting every bill for the emancipation of women, and his domestic
one by impressing upon his wife that her true sphere was the home. The
natural reaction followed after his death, when Mrs. Keeley broke
loose from the restraint his presence had put upon her, and practised
the precepts he had loved to expound in public. She became the most
active of political women; she spoke upon platforms; she harried the
rate-payers until they elected her favourite county councillor; she
canvassed in the slums for the candidate who would vote for woman's
suffrage. She had a passion for everything that was modern,
irrespective of its value; and she spent the time that was not
occupied by her public duties in trying to force her principles upon
her only daughter. But Marion Keeley refused to be modern, except in
her amusements; she accepted the bicycle and the cigarette with
equanimity, but she had no desires to reform anything or anybody; she
merely wanted to enjoy herself as much as possible, and she looked
forward to making a wealthy marriage in the future. Her greatest
ambition was to avoid being bored, and her greatest trial was the
energy of her mother. She never pretended to be advanced; and she felt
that she had been wasted on the wrong mother when she saw most of the
girls of her acquaintance burning to do things in defiance of their
old-fashioned parents. She chose her own friends from the idle world
of Mayfair; and so it was that two distinct sets of people met in the
Keeleys' drawing-room on Thursday afternoons and disapproved of each
other.

Katharine received a warm reception from her hostess. The fact that
she belonged to the class of working gentlewomen, about whom Mrs.
Keeley had many theories but little knowledge, was a sufficient
evidence of her right to be encouraged; and she found herself seated
on an uncomfortable stool, and introduced to an East-end clergyman
and a lady inspector of factories within five minutes of her entry
into the room. She glanced rather longingly towards the back
drawing-room, where her cousin Marion was looking very pretty and was
flirting very charmingly with three smart-looking boys; but it was
evident that her aunt had labelled her as one of her own set, and she
resigned herself to her fate, and agreed with the East-end clergyman
that the want of rain was becoming serious.

"My niece lectures, you know; strikingly clever, and _so_ young," said
Mrs. Keeley in a breathless aside to the lady inspector, as she came
back from the opposite side of the room, where she had just coupled a
socialist and a guardian of the poor.

"Indeed!" said the lady inspector; and Katharine began to lose her
diffidence when she found that she smiled quite like an ordinary
person. "Do you lecture on hygiene? Because Mr. Hodgson-Pemberton is
getting up some popular lectures in his parish, and we are trying to
find a lecturer for hygiene?"

Mr. Hodgson-Pemberton became animated for a moment; but when Katharine
said, apologetically, that her subjects were merely literary, he took
no further interest in her and resumed his conversation with the lady
inspector of factories. Katharine was left alone again, and relapsed
into one of her dreams, until Marion recognised her and came and
fetched her into the back drawing-room.

"Isn't it refreshing?" she said to the boys, who had now increased in
number: "Kitty doesn't know anything about politics, and she doesn't
want to be with the fogies at all, do you, Kitty? And, for all that,
she is dreadfully clever, and gives lectures on all sorts of things to
all sorts of people. Oh, dear, I do wish I were clever!"

"Oh, please don't be clever, Miss Keeley! you won't know me any longer
if you are," said her favourite boy, imploringly.

"You are far too charming to be clever," added another boy, who had
been her favourite last week, and was trying to regain his position by
elaborate compliments.

"That's rubbish," said Marion crushingly; "and not very polite to my
cousin, either."

The dethroned favourite did his best to repair his blunder by assuring
Katharine that he would never have supposed her to be clever, if he
had not been told so. And when she laughed uncontrollably at his
remark, he chose to be offended, and withdrew altogether.

"You shouldn't laugh at him. He can't help it," said Marion, and she
introduced a third admirer to Katharine to get rid of him. He had very
little to say, and when she had confessed that she did not bicycle,
and never went in the park because she was too busy, he stared a
little without speaking at all, and then contrived to join again in
the conversation that was buzzing around Marion. Most of the other
people had left now, and Katharine was trying to summon up courage to
do the same, when her aunt came up to her again, and presented her to
a weary-looking girl in a big hat.

"You ought to know each other," she said, effusively, "because you are
both workers. Miss Martin does gesso work, and has a studio of her
own; and my niece gives lectures, you know."

They looked at one another rather hopelessly, and Katharine resisted
another impulse to laugh.

"The knowledge of our mutual occupations doesn't seem to help the
conversation much, does it?" she said; and the weary-looking girl
tried to smile.

"That's right," said Mrs. Keeley, resting for a moment in a chair near
them. "I knew you two would have plenty to say to each other. That's
the best of you working-women; there is such a bond of sympathy
between you."

"Is there?" said Katharine, remembering the sixty-three working-women
at Queen's Crescent, and her feelings towards them. But Mrs. Keeley
had ideas about women who worked, and meant to air them.

"It is so splendid to think that women can really do men's work, in
spite of everything that is said to the contrary," she continued.

The weary-looking girl made no attempt to contradict her, but
Katharine was less docile.

"I don't think they can," she objected. "They might, perhaps, if they
had a fair chance; but they haven't."

"But they are getting it every day," cried Mrs. Keeley, waxing
enthusiastic. "Think of the progress that has been made, even in my
time; and in another ten years there will be nothing that women will
not be able to do in common with men! Isn't it a glorious reflection?"

"I don't think it will be so," persisted Katharine. "It has nothing to
do with education, or any of those things. A woman is handicapped,
just because she is a woman, and has to go on living like a woman.
There is always home work to be done, or some one to be nursed, or
clothes to be mended. A man has nothing to do but his work; but a
woman is expected to do a woman's work as well as a man's. It is too
much for any one to do well. I am a working-woman myself, and I don't
find it so pleasant as it is painted."

"I'm _so_ glad you think so," murmured Marion, who had come up
unobserved, with her favourite in close attendance. "I was afraid you
would be on mamma's side, and I believe you are on mine, after all."

At this point the weary-looking girl got up to leave, as though she
could not bear it another minute, and Katharine tried to do the same;
but she was not to be let off so easily.

"Tell me," said her aunt earnestly, "do you not think that women are
happier if they have work to do for their living?"

"I suppose it is possible, but I haven't met any who are," answered
Katharine. "I think it is because they feel they have sacrificed all
the pleasures of life. Men don't like women who work, do they?"

The eyes of Marion met those of her favourite admirer; and Marion
blushed. But Mrs. Keeley returned to the charge.

"Indeed, there are many in my own acquaintance who have the greatest
admiration for working-women."

"Oh, yes," laughed Katharine, "they have lots of admiration for us;
but they don't fall in love with us, that's all. I think it is because
it is the elusive quality in woman that fascinates men; and directly
they begin to understand her, they cease to be fascinated by her. And
woman is growing less mysterious every day, now; she is chiefly
occupied in explaining herself, and that is why men don't find her
such good fun. At least, I think so."

"You know us remarkably well, Miss Austen, you do, really," drawled
the favourite boy.

"Oh, no," said Katharine, really getting up this time, "I don't
pretend to. But I do know the working gentlewoman very well indeed,
and I don't think she is a bit like the popular idea of her."

She was much pleased with herself as she walked home; and even the
bustle of Edgware Road and the squalor of Queen's Crescent failed to
remove the pleasant impression that her excursion into the fashionable
world had left with her. It comforted her wounded feelings to
discover that she could hold her own in a room full of people,
although the only man whose opinion she valued held her of no more
account than a child.

"Hullo! you seem pleased with yourself," said Polly Newland, as she
entered the house. The cockney twang of her voice struck un-musically
on Katharine's ear, and she murmured some sort of ungracious reply and
turned to rummage in the box for letters. There was one for her, and
the sight of the precise, upright handwriting drove every thought of
Polly, and the Keeleys, and her pleasant afternoon out of her head.
Even then something kept her from reading it at once, and she took it
upstairs into her cubicle, and laid it on the table while she changed
her clothes and elaborately folded up her best ones and put them away.
Then she sat down on the bed and tore it open with trembling fingers,
and tried to cheat herself into the belief that she was perfectly
indifferent as to its contents.

"Dear child," it ran:--

     What has become of you? Come round and have tea with me
     to-morrow afternoon. I have some new books to show you.

         Yours ever,

              PAUL WILTON.

Here at last was the opportunity she had wanted. He should know now
that she was not a child, to be laughed at because she was cross, to
be ignored when she was hurt, and to be coaxed back into good humour
again by a bribe. She would be able to show him now that she was not
the sort of woman he seemed to consider her, and she told herself
several times that she was overjoyed at being given the chance of
telling him so. But when it came to the point, she found that the
cold, dignified letter she had been composing for weeks was not so
easy to write; and she spent the rest of the evening in thinking of
new ones. First of all, it was to be very short, and very stiff; but
that was not obvious enough to gratify her injured feelings, and she
set to work on another one that was mainly sarcastic. But sarcasm
seemed a sorry weapon to use when she had reached such a crisis in her
life as this; and she thought of another one in bed, after the light
was out, in which she determined that he should know she was unhappy
as well. And this one was so pathetic that it even roused her own
pity, and she felt that it would be positively inhuman to send such a
letter as that to any one, however badly he had behaved.

In the end, she did not write to him at all. It was more effective,
she thought, to remain silent. So she went to school the next morning
as usual, and gave her lessons as usual; though she looked in the
glass at intervals to see if she were pale and had a sad expression,
which certainly ought to have been the case. But even her head did not
ache, which it did sometimes; and Nature obstinately refused to come
to her assistance. She reached home again about four o'clock, and the
aspect of the doorsteps and the area completed her discomfiture. If
they had only been a little less squalid, a little more free from the
domination of cats, she might have retained her dignified attitude to
the end. But there was something about them to-day that recalled the
cosy little room in the Temple by vivid contrast; and she flung her
pile of exercise books recklessly upon the hall table, and hastened
out of the house again, without allowing herself time to think.

"I was afraid you were not coming," he said, and he greeted her with
both hands. She never remembered seeing him so unreserved in his
welcome before; and she marvelled at herself for having attempted to
keep away from him any longer.

"It was because of the cats," she said, laughing to hide her emotion.
But she could not hide anything from him; he knew something of what
she was thinking, and he bent down and deliberately kissed her.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, trying to free her hands to cover
her burning face.

"Because you didn't stop me, I suppose," he replied, lightly.

"But I didn't know you were going to."

"Because I knew you wouldn't mind, then."

She did not speak, and her eyes were lowered.

"Did you mind, Katharine?"

"No," she whispered.

"Now, tell me why I am indebted to the cats," he said, as he rang the
bell for tea; and for the rest of the afternoon they talked, as
Katharine laughingly said, "without any conversation."

There was no explanation on either side, no attempt at facing the
situation; and she felt when she left him that she had thrown away her
last chance of controlling their friendship. There had been a tacit
struggle between their two wills, and his had triumphed. She could
never put him out of her life now, unless he broke with her of his
own accord; and she realised bitterly, even while she was glad, that
he did not care enough for her to do that.

She saw him constantly all through the hot months of July and August.
She gave up her original intention of going home for the summer
holidays, on the pretext of reading for her next term's lectures at
the British Museum; but she did very little work in reality, and she
spent whole days in the reading-room, regardless of the people around
her, sometimes even of the book before her, and dreamed long hours
away, making visions in which only two people played any prominent
part,--and those two people were Paul and herself. Her whole life
seemed to be a kind of dream just then, with a vivid incident here and
there when she met him or went to see him, and the rest a vague
nebula, in which something outside herself made her do what was
expected of her. Sometimes she felt impelled to work furiously hard
for a day or two, or to take long walks by herself, as though nothing
else would tire her restless energy; and then she would relapse into
her lethargic mood again, and do nothing but watch vigilantly for the
post, or haunt the streets where she had sometimes met him. And all
the while she thought she was happy, with a kind of weird, passionate
happiness she had never known before; and it seemed to compensate for
the hours of suspense and anxiety she went through when he took no
notice of her. For his conduct was as inexplicable as ever; and for
one day that he was demonstrative and even affectionate, she had to
endure many of indifference that almost amounted to cruelty.

"We are horribly alike; it hurts me sometimes when I suddenly find
myself in you," she said to him one day, when he was in an expansive
mood.

"I am much honoured by the discovery, but I fail to see where the
likeness lies," was his reply.

"It is not very definite," she said, thoughtfully. "I think it must be
because I feel your changes of mood so quickly. We laugh together at
something, and everything seems so fearfully nice; and then, suddenly,
I feel that something has sprung up between us, and I look up and I
see that you feel it too, and all at once there is nothing to talk
about. Haven't you ever noticed it?"

"I think you are an absurdly sensitive little girl," he said, smiling.

"Of course," she continued, without heeding his remark, "on the
surface, no two people could be more unlike than we are. You are so
awfully afraid of showing what you feel, for instance; but I always
tell you everything, don't I?"

"My dear child, what nonsense! I am of the most artless and confiding
nature; while you, on the contrary, never give yourself away at all.
Why, you never tell me anything I really want to know! Whatever put
such an idea into that curious head of yours?"

"Oh, don't!" she cried. "You make me feel quite hysterical! You have
no right to upset all my views on my own character, as well as on
yours. I _know_ I am stupidly demonstrative. I have often blushed all
over because I have told you things I never meant to tell any one. How
can you say I am reserved? I only wish I were!"

"The few confidences of a reserved person are always rash ones,"
observed Paul. "The same might be said of the reflections of an
impulsive person, or the impulses of a reflective one. It all comes
from want of habit. You can't alter your temperament, that's all."

"But I can't believe that I am reserved," she persisted; "it seems
incredible. And it makes us more alike than ever."

"Really, Katharine, I beg you to rid your mind of that exceedingly
fallacious notion," said Paul, laughing. "I assure you I am to be read
like a book."

"A book in a strange language, then. I don't think I shall ever be
able to read it," said Katharine, shaking her head. And she drew down
a rebuke upon herself for being solemn.

They had a tacit unwillingness to become serious, about this time;
their conversation was made up of trivialities, and he never kissed
her except on the tips of her fingers. They avoided any demonstration
of feeling that might have revealed to them the anomaly of their
position, and they mutually shrank from defining their relations
towards one another.

They were standing together at the window, one day, looking down into
Fountain Court, which was as hot and as dusty as ever in spite of the
water that was playing into the basin in the middle.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked her, so suddenly that she was
surprised into an answer.

"I was thinking how queer it is that you and I should be friends like
this," she replied, truthfully.

"What's the matter with our friendship, then?" he asked, in the
prosaic manner he always assumed when she showed any sentiment. She
laughed.

"There's nothing the matter with it, of course. You are the most
unromantic person I ever knew. You seem to delight in divesting every
little trivial incident of its sentiment. What makes you such a
Vandal?"

"But, surely, you are not supposing that there _is_ any romance in our
knowing each other, are you?"

"I never dreamed of such a thing," retorted Katharine. "I think there
is more romance in your cigarette holder than in the whole of you!"

Sometimes she wondered if he were capable of deep feeling at all, or
if his indifference were really assumed.

"I envy you your utter disregard of circumstance," she once exclaimed
to him. "How did you learn it? Do you really never feel things, or is
it only an easy way of getting through life?"

"I'm afraid I don't see what you are driving at. I dare say you are
being very brilliant, but I fail to discern what I am expected to
say."

"You are not expected to say anything," she said, playfully. "That is
the best of being a gigantic fraud like yourself; nobody ever does
expect you to fulfil the ordinary requirements of every-day life. You
might be a heathen god, who grins heartlessly while people try to
propitiate him with the best they have to offer, and who eats up their
gifts greedily when they are not looking."

"Has all this any reference to me, might I ask?"

"I don't believe you've got any ordinary human feeling," pursued
Katharine. "I don't believe you care for anybody or anything, so long
as you are left alone. Why don't you say something, instead of staring
at me as though I were a curiosity?"

"If you reflect, you will see that there has not been a single pause
since you began to speak. Besides, why shouldn't you be catechised as
well as myself? Where do you keep all your deep feeling, please? I
haven't seen much of it, but perhaps I have no right to expect such a
thing. No doubt you keep it all for some luckier person than myself."

His tone was one of raillery, as hers had been when she began to talk.
But she startled him, as she did sometimes, by a sudden change of
mood; and she flashed round upon him indignantly.

"It is horrible of you to laugh at me. You know you don't mean what
you say; you know I have any amount of deep feeling. I hide it on
purpose, because you don't like me to show it, you know you don't!
I--I think you are very unkind to me."

He reached out his hand and stroked her hair gently; she was sitting a
little away from him, and he could see the sensitive curve of her
lower lip.

"Don't, child! One never knows how to take you. Another time you would
have seen that I was only joking."

"You have no right to joke about such a serious matter. You know it
was a serious matter, now; wasn't it?"

"The most serious in the universe," he assured her; and he brought his
hand gently down her cheek, and laid it against her throat.

"You are only laughing; you always laugh at me," she complained; but
she bent her head, and kissed his hand softly. "I feel like a wolf,
sometimes," she added, impetuously.

"Didn't you have enough tea?" he said. But she knew by his tone that
he was not laughing at her now, and she went on recklessly.

"I am certain I could not love any one very much, without hating him
too. It is a horrible dual feeling that tears one to pieces. Is it the
badness in me, I wonder? Other people don't seem to feel like that
when they are in love. Why is it?"

"Because it is the same emotion, or set of emotions, that inspires
both love and hatred," said Paul. "Circumstance does the rest, or
temperament."

"It is inexplicable," said Katharine solemnly. "I can understand
killing a man, because he could not understand my love for him; or
casting off my own child, because it was bored by my affection. I am
quite sure," she added, quaintly, "that I should bore any one in a
week, if I really loved him."

"Oh, no," said Paul politely; and they again laughed away a crisis.




CHAPTER X


At the beginning of October Paul went abroad. She had thought that
life without him would be unendurable, and she could not analyse her
own feelings when she found that she could laugh with as much
enjoyment as ever, and that her fits of depression were less frequent
than before. In fact, she had often been far more unsettled if a
letter from him had failed to arrive when it was due; and a new
sensation of freedom went far to cure her of the restlessness that had
possessed her all the summer. She began to probe into her truth-loving
soul, to try and discover whether her feeling for him was not an
illusion after all; but she found no satisfactory explanation of the
problem that was puzzling her, and she put it voluntarily away from
her, and turned to her work as a healthy antidote. And she had a good
deal of work just then. Thanks to the influence of the Honourable Mrs.
Keeley, her private pupils were increasing in number, and these, with
her lectures at the school, were producing a salary that relieved her
of all financial worry for the present. She was making new friends
too, and it added to her contentment to find that people asked her to
go and see them because they liked her. For the first time since her
arrival in town, she felt sure of being on the way to success; and the
sensation was a very thrilling one. Phyllis asked her, one day, why
she was looking so happy. Katharine laughed, and pondered for a
moment; then answered frankly that she did not know why. "I only know
that I have never been so gloriously happy in my whole life," she
added; and she wondered, as she spoke, whether the mad, feverish
happiness of the summer months had really been happiness at all. But
Phyllis, who felt that she had no share in this strange new life of
hers, looked back regretfully on the earlier days when Katharine had
been lonely and in need of her sympathy. Even Ted told her she was
looking "very fit," and this was the highest term of praise in his
vocabulary. For, since the beginning of October, she had seen a good
deal of Ted. It was very restful to come back to him, after the state
of high pressure in which she had been living lately; and when she
grew accustomed to his being a West-end young man, instead of an
easy-going schoolboy, she found him the same delightful companion as
of old. He did not allude to her many weeks of silence, nor ask her
how she had spent them; he came at her bidding, and when he found that
she liked him to come he came again. He was as humble as ever, except
in matters of worldly knowledge, and there he showed a youthful
superiority over her which amused her immensely. His laziness, which
had always been more or less an assumption with him, had developed
into the fashionable pose of indifference; and she tried in vain to
spur him on to doing something definite with his life, instead of
letting it drift away in a city office.

"Girls don't understand these things," he would say with good-natured
obstinacy. "Of course I loathe the beastly hole; any decent chap
would. But I may as well stop there. It's not my fault that I was ever
born, is it? I get enough to live on, with what my cousin allows me;
and I'm not going to grind all I know, to get a rise of five bob a
week. It isn't good enough. I'm sure I'm very easily contented, and my
wants are few enough. Oh, rats! I must have a frock coat; every decent
chap has. And you couldn't possibly call that extravagant, because I
sha'n't think of squaring it for a year at least. Of course I don't
expect you to understand these things, Kitty; it's impossible for a
man to do the cheap, like a woman."

And Katharine, who always wanted to reconstitute society, with a very
limited knowledge of its first principles, would strike in with a
vigorous denunciation of his comfortable philosophy; and he would
listen and laugh at her, and make no effort to support his own opinion
which he continued to hold, nevertheless. He was the best companion
she could have had just then; he never varied, whatever her mood was,
and he kept her from thinking too much about herself, which was a
habit she had acquired since she last saw him. Besides, he was a link
with her childhood, that period of vague existence which had held no
problems to be solved, and had never inspired her with a wish to
reform human nature. So they spent many evenings and half-holidays
together, and they went frequently to the theatre and sat in the
gallery, which often entertained them as much as the play itself; and
he loved to pay for her, with a manly air, at the box office, and
always made the same kind of weak resistance afterwards, when
Katharine insisted on refunding her share, under the lamp at the
corner of Queen's Crescent, Marylebone. Sometimes, when they were
unusually well off, they would dine at an Italian restaurant first,
where they could have many wonderful dishes for two shillings, and a
bottle of tenpenny claret. On one occasion--it was Ted's birthday, and
his cousin had sent him a five-pound note--they had more than an
ordinary jubilation.

"Buck up, and get ready!" he had rushed into the little distempered
hall to say. "We'll go to a new place, where the waiters aren't dirty,
and the wine isn't like sulphuric acid. And, Kitty, put on that hat
with the pink roses, won't you?"

They did their best, on that memorable evening, to reduce the five
pound-note, and to behave as though they were millionaires. They drove
in a hansom to the restaurant in question, which was a very brilliant
little one close to the theatres, where they had a waiter to
themselves instead of the fifth part of a very distracted and
breathless one. The state of Ted's pockets could always be estimated
by the amount of attention he exacted from the waiter; and this
evening there was absolutely nothing he would do for himself, from the
disposal of his walking stick to the choice of the wine.

"It's a very good tip to start by taking the waiter into your
confidence," he assured Kitty, when it had just been settled for them
that they were to have _bisque_ soup.

"It's convenient, sometimes, when everything is written in French,"
observed Katharine. Ted changed the conversation. On his twenty-second
birthday he felt inclined, for once in a way, to assert himself.

"I'm rather gone on this place; pretty, isn't it?" he continued. "All
the candle-shades are red, white, and blue; mean to say you didn't
twig that? You're getting less alive every day, Kit! Awfully
up-to-date place, this! I don't suppose there is a single decent woman
in the room, bar yourself."

He said this with such pride in the knowledge, that she would not have
robbed him of his satisfaction for the world.

"They look much the same as other women to me," she observed, after a
quick survey of the little tables.

"That's because you don't know. How should you? Women never do, bless
them! Do you like fizz?"

"Oh, Ted, don't! Isn't it a pity to spend such a lot just for
nothing?" she remonstrated. She had visions of all the unpaid bills he
had disclosed to her in one of his recent pessimistic moods.

"My dear Kitty, you really must learn to enjoy life. Don't be so
beastly serious over everything. Bills? What bills? There aren't any
to-night. The art of living is knowing when to be extravagant."

And she had to acknowledge, for the rest of the evening, that he had
certainly mastered the art of living. They went to a music hall, and
sat in the stalls; and Katharine enjoyed it because Ted was there, and
because he was so funny all through,--first, in his fear of being
asked by the conjurer for his hat which was a new one, or his watch
which was only represented by his watch chain; and secondly, because
he tried so hard to distract her attention from the songs that were
inclined to be risky. And Ted enjoyed it because it was the thing to
do, and because there would be hardly any of that fiver left by the
time he got home.

"Then you'll look me up at the office at five to-morrow; you won't
forget?" he asked rather wistfully, when they parted on the doorstep.

"Of course I won't forget," she answered, hastily. "Dear old Ted, I
have enjoyed it so much!"

"Good-night, dear," he said, as he turned away. And his tone haunted
her rather, as she groped her way up to bed in the dark. She began to
feel half afraid, with some annoyance at the thought, that this
pleasant state of things could not go on for ever, and that Ted was
going to spoil it all again as he had done once before, by taking
their relationship seriously. So she prepared to meet him, the next
afternoon, with a reserve of manner that was meant to indicate her
displeasure; but he disconcerted her very much by asking her bluntly
why the dickens she was playing so poorly; and she felt unreasonably
annoyed to find that her fears were groundless. So for some time
longer they went on as before, in the same happy-go-lucky kind of way
that had always characterised them. She learned to know several of his
friends, most of them genuine boyish fellows, who appealed to her more
by their affection for Ted than by any qualities they possessed
themselves. They seemed very much alike, though she was bound to
acknowledge that this impression may have been conveyed by the cut of
their clothes and the shape of their hats, which did not differ by so
much as a hair's breadth. But Ted always shone by comparison with the
best of them. He was the only one of his set who did not take himself
seriously; he had a sense of humour, too, and this compensated for the
exhausted manner which he felt obliged to assume as a mark of
fellowship with them.

He asked her, one night, with some diffidence, if she would mind
coming to tea in his chambers on the following Sunday.

"I shouldn't think of asking you to come alone," he hastened to add;
"but Monty is going to bring his sister along, so that's all square as
long as you don't mind."

"Mind! Why, of course not," said Katharine, in frank astonishment.
"What is there to mind? I want to see your chambers very much. I have
often wondered why you never asked me before."

Ted stared at her for a moment, and then began tracing what remained
of the pattern in the linoleum with his walking stick. They were
standing, as usual, in the hall of number ten, Queen's Crescent.

"What a babe you are, Kitty!" he said, without looking up; and
Katharine reddened as she suddenly realised his meaning. Of course Ted
was no longer a boy, and she was no longer a child; and she was on
precisely the same footing with him in the eyes of the world as she
was with Paul Wilton. Unconsciously, she compared the attitude of the
two men under similar circumstances; Paul, who was unscrupulous in
letting her visit him as long as no one knew of it; and Ted, who had
no views on the matter at all but merely wished to spare her any
annoyance.

"I see," she said. "Who is Monty?" She always felt nervous when he
offered to introduce her to any of his friends; because she knew very
well that he warned them all beforehand that she had "ideas," and this
put her at a distinct disadvantage to begin with.

"Oh, Monty's awfully smart! He knows no end. You'll like Monty, I
expect. He wants to meet you, awfully; says he likes the look of your
photograph. I told him how bally clever you were, and all that.
Monty's clever, too; he reads Ibsen."

Katharine received this proof of Monty's intellectual ability with
some cynicism which, however, she was careful to conceal.

"I shall be delighted to meet him," she said. "What time shall I
come?"

"Oh, any time; four will do. And, I say, Kit, I suppose I must have
cream, mustn't I? You can't give Monty milk that's been sitting for
hours, and spoof him that it's cream. I've done that sometimes, but
you can't spoof Monty."

"Oh, I'll bring the cream. I know a shop where they'll let me have it
on Sunday," said Katharine confidently; and Ted left comforted.

After all, Monty's sister could not come; but Ted's sense of the
fitness of things was satisfied by his having asked her, and, as Monty
himself came and did not seem afraid of Katharine as all his other
friends were, he felt that his tea-party was a success. The only thing
that marred his enjoyment was the fact that Katharine, for some
unaccountable caprice, refused to be intellectual in spite of the
efforts of Monty, whose real name proved to be Montague, to draw her
out. Monty was a young man with a gentlemanly view of life, tempered
by a great desire to be thought advanced; and he began the
conversation with a will.

"Awfully clever new thing at the Royalty! Suppose you've seen it, Miss
Austen?" he began. "Awfully plucky of the Independent Theatre to put
it on, it is really."

"Is it?" smiled Katharine. "I haven't seen it yet. Ted and I hate
those advanced plays,--they're so slow as a rule. Comic operas, we
like best."

Monty seemed surprised; and Ted was a little disconcerted by this
frank avowal of his own ordinary tastes.

"You see, Kit only goes to those things to please me," he said,
apologetically. "She's just as keen on all those humpy plays as you
are, don't you know?"

Monty was not sure that he knew, but he turned to another branch of
art.

"Talking about posters," he said,--which was only his favourite method
of opening a conversation, for nobody was talking about posters at
all,--"have you seen that awfully clever one of the new paper, 'The
Future'? It's by quite a new man, in the French style, so bold and yet
so subtle. But of course you must have seen it."

"Oh, yes," laughed Katharine, "I should think I had! You mean the red
one, don't you, with a black sun and a cactus thing, and a lot of
spots all over it? Ted and I were laughing at it, only yesterday. Do
you really think it is good?"

Monty said he really did think so; and Ted, who was torn in two by his
admiration for both of them, came to his rescue.

"You had better be careful, Kitty," he said, anxiously. "Monty does
know."

"Of course," said Katharine politely, "it is only a matter of taste,
isn't it, Mr. Montague?"

"Quite so," replied Monty, concealing his feelings of superiority as
well as he could. "By the way, talking of taste, what do you think of
the new Danish poet? Rather strong, don't you think?"

Katharine sighed, and glanced nervously at Ted.

"Oh, I suppose he's all right," she said, with the exaggerated
solemnity that would have betrayed to any one who knew her well how
close she was to laughter; "but he isn't a bit new, is he? I mean, he
only says the same things over again that the old poets said ever so
much better. Don't you think so?"

"They all give you the hump, any way," put in Ted. But Monty ignored
his remark, and said that he never read any of the old poets; he
preferred the new ones because they went so much deeper.

"Hang it all, Kitty; what a rum girl you are!" said Ted, in a
disappointed tone. "A chap never knows where to have you. I did think
you were advanced, if you couldn't be anything else."

At this point, Katharine yielded to an irresistible desire to laugh;
and Ted looked anxiously at the friend to whom he had given such a
false impression of her "ideas." But, to his surprise, the great Monty
himself joined in her laughter, and seemed inexpressibly relieved to
find that she was not nearly so intellectual as she had been painted,
and it was therefore no longer incumbent on him to sustain the
conversation at such a high pitch.

"Now that we have settled I am not advanced," said Katharine, turning
up her veil, "supposing we have some tea." And for the rest of the
afternoon they behaved like rational beings, and discussed the low
comedians and the comic papers.

"All the same," Ted complained, when Monty had gone, "he's awfully
clever, really. You may rot as much as you like, but Monty does know
about things. You don't know what a fool he makes _me_ feel."

"He needn't do that," said Katharine. "It would be the kindest thing
in the world not to let him read another magazine or newspaper for six
months. I think he is very nice, though, when he lets himself go."

Ted looked at her a little sadly.

"You seemed to be getting on beastly well, I thought," he said.

"He is certainly very amusing, and it was nice of you to ask me to
meet him," continued Katharine, innocently. Ted walked to the
fire-place, and studied himself silently in the looking-glass.

"I wish I wasn't such a damned fool," he burst out savagely. Katharine
stood still with amazement.

"Ted!" she cried. "Ted! What do you mean?"

Ted planted his elbows on the mantel-shelf, and buried his face in his
hands.

"Ted!" she said again, with distress in her voice. "What do you mean,
Ted? As if I--oh, Ted! And a man like _that_! You know piles more than
he does, old boy, ever so much more. You don't put on any side, that's
all; and he does. You mustn't say that any more, Ted; oh, you mustn't!
It hurts."

"You know you are spoofing me," he said, in muffled tones. "You know
you only say that just to please me. You think I am a fool all the
time, only you are a good old brick and pretend not to see it. As if I
didn't twig! I ought never to have been born."

Katharine walked swiftly over to him, and laid her hand on his arm.
She did not reason with herself; she only knew that she wanted to
comfort him at any price.

"Ted," she said, earnestly, "_I_ am glad you were born."

He turned round suddenly, and looked at her; and she started nervously
at the eagerness of his expression. He had not looked like that when
he made love to her in the summer-house.

"Do you mean that, dear?"

"Oh, don't be so serious, Ted! Of course I mean it; of course I am
glad you were born. Think how forlorn I should have been without you;
it would have been awful if I had been alone." He looked only half
satisfied; and she went on desperately, caring for nothing but to
charm away the miserable look from his face. "Dear Ted, you know what
you are to me; you know I don't care a little bit for Monty, or
anybody else, either."

"Do you mean that, Kitty?" he asked again, in a voice that he could
not steady. "Not anybody else, dear?"

Something indefinable, something that made her long for another man's
voice to be trembling for love of her, as his was trembling now,
seemed to come between them and to strike her dumb. He looked at her
searchingly for a moment, then shook off her hand and pushed her away
from him. She shivered as the suspicion crossed her mind that he had
guessed her thoughts, though she knew quite well that the renewal of
her friendship with Paul was unknown to him. She went up to him again,
and let him seize her two hands and crush them until she could have
cried out with the pain.

"You are the best fellow in the world, Ted," she said. "But you
mustn't look like that; oh, don't! I am not worth it, Ted; I am not
nearly good enough for you, dear,--you know I am not. I am never going
to marry any one; I am not the sort to marry; I am hard, and cold, and
bitter. Sometimes, I think I shall just work and fight my way to the
end. I know I shall never be happy in the way most women are happy.
But I will be your chum, and stick to you always, Ted. May I?"

"Oh, shut up!" said Ted, almost in a whisper; and the tears sprang to
her eyes. She stood on tiptoe, and impetuously kissed the only place
on his cheek she could reach. At the moment, it seemed the only right
and proper thing to be done.

"I couldn't help it. I had to; and I don't care," she said, defiantly.
And Ted wrung her hands again, and let them go.

"I suppose none of it is your fault, Kit, but--"

There was a pause, and Katharine avoided his eyes, for the first time
in her life.

"It's time to go," she said. "Will you see me home?"

She fetched him his hat and coat, and Ted gave himself a shake.

"He didn't take cream, after all," he said, with a poor attempt at a
laugh.




CHAPTER XI


A letter came from Paul, just before Christmas, to say that he was
going to remain at Monte Carlo for another month. Knowing his passion
for warmth and sunshine, she was not surprised; she was hardly even
disappointed. She began to wonder what her feelings would have been if
he had decided to remain another year instead of another month; and
again she was obliged to own that the solution of her own state of
mind was beyond her. The Keeleys went abroad about the same time,
which took away her chief centre of amusement; and her former mood of
satisfaction was succeeded by one of serene indifference, in which she
continued until she went home for the holidays. At Ivingdon the
dulness of four weeks, passed almost entirely in the company of her
father and Miss Esther, caused the old unsatisfied feeling to return
to her; and she longed for a vent for the restless energy that wore
her out as long as there was no work to be done. She grew impatient
once more for a glimpse of Paul Wilton, for the touch of his thin,
nervous hand, and the sound of his quiet, unemotional voice; and she
acted over and over again, in her mind, how they would meet once more
in the little room overlooking Fountain Court, what he would be sure
to say to her, and what she knew she would say to him. No letter came
from Paul all through those weary days, and she only wrote to him
once. The pathetic note was very prominent in that one letter, and she
consoled herself with her own unhappiness while she awaited the answer
to it; but when no answer came her pride revolted, and she wished
passionately that she had never sent it.

"Can't you stay another week, child?" said Miss Esther, as the end of
the holidays drew near. "You don't look much better than when you
came, though it's not to be expected you should, working away as you
do. I never heard such nonsense, and all to no purpose! When I was a
girl-- But there, what's the use?"

And Katharine, who had heard it all before, explained over again with
increasing impatience that her work was a definite thing and required
her presence on a certain day. She had never felt less pleased with
herself than on the day of her departure, when she left the home that
had once been the whole world to her, and took leave of the people who
no longer believed in her. But as she neared London a sensation of
coming events dispelled the atmosphere of disapproval which had been
stifling her for a whole month, and she once more felt the mistress of
her own situation and her own future. Here was life and activity, work
and success, and some of it was going to be hers. And Paul Wilton
would soon be coming home again. They told her at Queen's Crescent how
well she was looking, when she appeared in the dining-room at
tea-time; and she laughed back in reply as she contrasted their
greeting with her aunt's farewell words.

"Just a year since I first came," she said to Phyllis. "What a lot has
happened since then! I don't believe it was myself at all; it must
have been somebody else. Oh, I am glad I am different now!"

"I remember," said Phyllis, who never rhapsodised. "Your face was
smutty after your journey, and you looked as though you would kill any
one who spoke to you."

"And you were eating bread and treacle," retorted Katharine. "Let's
have some now, shall we?"

"By the way," said Phyllis presently, "there's a letter for you
upstairs. It came about a week ago, and I clean forgot to forward it.
I'm awfully sorry, but I don't suppose it matters much because it's
got a foreign post-mark."

The laughter died out of Katharine's face, as she put down her teacup
and stared speechlessly at her friend.

"Shall I go and fetch it?" continued the unconscious Phyllis, as she
deluged her last morsel of bread with more treacle than any force of
cohesion would allow it to hold. "Perhaps you're ready to come up
yourself, though? I've prepared a glorification for you--Hullo! what
are you in such a desperate hurry about?"

When she arrived breathless at the top of the house, Katharine was
already in her cubicle, turning everything over in a wild and
fruitless search.

"Go away!" she said shortly, when Phyllis came in. "It was the only
thing I asked you to do, and I thought I could trust you. I shall know
better another time. What are all these things doing here?"

She knocked her head, as she spoke, against a string of Chinese
lanterns. There were flowers on the mantel-shelf, and a look of
festivity in the dingy little room; but it was all lost on Katharine,
who continued to open and shut the drawers with trembling hands, and
to search in every likely place for her letter, until Phyllis put an
end to her aimless task by bringing it to her in eloquent silence.
Then she stole away again; and Katharine sat down in the midst of the
confusion she had created, and became absorbed in its contents. It was
very short, and there was hardly any news in it that could not have
been extracted from a guide-book; but she spent quite half an hour in
reading it and pondering over it, until she knew every one of its
stilted phrases by heart. He was very well and it was very hot, and he
was sitting by the open window looking down on the orange groves, and
the sea was a splendid colour, and there were some very decent people
in the hotel, and amongst them her relations the Keeleys. It was hard
to look up at last, with dazed eyes, and to discover that she was in
Queen's Crescent, Marylebone, instead of being where her thoughts
were, in the sunny South of France.

"Hullo," said Phyllis, who was standing at the end of the bed.

"Yes?" said Katharine, smiling. "Do you want anything?"

"Oh, no," said Phyllis, and crept away again. Katharine sat and
pondered a little while longer. Presently, she shivered and made the
discovery that she was cold, and she jumped up and stretched herself.

"I suppose I must unpack," she said, still smiling contentedly. "Where
has Phyllis gone, I wonder?"

She went to the door and made the passage ring with her voice, until
Phyllis hurried out of a neighbouring room and apologised for not
being there when she was wanted.

"I believe you were there when I didn't want you," said Katharine
candidly. "Wasn't I cross to you or something?" Her foot touched one
of the discarded Chinese lanterns.

"Hullo! I thought there were some lanterns somewhere. Where are they
gone?"

"Oh, no!" said Phyllis, going down on her knees before the box. "You
must have been dreaming."

"I wasn't dreaming, and you're a foolish old dear, and I am a selfish
pig," cried Katharine penitently.

"Oh, no!" said Phyllis again. "I was the pig, you see, because I
forgot your letter. You'll rumple my hair, if you do that again."

Katharine did hug her again, nevertheless, and accused herself of all
the offences she could remember, whether they related to the present
occasion or not; and Phyllis silenced her in a gruff voice, and the
unpacking proceeded by degrees.

"Don't you think," said Katharine irrelevantly, "that women are much
more selfish than men, in some ways?"

"What ways?"

"I mean when they are absorbed in anything. Now, a man wouldn't behave
like a cad to his best friend, just because he happened to be in love
with a girl, would he? But a woman would. She would betray her nearest
and dearest for the sake of a man. I am certain I should. Women are so
wolfish, directly they feel things; and they seem to lose their sense
of honour when they fall in love. Don't they?"

"Where do the stockings go?" was all Phyllis said.

"Perhaps," continued Katharine, "it is because a woman really has
stronger feelings than a man."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Phyllis. "Who packed the sponge bag next
to your best hat?"

"I don't think it matters," said Katharine mildly. "I was saying--
What are you laughing at?"

"Nothing. Only, it is so delightful to have you back again, moralising
away while I do all the work," laughed Phyllis.

Katharine owned humbly that Phyllis always did all the work, and
Phyllis bluntly repudiated the charge, and insisted that Katharine was
the most unselfish person in the world, and Katharine ended in
allowing herself to be persuaded that she was; and the rest of the
evening passed in an amicable exchange of news. Even the "cat in the
pie dish" seemed appetising that evening.

Her feeling of satisfaction was increased when she arrived at school
the next morning and found that Mrs. Downing was anxious to speak to
her. An interview with the lady principal at the beginning of term
generally foreboded some good.

"I want you to give up the junior teaching this term, my dear Miss
Austen," she began, after greeting her warmly. "You are really too
good for it, far too good. Mr. Wilton was quite right when he told me
how cultured you were, quite right. At the time, I must confess to
feeling very doubtful; you seemed so inexperienced,--so very young, in
fact. But I have come to think that in your case it is no drawback to
be young; indeed, the dear children seem to prefer it. Their
attachment for you is extraordinary; pardon me, I should have said
phenomenal. And the way you manage them is perfect, quite
perfect,--just the touch of firmness to show that your kindness is not
weakness. Admirable! I am most grateful to Mr. Wilton for introducing
you to me, most grateful. Such a charming man, is he not? So
distinguished!"

She paused for breath, and Katharine murmured an acknowledgment of Mr.
Wilton's distinction.

"To come to the point, my dear Miss Austen, I should be charmed, quite
charmed, if you would take the senior work this term,--English in all
its branches, French translation, Latin, and drawing. I think you know
the curriculum, do you not? Thank you very much; that is so good of
you! Did you have a pleasant holiday? There is no need to ask how you
are,--the very picture of health, I am sure! And the architecture
lectures, too; I should be more than grateful if you would continue
them as before. Thank you so much-- Ah, I beg your pardon?"

Katharine here made a desperate inroad into the torrent of words, and
mentioned that she knew no Latin and had never taught any drawing.

"Indeed? But you are too modest, my dear Miss Austen; it is your one
failing, if I may say so. Of course, if you wish--then let it be so.
But I am convinced you would do both as well as Miss Smithson, quite
convinced. However, that can easily be arranged. The salary I think
you know, and the lectures will be as before. Indeed, we are most
fortunate to have so delightful a lecturer, most fortunate. Ah, there
is one more thing," continued Mrs. Downing, leading her towards the
door. The rest of her speech was said on the landing which happened,
fortunately, to be empty. "This is between ourselves, my dear Miss
Austen,--quite between ourselves. I should be more than grateful if
you would act as chaperon to the music master this term. It may appear
strange that I should ask you to do this,--indeed, I may say peculiar;
but I do so in the conviction that I can trust you better than any one
else. Of course you will not mention what I have said! I am sure you
understand what I mean. That is so charming of you! Thank you so
much!"

And the lady principal returned to say very much the same thing over
again to the next teacher whom she summoned. But Katharine, who had
long since learnt to regard her insincerity as inevitable, merely
congratulated herself on the practical results of her interview, and
thoroughly enjoyed the contest that ensued when her new pupils found
they were going to be taught by a junior mistress. She felt very
elated when she came out of it victorious; and for the next week or
two everything seemed to go well with her. She had made a position for
herself, although every one had told her it would be impossible; there
were people who believed in her thoroughly, and there were others,
like Ted and Phyllis Hyam, who did not understand her but worshipped
her blindly. It was all very gratifying to her, after the dull month
she had spent at home; and for the first time she threw off the
reserve she usually showed, though unconsciously, towards the working
gentlewomen of Queen's Crescent, and talked about herself in a way
that astonished them not a little. Work to them was a sordid
necessity, and they were a little jealous of this brilliant girl, with
the youth and the talent, who found no difficulty in winning success
where they had barely earned a living, and who seemed to enjoy her
life into the bargain.

"Who is that girl with the jolly laugh and the untidy hair?" she
overheard a stranger asking Polly Newland one day.

"That one?" was the reply, given in a contemptuous tone. "Oh, she's a
caution, I can tell you! Nice? Oh, I dare say! She's a prig, though.
Phyllis Hyam--that's the other girl in our room--thinks all the world
of her; but I can't stand prigs, myself."

It was a little shock to her self-esteem to hear herself described so
baldly, though she consoled herself by the reflection that Polly had
never liked her, and there was consequently very little value to be
attached to her opinion. But she was careful to remain silent about
her own affairs for the next day or two; and she startled Ted, one
evening, by asking him suddenly, between the acts of a melodrama, what
was meant by a "prig."

"A prig? Oh, I don't know! It's the same thing as a smug, isn't it?"

"But what is a smug?"

"Well, of course, a smug is--well, he's a smug, I suppose. He hasn't
got to be anything else, has he? He's a played-out sort of bounder,
who wants to have a good time and hasn't the pluck, don't you know?"

"Are all prigs bounders?" asked Katharine, in a voice of dismay.

"Oh, I expect so! It doesn't matter, does it? At least, there's a chap
in our office who is a bit of a prig, and he isn't a bounder exactly.
He's a very decent sort of chap, really; I don't half mind him,
myself. But they always call him a prig because he goes in for being
so mighty saintly; at least, that's what they say. I don't think he is
so bad as all that, myself."

"Is it priggish to be good, then? I thought one ought to try."

"My dear Kit, of course you are a girl; don't worry yourself about it.
It's altogether different for a girl, don't you see?"

"Then girls are never prigs?" said Katharine eagerly.

"Bless their hearts," said Ted vaguely; and she did not get any
further definition from him that evening.

And so the days grew into weeks, and her life became filled with new
interests, and she told herself she was learning to live at last. But
she had her bad days, as well; and on these she felt that something
was still wanting in her life. And the end of February came, and Paul
Wilton had not yet returned to his chambers in Essex Court.




CHAPTER XII


The courts had just risen, and the barristers in their wigs and gowns
were hastening through the Temple on the way to their various
chambers. It was not a day on which to linger, for a pitiless east
wind swept across Fountain Court, making little eddies in the basin of
water where the goldfish swam, and swirling the dust into little
sandstorms to blind the shivering people who were using the
thoroughfare down to the Embankment. The city clocks were chiming the
quarter after four, as Paul Wilton came along with the precise and
measured step that never varied whatever the weather might be, and
mounted the wooden staircase that led to his rooms. A man rose from
his easiest chair as he walked into his sitting-room, and they greeted
one another in the cordial though restrained manner of men who had not
met for some time.

"Sorry you've been waiting, Heaton. Been here long?" said Paul,
throwing off his gown with more rapidity than he usually showed.

"Oh, no matter; my fault for getting here too early," returned Heaton
cheerily, as he sat down again and pulled his chair closer to the
fire. He never entered anybody's house without making elaborate
preparations to stay a long while.

"Fact is," he continued, "it's so long since I saw you that, directly
I heard you were back, I felt I must come round and look you up. It
was young Linton who told me,--you remember Linton? Ran across him in
the club, last night; he knows some friends of yours,--Kerry, or
Keeley, or some such name as that; just been calling on them,
apparently, and they told him you had travelled back with them.
Suppose you know the people I mean?"

Paul admitted that he knew the people he had been travelling with, and
Heaton rattled on afresh.

"We were talking about you at the club, only the other afternoon;
coincidence, wasn't it? Two or three of us,--Marston, and Hallett, and
old Pryor. You remember old Pryor, don't you? Stock Exchange, and
swears a lot--ah, you know; he wanted to know what had become of you
and your damned career; it was a damned pity for the most brilliant
man at the bar, and the only one with a conscience, to be wasted on a
lot of damned foreigners, and so on. You know old Pryor. Of course I
agreed with him, but it wasn't my business to say so."

He paused a little wistfully, as though he expected Paul to say
something to explain his long absence; but the latter only smiled
slightly, and walked across to his cupboard in the corner.

"I'm going to have some tea," he observed, "but I don't expect you to
join me in that, Heaton. There's some vermuth here, Italian vermuth;
or, of course, you can have whiskey if you prefer it."

"Thanks, my boy," laughed the other. "I'm glad to see that five months
in the infernal regions haven't spoilt your memory. Claret for boys,
brandy for heroes, eh?"

He helped himself to whiskey, and then leaned back in his chair to
survey Paul, who was making a cigarette while the water boiled. There
was one of the long silences that were inevitable with Paul, unless
his companion took the initiative; and for the next five minutes the
only sounds to be heard were the singing of the kettle, the rise and
fall of footsteps in the court below, and the occasional rattle of the
window sash as the wind wrestled with it. Paul made the tea, and
brought his cup to the table, and flung himself at full length on the
sofa beside it.

"Well," he said at last, "haven't you any news to tell me? Who is the
last charming lady you have been trotting round to all the picture
galleries,--the one who is more beautiful, and more intellectual, and
more sympathetic than any woman you have ever met?"

Heaton laughed consciously.

"Now, it's odd you should happen to say that," he said in his simple
manner. "Of course I know it's only your chaff, confound you, but
there _is_ just a smattering of truth in it. By Jove, Wilton, you must
come and meet her; you never saw such a figure, and she's the wittiest
creature I ever ran across! I'm nowhere, when it comes to talk; but
she's so kind to me, Wilton,--you can't think; I never met such a
sympathetic woman. Really, she has the most extraordinary effect upon
me; I haven't been so influenced by any woman since poor little May
died, 'pon my word I haven't. I can't think how it's all going to end,
I tell you I can't. It's giving me a lot of worry, I know."

"Ah," said Paul gravely. "Widow?"

"Her husband was a brute," said Heaton energetically. "Colonel in the
army, drank, used her villainously I expect, though she doesn't say
much; she's awfully staunch to the chap. Women are, you know; I can't
think why, when we treat them so badly. That's where they get their
hold over us, I suppose. But her influence over me is wonderful. I
wouldn't do anything to lose her respect, for the world."

He blinked his eyes, and drank some more whiskey. Perhaps it occurred
to him that his companion was even less responsive than usual, for
there was more vigour and less sentiment in his tone when he resumed
the conversation.

"You never tell me anything about yourself," he complained, rather
pathetically. "You draw me out, and I'm ass enough to be drawn; and
then you sit and smile cynically, while I make a fool of myself. How
about _your_ experiences, eh? 'Pon my word, I don't remember a single
instance of your giving me your confidence! You're such a rum,
reserved sort of chap. Well, I dare say you're right to keep it all to
yourself. It does me good to tell things; but then, I'm different."

"My dear fellow, I've nothing to tell," replied Paul, smiling. "You
forget that my life is not full of the charming experiences that seem
to fall so continually to your lot. And your conversation is so much
more interesting than mine would be, that I prefer to listen; that's
all. I'm not secretive; I have merely nothing to secrete."

"That's all very well," said Heaton, shaking his head; "but I'm older
than you, so that won't wash. You should have heard what those fellows
at the club were saying about you."

"Yes? It doesn't interest me in the least," said Paul coldly. But tact
was not the strong point of his friend's character, and he went on,
notwithstanding.

"Of course I didn't say much,--it isn't my way; besides, you know I
think you're always right in the main. But it's enough to make fellows
talk, when a man like you, who always sets his career before his
pleasure, goes away out of the vacation, and stays away all these
months. You must own it's reasonable to speculate a little; it's only
in man's nature."

"Some men's," said Paul, as coldly as before. "I should never dream of
speculating about anybody's course of action, myself."

"No, no, of course not; I quite agree with you, quite," said Heaton.
"By the way," he added, with bland innocence in his expression, "what
sort of people are these Kerrys you have been travelling with? An old
married couple of sorts, I suppose!"

Paul raised himself on his elbow and drank his tea straight off, as
though he had not heard the question. He was always divided, in his
conversations with Heaton, between a desire to snub him and a fear of
wounding his sensitiveness.

"You haven't told me the charming widow's name," he said, dropping
back into his former position. The other man's face brightened, and
the conversation again became a monologue until even Heaton's
prosiness was exhausted, and silence fell upon them both. And then,
very characteristically, as soon as he was quite sure he was not
expected to say anything, Paul suddenly became communicative.

"The Keeleys are rather nice people," he observed, taking his
cigarette out of his mouth and staring fixedly at the lighted end of
it. "Mother and daughter, you know, just abroad for the winter. Nice
little place in Herefordshire, I believe, but they come to town for
the season,--Curzon Street."

Heaton was wise enough to remain silent; and Paul went on, after a
pause.

"Sat next to them at table d'hôte, and that sort of thing. One is
always glad of a compatriot abroad, don't you know! And the mother was
really rather nice," he added, as an afterthought.

"And what was the daughter like?" asked Heaton.

"Oh, just an ordinary amusing sort of girl! She's pretty, too, in a
sort of way, but I don't admire that kind of thing much, myself. And I
think she found me very dull." He paused, and looked thoughtful. "I
must take you there when they come up to town, Heaton. You'd get on
with them, and the girl is just your style, I fancy. She is really
very pretty," he added, becoming thoughtful again.

"Nothing I should like better! Delightful of you to think of it!"
exclaimed Heaton, with a warmth that was a little overdone. His want
of a sense of proportion was always an annoyance to Paul. "You take me
there, that's all," he said, chuckling; "and let me have my head--"

"Which is precisely what you wouldn't have," said Paul drily. "And I'm
sure I don't know why you want to know them; they are quite ordinary
people, and don't possess every grace and virtue and talent, like all
your other lady friends. However, I shall be very pleased if you
really care about it. But you'll be disappointed."

Heaton agreed to be disappointed, and as another pause seemed
imminent, he began to think about taking his departure. But Paul did
not notice his intention, and seized the occasion to start a new
subject.

"Look here, Heaton," he began, so suddenly that the elder man sat down
again with precision; "you say I never tell you anything about my
experiences. Does that mean that you really think I have anything to
tell?"

Heaton looked at him dubiously.

"I'm hanged if I know," he said.

Paul smiled, a little regretfully.

"After years of renunciation," he murmured, "to be merely accounted a
riddle! Then you think," he continued, with an interested expression,
"that I am not the sort of man women would care about, eh? Well, I
dare say you're right. But then, why do they ever care for any of us?
I never expect them to, personally."

Heaton was looking at him in a perplexed manner.

"Perhaps I didn't express myself quite clearly," he hastened to say,
with his usual wish to compromise. "I only meant that I sometimes
think you never can have cared for any one seriously. But I've no
doubt I'm wrong. And I never said that nobody had ever cared for
_you_; I think that's extremely unlikely. In fact-- Do you really want
me to say what I think?"

"It would be most interesting," said Paul, still smiling.

"Well," said Heaton decidedly, "I think you're the sort of man who
would break a woman's heart and spare her reputation, and perhaps not
discover that she liked you at all. I know what women are, and they
just love to pine away for a man like you who would never dream of
giving them any encouragement. And you have such a fascinating way
with you that you just lead them on, without meaning to in the least.
You can curse, if you like, Wilton; it's great impertinence on my
part, eh?"

"My dear fellow," was all Paul said. As a matter of fact, he had never
liked him better than he did at that moment, and his words had set him
thinking. But Heaton's next remark undid the good impression he had
unwittingly made.

"The fact is," he said, "a woman's reputation is worth only half as
much to her as her happiness."

And his worldly wisdom jarred on Paul's nerves, and sounded
unnecessarily coarse to him in his present mood; and he did not try to
detain him again, when Heaton rose for the second time to take his
leave. When he had gone, Paul strolled to the window-seat and smoked
another cigarette, looking down into the wind-swept court. And his
thoughts deliberately turned to Katharine Austen. He had not seen her
for five months, he had not written to her for two, and her last
letter to him was dated six weeks back. It had not occurred to him,
until he drew it from his pocket now and looked at it, that it was
really so long as that since she had written to him; and he became
suddenly possessed of a wish to know what those six weeks had held for
her. Out there in the orange groves of the South, walking by the side
of the beautiful Marion Keeley, with the rustle of her skirts so close
to him and the shallow levity of her conversation in his ears, it had
been easy to forget the desperately earnest child who was toiling away
to earn her living in the dullest quarter of a dull city. But here,
where she had so often sat and talked to him, where they had loved to
quarrel and to make it up again, where she had given him rare
glimpses of her quaint self and then hastily hidden it from him again,
where she had been whimsical and serious by turns, where he had
sometimes kissed her and felt her cheek warm at his touch,--here, all
sorts of memories rushed back into his mind, and made him wonder why
he had yielded so easily to the persuasions of the Keeleys, and
remained so long away from England. It was impossible to name Marion
Keeley in the same breath with this curiously lovable child who had
held him in her sway all last summer, who had never used an art to
draw him to her, and yet had succeeded, by force of qualities that she
did not know she possessed, in gaining his sincere affection. Yet he
had hardly thought of her for two months, and she had not written to
him for six weeks. What had she been doing in those six weeks? It had
not seemed to matter, when he walked by the side of Marion Keeley, how
Katharine was passing her time in London; but now that Marion was no
longer near him, now that he was free from her fascination and the
necessity of replying to her banalities, it suddenly became of the
first importance to him to know what had happened to Katharine in
those six weeks. He had gone away, he told himself, because he had
taken fright at the situation, because he could not analyse his own
feelings for her, because everything, in the eyes of the world, was
hurrying them on to marriage,--and of marriage he had the profoundest
dread. And he had allowed himself to be captivated almost immediately,
by the ordinary beauty of an ordinary girl, someone who knew how to
play upon a certain set of his emotions which Katharine had never
learnt to touch. An expression of distaste crossed his face as he
threw away his cigarette only half smoked, and looked down at the
fountain as he had so often stood and looked with her in the hot days
of last July. Heaton's words returned to his mind with a new
significance: "Their reputation is worth only half as much to them as
their happiness." He remembered how he had parted from Katharine in
this very room, before he went abroad; and how he had congratulated
himself afterwards on having refrained from kissing her. But he had a
sudden recollection now of the look on her face as she turned away
from him; and, for the first time, he thought he understood its
meaning.

He had never acted on an impulse in his life, before, nor yielded to a
wish he could not analyse; but this afternoon he did both. It was
about an hour later that Phyllis Hyam strolled into Katharine's
cubicle with the announcement that a gentleman was in the hall,
waiting to speak to her.

"Bother!" grumbled Katharine, who was correcting exercises on the bed.
"He never said he was coming to-night."

"It isn't Mr. Morton," volunteered Phyllis, from behind her own
curtain. "I've never seen him before. He's tall, and thin, and serious
looking, with a leathery sort of face, and a dear little fizzly
beard."

She made a few more gratuitous remarks on the gentleman in the hall,
until she began to wonder why she received no reply to them, and then
made the discovery that the occupant of the neighbouring cubicle was
no longer there.

Paul was already regretting his impulse. He had never been inside the
little distempered hall before, and it struck a feeling of chill into
him. A good many girls came in at the door while he was waiting, and
they all stared at him inquiringly, and most of them were dull
looking. He remembered the sumptuous house in Mayfair that would soon
contain Marion Keeley, and he shuddered a little.

"I don't think I should like to live with working-women much," he
said, when Katharine came running down the wooden stairs.

It was the only remark that came easily to him, when he felt the warm
clasp of her hand and saw the glad look in her eyes.




CHAPTER XIII


She was looking rather tired, he thought, when he examined her more
critically; her eyes seemed larger, and her expression had grown
restless, and she had lost some of the roundness of her face. But she
had gained a good deal in repose of manner; and her voice, when she
answered him, was more under control at the moment than his own.

"I shouldn't think you would," she laughed. "I shocked them all at
breakfast, this morning, by saying I should like to try idle men for a
change!"

It struck him that she would not have made such a remark when he left
her last autumn; and again he would have liked to possess a chronicle
of the last six weeks. But her laugh was the same as ever, and her
hand was still grasping his with a reassuring fervour.

"Come back with me," he said, spontaneously. "We can't talk here, can
we? I dare say I can knock up some sort of a supper for you, if you
don't mind a very primitive arrangement."

"It will be beautiful," she said; and the throb of pleasure in her
voice allayed his last feeling of suspicion.

They found that, after all, they had very little to say to one
another; and they were both glad of the occupation of preparing
supper, when they arrived at the Temple and found that the housekeeper
had gone out for the evening. They made as much fun as they could over
the difficulties of procuring a meal, and avoided personal topics with
a scrupulous care, and did not once run the risk of looking each other
in the face. And afterwards, when they had made themselves comfortable
in two chairs near the lamp and conversation became inevitable, an
awkward embarrassment seized them both.

"It's very odd," said Katharine, frowning a little; "but I have been
bottling up things to tell you for weeks, and now they seem to have
got congested in my brain and I can't get one of them out. Why is it,
I wonder? I can't have grown suddenly shy of you; but we seem to have
lost touch, somehow. Oh, it's queer; I don't like it!"

She gave herself a little shake. Paul laughed slightly.

"What an absurd child you are! It is only because we have not been
together lately, and so we've lost the trick of it. You are always
turning yourself inside out, and then sitting down a little way off to
look at it."

"I believe I do," owned Katharine. "I always want to know why certain
things affect me in certain ways."

"Did you want to know why you were glad to see me, this evening?"

She looked up quickly at him for the first time.

"No," she said, frankly. "At least, I don't think I thought about it."

"Good child!" he said. "Don't think about it." And she wondered why he
looked so pleased.

"Why not?" she asked him. "Please tell me."

"Oh, because it isn't good for you to be always turning yourself
inside out; certainly not on my account. Besides, it spoils things.
Don't you think so?"

"What things?"

"Oh, please! I'm not here to answer such a lot of puzzling questions.
Who has been getting you into such bad habits, while I have been
away?"

"Nobody who could answer any of my puzzling questions," she replied,
softly; and Paul asked hastily if she would make the coffee. He had
fetched her here as an experiment, a kind of test of his own feelings
and of hers; and he had a sudden fear lest it should succeed too
effectually. She went obediently and did as she was told, and brought
him his coffee when it was ready; and he submitted to having sugar in
it, since it compelled her to brush his hair with her sleeve as she
bent over him with the sugar basin.

"Well?" he asked, in the next pause. She was balancing her spoon on
the edge of her cup, with a curious smile on her face.

"Oh, nothing!"

"Nothing must be very interesting, then. But I don't suppose I have
any right to know. Have I?"

The spoon dropped on the floor with a clatter.

"Of course you have! I wish you wouldn't say those things! They hurt
so. I was only thinking,--it wasn't anything important, but--I'm so
awfully happy to-night."

"But that is surely of the very first importance. Might one know why?
Or is that some one else's secret, too?"

She disturbed his composure by suddenly pushing her coffee away from
her; and there was an angry light in her eyes, as she sprang to her
feet and stood looking down at him.

"Sometimes I think I hate you," she said; and the words struck him as
being strangely inadequate to the occasion. They might have been
spoken by a petulant child, and the moment before he had felt that she
was a woman. He put his cup down too, and went towards her.

"Does sometimes mean now?" he asked jestingly. He was trying,
impotently, to prevent her from going any farther. But she took a step
backward, and did not heed his intention.

"Yes, it does," she said, angrily. "I am tired of being treated like a
child; I am tired of letting you do what you like with me. One day you
spoil me; and another, you hurt me cruelly. And you don't care a
little bit. I am a kind of amusement to you, an interesting puzzle, a
toy that doesn't seem to break easily; that's all. And I just let you
do it,--it is my own fault; when you hurt me I hide what I feel, and
when you are nice to me I forget everything else. Oh, yes, of course I
am a fool; do you think I don't know it? You have only to touch my
face, or to look at me, or to smile, and you know I am in your hands.
I despise myself for it; I would give all I know to be strong enough
to put you out of my life. But I can't do it, I can't! And you know I
can't; you know I am bound up in you. Everything I feel seems to be
yours; all my thoughts seem to belong to you, directly they come into
my head; I can't take the smallest step without wondering what you
will think of it. Oh, I hate myself for it; you don't know how I hate
myself! But I can't help it."

"Stop," said Paul, putting out his hand. But she waved him away, and
went on talking rapidly.

"I must say it all now; it has been driving me mad lately. At first,
it seemed so easy to get on without you; but it grew much harder as it
went on, and when you stopped writing to me, I--I thought I should go
mad. It was so awful, too, when I had got used to telling you things;
there was no one else I could tell things to, and the loneliness of it
was so terrible! I wanted to kill myself, those days; but I was too
big a coward. So I got along somehow; and some days it was easier than
others, but it was always hard. Only, nobody ever guessed. Oh, if you
knew how I have learnt to deceive people! And there was always my work
to get through, as well; it has been horrible. And I could no more
help it than I could help breathing. I wanted to kill myself!"

"Don't," half whispered Paul, and he came a little nearer to her. But
she turned and leaned against the mantel-shelf for support, and
clasped the cold marble with her fingers.

"I must say it, Paul. If you like, I will go away afterwards and never
see you again. But I cannot let it spoil my life any longer; I feel as
though you had got to hear it _now_. When I wrote you that last
letter, I said that if you did not answer it I would not write to you
again, or think about you, or come and see you any more. And you
didn't answer it. I got to loathe the postman's knock, because it made
my face hot, and I was afraid people would find out. But they never
did! I came down to breakfast every day, in the hope of finding a
letter from you; and when there wasn't one, and everything seemed a
blank,--oh, don't I know the awful look of that dining-room when
there isn't a letter from you!--I just had to pretend that I hadn't
expected to find one at all." She paused expectantly, but this time
Paul made no attempt to speak. "I was never any good at pretending,
before," she went on in a gentler tone, "but I believe I could deceive
any one now. Only, I never succeeded in cheating myself! I used to
find out new ways to school, because the old ones reminded me of you;
and I had to do all my crying in omnibuses, at the far end up by the
horses, because I dare not do it at Queen's Crescent, where I might
have been seen. For I did cry sometimes." Her voice trembled, and she
ended with a little sob. She buried her face in her hands.

"So that is what you have been doing for these six weeks?" said Paul,
involuntarily.

"Do you find it so amusing, then?" asked Katharine in a stifled tone.
He stepped up behind her, and twisted her round gently by the
shoulders, so that she was obliged to look at him. The hardness went
from her face, and she held out her hands to him instinctively.
"Paul," she said, piteously, "I couldn't help it. Aren't you a little
bit sorry for me? What have I done that I should like the wrong
person? Other girls don't do these things. Am I awfully wicked, or
awfully unlucky? Paul, say something to me! Are you very angry with
me? But I couldn't help it, I couldn't indeed! I have tried so hard to
make myself different, and I can't!"

He bit his lip and tried to say something, but failed.

"And after all," she added in a low tone, "when I had been schooling
myself to hate you for six weeks, I nearly went mad with joy when
Phyllis came and told me you were in the hall. Oh, Paul, I know I am
dreadfully foolish! Will you ever respect me again, I wonder?"

There was a quaint mixture of humour and pathos in her tone; and he
gathered her into his arms and kissed her tenderly, without finding
any words with which to answer her. She clung to him, and kissed him
for the first time in return, and forgot that she had once thought it
wrong to be caressed by him; just now, it seemed the most natural
thing in the world that he should be comforting her for the suffering
of which he himself was the cause. And her passionate wish to rouse
him from his apathy had ended in a weak desire to regain his tolerance
at any cost.

"You are not angry with me? I haven't made you angry?" she asked him
in an anxious whisper.

"No, no, you foolish child!" was all he said as he drew her closer.

"But it was dreadful of me to say all those things to you, wasn't it?"

"I like you to say dreadful things to me, dear."

She swayed back from him at that, with her two hands on his shoulders.

"Do you mean that, really? But--you _must_ think it dreadfully wicked
of me to let you kiss me, and to come and see you like this? It is
dreadfully wicked, isn't it? Oh, I know it is; everybody would say
so."

"I can't imagine what you mean. You are a dear little Puritan to me.
You don't know what you are saying. Come, there are all those things
you have got to tell me. I want to hear everything, please; whom you
have been flirting with, and all sorts of things. Now, it is no use
your pretending that you are going to hide anything from me, because
you know you can't!"

He had resumed his former manner with a rather conscious effort, and
drew her down beside him on the sofa. She tried to obey him, but she
could think of very little to say; and towards ten o'clock, Paul
looked at his watch.

"My child, you must go," he said. Katharine rose to her feet with a
sigh.

"I don't want to go," she said, reluctantly.

"Has it been nice, then?" he asked, smiling at her dejected face.

"It has been the happiest evening I have ever spent," she said,
looking away from him.

"Surely not!" laughed Paul. "Think of all the other evenings at the
theatre, with Ted and Monty and all the rest of them!"

"You know quite well," she said indignantly, "that I like being with
you better than with any one else in the world. You know I do, don't
you?" she repeated, anxiously.

"It is enough for me that you say so," replied Paul; and they stood
silent for a moment or two. "Come, you really must go, child," he said
again. Katharine still remained motionless, while he put on his coat.

"Must I?" she said, dreamily. He came back to her and gave her a
gentle shake.

"What is it, you strange little person? I believe you would have been
much happier if I had not come back to bother you, eh?"

She denied it vehemently, and exerted herself to talk to him all the
way home in the cab. She was solemn again, however, when the time
came to say good-bye.

"May I see you again soon?" she asked him wistfully.

"Why, surely! We are going to have lots of larks together, aren't we?
Well, what is it now?"

"Oh, I was only thinking!"

"What about?"

She unlocked the door with her latch-key before she replied.

"It seems so odd," she said, "that I care more about your opinion than
about anybody else's in the whole world; and yet I have given you the
most reason to think badly of me. Isn't it awfully queer?"

She shut the door before he had time to answer her. And Paul walked
home, reflecting on the futility of experiments.




CHAPTER XIV


The Sunday afternoon on which the Honourable Mrs. Keeley gave her
first reception, that season, was a singularly dull and sultry one.
The room was filled with celebrities and their satellites; and
Katharine's head was aching badly, as she struggled with difficulty
through the crowd and managed to squeeze herself into a corner by the
open window. She was always affected by the weather; and to-day, she
felt unusually depressed by the absence of sunshine. A voice from the
balcony uttered her name, and she turned round with a sigh, to be met
by the complacent features of Laurence Heaton. For a moment she did
not recognise him; and then, the sound of his voice carried her back
to Ivingdon, and she smiled back at him for the sake of the
associations he brought to her mind.

"Is it really two years?" he was saying. "Seems impossible when I look
at your face, Miss Austen. Two years! And what have you been doing
with yourself all this time, eh? And how do you contrive to look so
fresh on a day like this? I am quite charmed to have this opportunity
of renewing so pleasant an acquaintance."

He forgot that, when he had known her before, she had annoyed him by
not being in his style. And Katharine answered him vaguely, while her
eyes wandered over the crowd of faces; for Paul had told her he was
going to be there, and she felt restless.

"Small place the world is, to be sure," continued Heaton, with the air
of a man who says something that has not been said before. "Who would
have expected you to turn up at my old friends', the Keeleys'? Most
curious coincidence, I must say!" Katharine, who knew of his very
recent introduction to the house, explained her own relationship
demurely. But her companion was quite unabashed, and changed the
conversation skilfully.

"Wilton often comes here, he tells me. You remember Wilton, don't you?
Ah, of course you do, since it is to him that I owe your charming
acquaintance," he said, gallantly. "He met them at Nice, or somewhere.
Astonishing how many people one meets at Nice! Wilton always meets
every one, though, and every one likes him; he's so brilliant, don't
you think? Yes, brilliant exactly describes him. Ever seen him since
he stayed in your delightful rural home?"

"Oh, I see him here sometimes. And my aunt is expecting him to-day, I
believe."

"I have no doubt of it, no doubt of it whatever!" smiled Heaton,
nodding his head wisely. "If I'm not very much mistaken, Wilton is
often the guest of Mrs. Keeley, is he not?"

The meaning in his remarks was wasted on Katharine, for most of her
attention was still concentrated on the doorway. But Heaton, to whom
she was more of an excuse than a reason for conversation, rambled on
contentedly.

"Nice fellow, Wilton, to bring me here, pretending he wanted me to
know her! Not much chance of that, I fancy! I haven't had two words
with her since I first called here with him, three weeks ago. Ah,
well, I mustn't be surprised at that,--an old fellow like me; though I
would have you know, Miss Austen, that I am still young enough to
admire the charms of a beautiful woman! But it is amusing, all the
same, to watch how a serious fellow like Wilton suddenly forgets all
his prejudices against marriage, and behaves like every one else. If
it had been me, now--but then, I'm a marrying man, and I've had two of
the sweetest wives God ever gave to erring man-- Ah, I beg your
pardon?"

"I--I don't quite understand," said Katharine.

"Nobody does, my dear young lady; nobody does. It is impossible to
understand a clever, quiet sort of chap like Wilton. To begin with, he
doesn't mean you to. But I'm heartily glad he has made such a
fortunate choice; he is an old friend of mine, and my friends'
happiness is always my happiness. He is lucky, for all that; beauty
and money and influence, all combined in one charming person, are not
to be despised, are they? She is so sweet, too; and sweetness in a
woman is worth all the virtues put together, don't you agree with me?
Now, tell me,--woman's opinion is always worth having,--do you
consider her so very pretty?"

"I don't know whom you mean," said Katharine. She was wishing he would
take his idle chatter away to some one else. But Heaton was accustomed
to inattention on the part of his hearers, and he was not disconcerted
by hers.

"Why, the beautiful Miss Keeley, to be sure," he replied. "For all
that," he added, hastily, "I think she is rather overrated, don't
you?" This was meant to be very cunning, for he prided himself on
being an accomplished lady's man. But Katharine's reply baffled him.

"Do you mean Marion? I think she is beautiful," she said, warmly. "I
am not surprised that every one should admire her."

"Just so, just so; quite my view of the case!" exclaimed Heaton, at
once. "I call her unique, don't you? 'Pon my word, I never felt more
pleased at anything in my life! What a future for Wilton, with the
Honourable Mrs. Keeley for a mother-in-law, and her beautiful daughter
for a wife; why, we shall see him in Parliament before long! The
Attorney-General of the future,--there's no doubt about it. Ah, I see
you are smiling at my enthusiasm, Miss Austen. That is because you do
not know me well enough to realise how much my friends are to me. All
the real happiness in my life comes from my friends, it does indeed.
But I am boring you with this dull conversation about myself. Come
along with me, and I'll see where the ices are to be found. Young
people always like ices, eh?"

And she yielded to his kindly good-nature, even while she felt
indignant with him for spreading such an absurd piece of gossip. And
what had Paul been doing, to allow such an idea to take root in his
foolish old head? He had known nothing of the rumour on Wednesday, for
she had been to a concert with him then, and he had never once alluded
to her cousin. Of course, it was ridiculous to give it another
thought, and she roused herself to chatter gaily to her companion as
they slowly made their way downstairs.

But, as she stood in the crowded dining-room, wedged between the table
and Heaton who was occupied for the moment in seeking for champagne
cup, she became again the unwilling hearer of that same absurd piece
of gossip. It sounded less blatant, perhaps, from the lips of the two
magnificent dowagers who were lightly discussing it, but it was hardly
less vulgar in its essence; and Katharine ceased to be gay, and shrank
instinctively away from them.

"Who is he? I seem to know the name, but I never remember meeting him
anywhere. Surely her mother would not throw her away on a nobody? She
expects such great things from Marion, one is always led to believe;
though she is just the sort of girl to end in being a disappointment,
don't you think so?"

"My dear, it is a _fait accompli_, and he is not a nobody at all. He
would not visit here if he were; at least, not seriously. His name is
Wilton,--something Wilton, Peter or Paul or one of the apostles, I
forget which. He belongs to a very good Yorkshire family, I am told.
His father was a bishop, or it may have been a canon; at all events,
he was not an ordinary person. Mr. Wilton, this one, is one of our
rising men, I believe,--a lawyer, or a barrister, or something of that
sort. He defended the plaintiff in the Christopher case, don't you
remember? And with Mrs. Keeley to back him up, he will soon be in the
front rank,--there is no doubt about that. They always ice the coffee
too much here, don't they? Have you seen Marion to-day?"

"Yes. She's over there in the same green silk. Wonderful hair, isn't
it? A little too red for my taste, but any one can see it is
wonderful. He's over there too, but you can't see him from here. He is
much older than Marion, and delicate looking. I shouldn't like a child
of mine to marry him, but that's another matter. And, of course, all
_my_ girls were so particular about looks. How insufferably hot it
is! Shall we go upstairs?"

Laurence Heaton had a second glass of champagne cup, and when he had
drunk it he found that Katharine was gone. He dismissed her from his
mind without any difficulty, however, and fought his way upstairs to
find some one who was more to his taste. He certainly did not connect
her disappearance with his gossip, nor yet with his old friend, Paul
Wilton.

And Katharine could not have told him herself why she had slipped away
so abruptly. Of course, the rumour was not true; she did not believe a
word of it; and it was disloyal to Paul even to be annoyed by it. But
it was disquieting, all the same, to hear his name so persistently
coupled with her cousin's; and she wondered if her aunt knew any of
his views against marriage, to which she had been so often a humble
listener. And it was equally certain that he was one of the most
rising men of the day; she did not want to be told that by a number of
society gossips, who had never even heard of him until he paid his
attentions to one of their set,--just the ordinary attentions of a
courteous man to a beautiful woman. Had he not repeatedly told her
that she knew more about his real life and his real self, more about
his ambition and his work, than any one else in the world? He had
chosen her out of all his friends for a confidant; and yet, she might
not even acknowledge her friendship for him. He only trifled with
Marion, teased her about the number of her admirers, talked to her
about the colour of her hair, and the daintiness of her appearance; he
had told her that, too. Marion knew nothing of his aspirations; she
would not understand them, if she did. And yet it was common talk that
he admired Marion, while _she_ was to make a secret of her intimacy
with him. Something of the old feeling of rebellion against him, which
had been dead ever since the evening they had supped together in his
chambers, was in her mind as she left the house where he was sitting
with Marion, and walked aimlessly towards the park. The sun had
completely vanished in a dull red mist; and the intense heat and lurid
atmosphere did not tend to raise her spirits. A nameless feeling of
impending trouble crept over her, and she felt powerless to shake it
off. She wandered along the edge of the crowds as they listened to the
labour agitators, past groups of children playing on the grass, past
endless pairs of lovers in their Sunday garments, until the noisy
tramp of footsteps began to grate upon her nerves; and she turned and
fled from the park, as she had fled from Curzon Street. Something at
last took her towards the Temple, and an hour later she was knocking
furtively at the door of Paul's chambers. She had never been there on
a Sunday before, and the deserted look of the courts, and the silk
dress of the housekeeper whom she met on the stairs, depressed her
still further. Would she come in and wait, the housekeeper suggested,
as Mr. Wilton was out, and had not said when he would be back? But
Katharine shook her head wearily, and turned her face homewards. Even
the solitude of Queen's Crescent could not be worse than the
unfriendliness of the deserted London streets. She went out of her way
to walk down Curzon Street, without knowing why she did so, and took
the trouble to cross over to the side opposite her aunt's house, also
without a definite purpose in her mind. It was not much after eight,
but the storm was still gathering, and there was only just enough
daylight left to show the figure of a girl on the balcony. It was
Marion, beyond any doubt Marion, who was leaning forward and looking
down into the street as though she expected to see some one come out
of the house. The front door opened, and a man came down the steps;
he looked up and raised his hat, and lingered; and Marion glanced
hastily around, kissed her fingers to him, and vanished indoors. The
man walked away down the street with a leisurely step, and Katharine
stepped back into the shadow of the portico. But her caution was quite
unnecessary, for neither of them had noticed her.

For the second time that evening Katharine knocked gently at the door
of Paul's chambers in the Temple. This time, he opened to her himself.

"Good heavens!" he was startled into exclaiming. "What in the name of
wonder has brought you here at this time of night? It is to be hoped
you didn't meet any one on the stairs, did you?"

He motioned her in as he spoke, and shut the door. Katharine walked
past him in a half-dazed kind of way. There had been only two feelings
expressed in his face, and one was surprise, and the other annoyance.

"What is it, Katharine? Has anything gone wrong?" he demanded in his
low, masterful tone. Katharine turned cold; she had never realised
before how pitilessly masterful his tone was.

"I couldn't help coming,--I was so miserable! They were all saying
things about you, things that were not true. And I wanted to hear you
say they were not true. I couldn't rest; so I came. Are you angry with
me for coming, Paul?"

She faltered out the words, without looking at him. Paul shrugged his
shoulders, but she did not see the movement.

"It was hardly worth while, was it, to risk your reputation merely to
confirm what you had already settled in your own mind?"

She opened her eyes, and stared at him hopelessly. Paul walked away to
look for some cigarette papers in the pocket of a coat.

"Was it?" he repeated, with his back turned to her. Katharine
struggled to answer him.

"You have never spoken to me like that, before," she stammered at
last.

"You have never given me any cause, have you?" said Paul, rather
awkwardly.

"But what have I done?" she asked, taking a step towards him. "I
didn't know you would mind. I always come to you when I am unhappy;
you told me I might. And I was unhappy this evening; so I came. Why
should it be different this evening? I don't understand what you mean.
Why are you angry with me? You have never been angry before. What have
I done?"

"My dear child, there is no occasion for heroics," said Paul, speaking
very gently. "I am not angry with you at all. But you must own that it
is at least unusual to call upon a man, uninvited, at this unearthly
hour. And hadn't you better sit down, now you have come?"

Katharine did not move.

"What does it matter if it is unusual?" she asked. "You know I have
been here sometimes, as late as this, before. There is no harm in it,
is there? Paul! tell me what I have done to annoy you?"

Paul gave up rummaging in his coat pocket, and came and sat on the
edge of the table, and made a cigarette.

"I seem to remember having this same argument with you before," he
observed. "Don't you think it is rather futile to go all through it
again? You know quite well that it is entirely for your sake that I
wish to be careful. Hadn't we better change the subject? If you are
going to stop, you might be more comfortable in a chair."

Katharine clenched her hands in the effort to keep back her tears.

"I am not going to stay," she cried, miserably. "I can't understand
why you are so cruel to me; I think it must amuse you to hurt me. Why
do you ask me to come and see you sometimes, quite as late as this,
and then object to my coming to-night? I don't know what you mean."

Paul lighted his cigarette before he answered her.

"You have quite a talent, Katharine, for asking uncomfortable
questions. If you cannot see the difference between coming when you
are asked, and coming uninvited, I am afraid I cannot help you. Would
you like any coffee or anything?"

All at once her brain began to clear. For two hours she had been
wandering aimlessly through the streets, in a strange bewilderment of
mind, not knowing why she was there nor where she was going. Then she
had found herself in Fleet Street; and habit, rather than intention,
had brought her to the Temple. And now his maddening indifference had
touched her pride, and her deadened faculties began slowly to revive
under the shock. She put her fingers over her eyes, and tried to
think. The blood rushed to her face, and she thrilled all over with a
passionate instinct of resistance. He did not know what to make of
her, when she stepped suddenly in front of him and faced him
unflinchingly.

"You must not expect me to see the difference," she said, proudly. "I
shall never understand why I have to make a secret of what is not
wrong, nor why you allow me to do it at all if it is wrong. I think
you have been playing with my friendship all the time; I can see now
that you have not valued it, because I gave it you so freely. But I
didn't know that; I wasn't clever enough; and I had never liked
anybody but you. I didn't know that I ought to hide it, and pretend
that I didn't like you. Perhaps, if I had done that you would have
gone on liking me."

He was going to interrupt her, but she did not give him time.

"Would you ask Marion Keeley to come and see you, as you have asked
me?"

Paul's face grew dark, and she trembled suddenly at her own boldness.

"I fail to see how such a question can interest either of us," he
said, coldly.

"But would you ask her?" she repeated.

"I am perfectly assured," he replied, quietly, "that if I were to
forget myself so far as to do so, Miss Keeley would certainly not
come."

"Then you mean to say that it has always been dreadfully wrong of _me_
to come?"

"Really, Katharine, you are very quarrelsome this evening," said Paul,
with a forced laugh. "I have repeatedly pointed out to you that a man
chooses some of his friends for pleasure, and others for business. I
really fail to see why I should be subjected to this minute catechism
at your hands."

"Then you chose Marion--for business? It is true, then, what they
said! I wish--oh, I wish you had never chosen me--for pleasure!"

The anger had died out of her voice; he could hardly hear what she
said; but he made a last attempt to treat the matter lightly.

"I really think, my child, that any comparison between you and your
cousin is unnecessary," he began in a conciliating manner.

"I thought so too, until to-day," she replied, piteously.

"But what has happened to-day to put you in this uncomfortable frame
of mind?"

"It is what every one is saying about you and Marion,--all those
horrid people, and Mr. Heaton, and everybody. I want to know if it is
true. Everything is going wrong, everywhere. I wish I were dead! I
came to ask you if it is true; I thought I might do that; I thought I
knew you well enough. I didn't know you would mind. If you like, I
will go away now, and never come and see you any more, or bother you,
or let you know that I care for you so awfully. Only, tell me first,
Paul, whether it is true or not?"

Her voice had risen, as she went on, and it ended full of passionate
entreaty. The stern look on his face deepened, but he did not speak.

"I wish I knew the meaning of it all," she continued, relentlessly as
it seemed to him. "I wish it were easier to like the right people, and
to hate all the others. Why was I made the wrong way? If I had never
wanted to like you, it would have been so simple. It would not have
mattered, then, that you did not really care for me. But I wish I
understood you better. Why did you tell me that you wanted me for your
friend, always; and that you didn't believe in marriage, and those
things? I believed you so, Paul; and I was content to be your friend;
you know I was, don't you? And now you have met Marion, and she is
beautiful, and she can help you to get on, to become one of the first
men in the country, they said. And you have forgotten all about your
views against marriage; and you allow people to talk as though you
were making a kind of bargain. Oh, it is horrible! But it isn't true,
Paul, is it?"

"Who has been telling you all these things?" he asked.

"Then it is true? You are going to marry her, because of the position,
and all that? I wish it wasn't so difficult to understand. Is it a
crime, I wonder, to like any one so desperately as I like you? But I
can't help it, can I? Oh, Paul, do tell me what to do?"

He winced as she turned to him so naturally for protection, even
though it was against himself that she asked it.

"Don't talk like that, child," he said, harshly. And the hand she had
held out to him appealingly fell down limply at her side.

"I can't expect you to think anything of me, after what I have just
said to you," she went on in the same hopeless voice. "Girls are never
supposed to tell those things, are they? It doesn't seem to me to
matter much, now that it has all got to stop, for always. I only
wish--I wish it had stopped before. I--I am going now, Paul."

Although she turned away from him, she still half expected him to
come and comfort her. For a couple of seconds she stood quite still,
possessed with a terrible longing to be comforted by him. But he sat
motionless and silent on the table; even his foot had ceased swinging.
She walked unsteadily to the door.

"Stop," said Paul. "You cannot go out in this storm."

A peal of thunder broke over the house as he spoke. She had not
noticed the rain until then.

"I must go," she said dully, and fumbled at the fastening of the door.
Paul came and took her by the arm, and led her back gently.

"I want to explain, first," he said.

"There is nothing to explain," said Katharine. "I understand."

"Not quite, I think," said Paul. They were standing together by the
table, and he was nervously caressing the hand he held between his
own. "You have only been talking from your own point of view; you have
forgotten mine altogether. You do not seem to think that I, too, may
have had something to suffer."

"You? But you do not care--as I do."

He did not heed the interruption.

"It is the system that is at fault," he said. "A man has to get on at
the sacrifice of his happiness; or he has to be happy at the
sacrifice of his position. It is difficult for a woman to realise
this. She never has to choose between love and ambition."

"And you have chosen--ambition," said Katharine bitterly.

"My child, when you are older you will understand that the very
qualities you affect to despise in man now, are the qualities that
endear him to you in reality. You are far too fine a woman, Katharine,
to love a man who has no ambition. Is it not so?"

She quivered, and lowered her eyes.

"I don't know," she said. "It seems so hard."

"It is terribly hard for both of us," continued Paul, looking down
too. "But believe me, there would be nothing but unhappiness before us
if it were otherwise. I am thinking of you, child, as much as of
myself. Marriage for love alone is a ghastly mistake. There, I have
said more to you than I have ever said to any woman; I felt you would
understand, Katharine."

He mistook her silence for indifference, and put his arms round her.
But she clung to him closely, and lifted her face to his and broke out
into a desperate appeal.

"Paul, don't say those horrid, bitter things! They are not true; I
will never believe they are true. Why must you marry for anything so
sordid as ambition? Why must you marry at all? Can't we go on being
friends? I want to go on being your friend. Paul, don't send me away
for ever. I can't go, Paul; I can't! I will work for you, I will be
your slave, I will do anything; only don't let it all stop like this.
I can't bear it; I can't! Won't you go on being nice to me, Paul?"

He threw back his head and compressed his lips. He had grown quite
white in the last few moments. She sobbed out her entreaties with her
face hidden on his shoulder, and wondered why he did not speak to her.

"Why did you never look like that before?" he asked in a hoarse
whisper. She raised her head and stared at him with large, frightened
eyes.

"Like what, Paul? What do you mean?"

He flung her away from him almost roughly.

"You must go," he said, "at once."

She laid her hand on his arm, and looked into his face.

"Why are you so angry?" she asked, wonderingly. "Is it because I have
told you all these things?"

"My God, no! You must go," he repeated, vehemently, and pushed her
towards the door. She stumbled as she went, and he thought he heard
her sob. He sprang to her side instantly, and took her in his arms
again.

"Why didn't you go quickly?" he gasped, as he crushed her against him.

His sudden change of manner terrified her. None of the tenderness or
the indifference, or any of the expressions she was accustomed to see
on his face were there now, and his violence repelled her. She
struggled to free herself from his grasp.

"Let me go, Paul!" she pleaded. "I don't want to stop any more. What
is the good of it all? You know I have got to go; don't make it so
difficult. Paul, I--I _want_ to go."

He looked searchingly into her eyes, as though he would have read her
inmost thoughts; but he did not see the understanding he had almost
hoped to find there, and he laughed shortly and relinquished his hold
of her.

"There, go!" he said in an uncertain tone. "Why did I expect you to
know? Your day hasn't come yet. Meanwhile-- Ah! what am I saying?"

"I have annoyed you again," said Katharine sorrowfully. "What ought I
to have known?"

"Oh, nothing," said Paul, flinging open the door. "You can't help it.
Now and again Nature makes woman a prig, and it is only the right man
who can regenerate her. Unfortunately, circumstances prevent me from
being the right man. Are you ready to come, now?"

He spoke rapidly, hardly knowing what he said. But Katharine walked
past him without speaking, with a set look on her face. He talked
mechanically about the storm and anything else that occurred to him,
as they went downstairs, but she did not utter a word, and he did not
seem to notice her silence. She held out her hand to him as they stood
in the doorway.

"You will let me see you to a cab?" he said. "Oh, very well, as you
like; but, at least, take an umbrella with you."

She shook her head mutely, and plunged out into the rain and the
storm. It was on just such a night as this, more than two years ago,
that she had first gone out to meet him. Paul called after her to come
back and take shelter; and some one, who was walking swiftly by,
turned round at the sound of his voice. The dim lamp above shed its
uncertain light for a moment on the faces of the three, whom
circumstances had thus strangely brought together in the fury of that
June thunder-storm. It was only for a moment. Paul drew back again
into the doorway, and Katharine stumbled blindly against the man
outside.

"Ted!" she cried, with a sob of relief. "Take me home, Ted, will you?
Something terrible has happened to me; I can't tell you now. Oh, I am
so glad it is you!"

She clung to his arm convulsively. Some clock in the neighbourhood was
striking the hour, and it struck twelve times before Ted spoke.

"Kitty!" he said.

She waited, but not another word came. Exhaustion prevented her from
resisting, as he led her to a hansom, and paid the driver, and left
her. Then she remembered dimly that he had not spoken to her, except
for that one startled exclamation.

It seemed to Katharine as though nothing could be wanting to complete
her wretchedness.




CHAPTER XV


But, humiliated as she was, the predominant feeling in her mind was
astonishment. Could it be true that she was a prig? Was that the final
definition of the pride and the strength in which she had gloried
until now? Was that all that people meant when they told her she was
not like other girls? It was an odious revelation, and for the moment
her self-respect was stunned by it. She had boasted of her success;
and to be successful was merely to be priggish. She had been proud of
her virtue; and virtue, again, was only an equivalent for
priggishness. She wondered vaguely whether there was a single
aspiration left that did not lead to the paths of priggishness. A
prig! He had called her a prig! She had thought it such a fine thing
to be content with his friendship, and this was the end of it all. All
the wretchedness of her solitary drive home was centred in those last
cruel words of his; all the bitterness of that long, miserable Sunday
was concentrated in that covert insult. She could have borne his
indifference, or even his displeasure; but she could have killed him
for his contempt.

And Ted? She did not give a thought to Ted. Even the reason for his
curious behaviour had not fully dawned upon her yet. It had only
seemed in keeping with the rest of her misfortunes, just like the
rain, which she allowed to beat in upon her, with a kind of reckless
satisfaction. In the fulness of her more absorbing personal trouble,
Ted would have to wait. It had been her experience that Ted always
could wait. It was not until she stood once more within the familiar
hall of number ten, Queen's Crescent, that the recollection of Ted's
astonished look returned to her mind; and then she put it hastily away
from her, as something that would have to be faced presently.

As she walked into her room, too weary to think any more, and longing
for the temporary oblivion of a night's rest, the first thing that met
her eye was the unmade condition of her bed. The desolate look of the
tiny compartment was the crowning point of her day of woe; and the
tears, which she had kept back until now, rushed to her eyes. It
seemed a little hard that, on this day of all others, Phyllis should
have neglected to make her bed. She gave it an impatient push, and it
scraped loudly over the bare boards.

"Stop that row!" said Polly's sharp voice from the other end of the
room. "You might be quiet, now you _have_ come in."

"Is Phyllis asleep?" asked Katharine shortly.

"Can't you be quiet?" growled Polly. "Haven't you heard she is worse?
Don't see how you should, though,--coming in at this hour of the
night!"

"Worse?" With an effort, Katharine's thoughts travelled back over the
absorbing events of the day, to the early morning; and she remembered
that Phyllis had stayed in bed with a headache. "What is the matter
with her?" she asked, faintly. Everything seemed to be conspiring
against her happiness to-day.

"Influenza. A lot you care! Nothing but my cousin's funeral would have
taken me out to-day, I know. I had to show up for that. Of course, I
thought you would look after her; I asked you to."

Katharine had pushed aside the curtain, and was looking at the
flushed, unconscious face of her friend. She dimly remembered saying
she would stop with her; and then a letter had come from Paul, asking
her to meet him in the park, and she had thought no more of Phyllis.
She had not even succeeded in meeting him; and again her eyes filled
with tears at her own misfortunes.

"I couldn't help it," she said, miserably. "How was I to know she was
so bad? Have you taken her temperature?"

"Hundred and three, when I last took it. It's no use standing there
and pulling a long face. She doesn't know you; so it's rather late in
the day to be cut up. You'd better go to bed, I should say; you look
as though you'd been out all day, and half the night, too!"

She ended with a contemptuous sniff. Katharine rubbed the tears out of
her eyes. The weariness had temporarily left her.

"Let me sit up with her," she said.

"You? What could you do? Why, you'd fall asleep, or think of something
else in the middle, and she might die for all you cared," returned
Polly contemptuously. "Can you make a poultice?"

Katharine shook her head dumbly, and crept away. Her self-abasement
seemed complete. She lay down on her untidy bed, and drew the clothes
over her, and gave way to her grief. There did not seem a bright spot
in her existence, now that Phyllis was not able to comfort her. She
hoped, with a desperate fervour, that she would catch influenza too,
and die, so that remorse should consume the hearts of all those who
had so cruelly misunderstood her.

A hand shook her by the shoulder, not unkindly.

"Look here! you must stop that row, or else you will disturb her.
What's the good of it? Besides, she isn't as bad as all that either;
you can't have seen much illness, I'm thinking."

"It isn't that," gasped Katharine truthfully. "At least, not entirely.
I was dreadfully unhappy about something else, and I wanted to die;
and then, when I found Phyllis was ill, it all seemed so hopeless. I
didn't mean to disturb any one; it was dreadfully foolish of me; I
haven't cried for years."

Polly gave a kind of grunt, and sat down on the bed. It was more or
less interesting to have reduced the brilliant Miss Austen to this
state of submission.

"Got yourself into trouble?" she asked, and refrained from adding that
she had expected it all along.

Katharine began to cry again. There was so little sympathy, and so
much curiosity, in the curt question. But she had reached the point
when to confide in some one was an absolute necessity; and there was
no one else.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she sobbed. "Why should one suffer so
awfully, just because one didn't _know_! We were only friends, and it
was so pleasant, and I was so happy! It might have gone on for ever,
only there was another girl."

"Of course," said Polly. "There always is. How did she get hold of
him?"

Katharine shrank back into herself.

"You don't understand," she complained. "He isn't like that at all. He
is clever, and refined, and very reserved. He doesn't flirt a bit, or
anything of that sort."

"Oh, I see," said Polly, with her expressive sniff. "I suppose the
other girl thought herself a toff, eh?"

"She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen," said Katharine
simply. "But I never knew he cared about that. He had views against
marriage, he always said; and he wasn't always talking about women,
like some men. I did not think he would end in marrying, just like
every one else."

"More innocent you, then! I always said you ought to have stopped at
home; girls like you generally do come the worst cropper. You surely
didn't suppose he would go on for ever, and be content merely with
your friendship, did you?"

"Yes, I did," said Katharine wearily. "Why not? I was content with
his."

Polly gave vent to a stifled laugh.

"My dear, you're not a man," she said in a superior tone. It added
considerably to the piquancy of the conversation that the subject was
one on which she was a greater authority than her clever companion.

"But he really cared for me, I am certain he did," Katharine went on
plaintively; and her eyes filled with tears again.

"Then why is he marrying the other girl instead of you? If she is so
beautiful, you're surely very good-looking too, eh? That won't wash
anyhow, will it?"

Katharine was silent. She felt she could not reveal the full extent of
his infamy just then; there was something so particularly sordid in
having been weighed against the advantages of a worldly marriage and
found wanting; and she felt a sudden disinclination to expose the
whole of the truth to the sharp criticism of Polly Newland.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she said again. "I don't understand
why things are so unfairly arranged. Why should I suffer for it like
this?"

"Don't know about that," retorted the uncompromising Polly. "I expect
you've been foolish, and that's a worse game than being bad. Going
about town with a man after dark, when you're not engaged to him,
isn't considered respectable by most, even if it's always the same
man. I'm not so particular as some, but you must draw the line
somewhere."

"I didn't go about with him much," said Katharine, making a feeble
attempt to justify herself. "He didn't care about it; he was always so
particular not to give people anything to talk about. He didn't care
for himself, he said; it was only for me. So I used to go to his
chambers instead. I couldn't be more careful than that, could I? And I
should have gone in the daytime, if I had had more time; but there was
all my work to get through,--so what else could I do? There wasn't any
harm in it."

She could not see her companion's face, and was so full of her own
reflections that she failed to notice her silence. Polly did not even
sniff.

"Then there's Ted," Katharine continued presently. "Even Ted was
strange to-night; and Ted has never been like that to me before. I
can't think what has come over everybody. What have I done to deserve
it all?"

"Mercy me!" cried Polly suddenly. "Is there another of them? Who on
earth is Ted?"

"Ted? Why, you must have seen him in the hall sometimes; he often
comes to take me out. I have known him all my life; he is only a
little older than I am, and I am devoted to him. I would not quarrel
with Ted for anything in the whole world; it would be like quarrelling
with myself. And to-night I ran into him, just as I came out of--of
the other one's chambers; and I was so glad to see him, because Ted is
always so sweet to me when I am in trouble; and--and Ted was quite
funny, and he wouldn't speak to me at all, and he just put me into a
hansom and left me to come home alone. I can't think why he behaved so
oddly. I know he used not to get on with--with the other one, and that
is why I never told him I had met him again up here in London; and I
suppose he caught sight of him to-night in the doorway,--there was a
lamp just above,--but still, he need not have been hurt until he had
heard my explanation, need he? Why has every one turned against me at
once?"

Polly remained silent no longer. She turned and stared at the
prostrate figure on the bed, with all the power of her small, watery
blue eyes.

"I really think you beat everything I ever knew," she exclaimed.

"What?" said Katharine, who had turned her face to the wall, and was
occupied in meditating miserably on the problem of her existence.
"What do you mean?"

Polly lost all control over herself.

"Do you mean to tell me that you never saw any harm in all this?" she
cried emphatically. "Do you really mean to say that you have been
carrying on anyhow with two men at once, going to their chambers late
at night, and letting yourself be seen in public with them, without
knowing that it was unusual? Didn't you ever see the danger in it? You
are either the biggest fool in creation or the biggest humbug! One man
at a time would be bad enough; but two! My eye!"

"But--there wasn't any harm," pleaded Katharine. "Why does no one
understand? It seemed quite natural to me. They were so different,
and I liked them in such opposite ways, don't you see? I have known
Ted all my life; he is a dear boy, and that is all. But Paul is clever
and strong; he is a man, and he knows about things. And I never knew
it was wrong; I didn't _feel_ wicked, somehow. I wonder if that was
what Paul was thinking, when he said I was a prig? Oh, dear! oh, dear!
I have never been so wretched in my whole life!"

"Did he say that about you? Well, I don't wonder."

Katharine looked hopelessly at her unsympathetic profile, with the
snub nose and the small chin, and the hair twisted up into tight
plaits and the ends tied with white tape; and her eyes wandered down
the red flannel dressing-gown to the large slippered feet that emerged
from beneath it.

"You called me a prig, too," she said, humbly. "I overheard you."

"I thought so then," said Polly gruffly.

"Do you think so now? Is it true? Am I a prig?" She awaited the answer
anxiously. Polly gave her another pitiless stare.

"I'm bothered if I know," she said. "But if you're not, you ought to
be in the nursery. Only don't go telling people the things you've
been telling me to-night, or you might get yourself into worse
trouble. You'd better go to sleep now, and leave it till to-morrow. My
conscience! you'd make some people sit up, you would!"

Katharine felt she had endured as much contempt as she could bear that
evening; but she made a last attempt to recover some of her
self-respect.

"I wish you would tell me why it is wrong to do things that are not
really wrong in themselves, just because people say they are wrong?"
she asked, rather sleepily.

"Because people can make it so jolly unpleasant for you if you don't
agree with them," said Polly bluntly. "And if you fancy you're going
to alter all that, you must make up your mind to be called a prig. You
can't have a good time and defy convention as you've been doing, and
then expect to get off scot free without being called a prig; it isn't
likely. Most people are content to take things as they are; it's a
jolly sight more comfortable, and it's good enough for them.
Good-night."

"I sha'n't sleep," Katharine called after her. And Polly sniffed.

And the next thing that Katharine remembered was being awakened by her
in the early morning, and told in a gruff voice that she might sit
with Phyllis if she liked, until some one came to relieve her.

"All right," she replied, drowsily. "How tired you look; didn't you
sleep well?"

"Sleep? There wasn't much chance of that, when she was talking
gibberish all the time. She's quieter now, and you can fetch Jenny if
you want anything. I must be off; I shall be late as it is. Just like
my luck to get my early week when she is ill!"

And there by the bedside of Phyllis Hyam, before any one else in the
house was astir, Katharine sat and pondered again over the events of
the day before. They seemed just as tragic as ever, separated as they
were from her by a few hours of forgetfulness; and she wondered
miserably how she was going to take up her life as usual, and go about
her work as though nothing had happened. "That is why it is so hard to
be a woman," she murmured, full of pity for her own troubles. And yet,
when Miss Jennings came and took her post in the sick-room, and she
was free to go to school, she found that it was a relief to be
compelled to do something, and her work seemed easier to her than she
had ever found it before. She had never given a better lecture than
she gave that morning; and something that was outside herself seemed
to come to her assistance all day, and remained with her until her
work was done. But when she returned home in the evening, the full
significance of her unfortunate situation stared her again in the
face; and the news that Phyllis was worse and was not allowed to see
any one was so in keeping with her feelings, that she felt unable even
to make a comment upon it.

"I always said that Miss Austen hadn't a spark of feeling in her,"
observed the girl who had given her the information; and Katharine
overheard her, and began to wonder mechanically if it were true. Every
faculty she possessed seemed deadened at that moment; she had no
longer the inclination even to rebel against her fate. She sat on the
stairs, outside the bedroom she was not allowed to enter, and took a
strange delicious pleasure in dwelling upon the whole of her
intercourse with Paul. There was not a conversation or a chance
meeting with him, that she did not go through in her mind with a
scrupulous accuracy; the pain of it became almost unendurable at
moments, and yet it was an exquisite torture that brought her some
measure of relief. She even forced herself to recall her last meeting
with him, and was surprised in an apathetic sort of way when she
found that she did not want to cry any more.

And from thinking of Paul, she naturally fell to thinking of Ted too.
And it slowly dawned upon her, as she considered it in the light of
her present mood, that what Polly had said in her vulgar,
uncompromising manner, was the truth. For a whole year she had been
living in a false atmosphere of contentment; she had deluded herself
into the belief that she was superior to convention and human nature
combined, and she had ended in proving herself a complete failure.
Paul had seen through her self-righteousness, he had nothing but
contempt for her, and he had found it a relief to turn from her to the
human and faulty Marion Keeley. In the depths of her self-abasement,
she had even ceased to feel angry with Marion.

And Ted had found her out. That was the worst of all. On the impulse
of the moment, she fetched some paper and wrote to him at once,
sitting there on the uncarpeted stairs, while the people passed up and
down unheeded by her. It was a very humble letter, full of pleading
confession and self-accusation,--such a letter as she had never sent
him before, and written from a standpoint she had never yet been
obliged to assume towards him. It was a relief at the moment to be
doing something; but she regretted her action the whole of the
following day, and hardly knew how to open his reply when she found it
awaiting her, on her return home in the evening. It was very short.

"Dear Kitty," it ran:--

     Don't mind about me. It's a rotten world, and I'm the
     rottenest fool in it. I was only hit up the other night
     because I was so surprised. Of course you're all right, and I
     ought never to have been born. I knew all the time that you
     were spoofing me when you pretended to care for me; but I
     didn't know you cared for any one else, least of all Wilton.
     He always seemed so played to me, but then I'm not clever.
     Only, I advise you not to go hanging round his chambers at
     night; people are so poor, and they might talk. Let me know if
     you want me or anything. I won't bother you otherwise.

          TED.

He still believed in her, then; only it was more from habit than
conviction. But she had destroyed his love for her. She realised these
two facts in the same breath, and she rebelled passionately at the
loss of the affection that had been hers for so long, though she had
valued it so lightly.

"I do want you, now," she scribbled to him in pencil. "Will you come
here to-morrow evening? Miss Jennings has promised me the use of her
sitting-room. I shall expect you about seven."

It seemed quite in harmony with the general wretchedness of those few
days that Phyllis should be seriously ill all the time. The
sixty-three working gentlewomen, who had never pretended to care for
the brusque shorthand clerk when she was in good health and trampled
without a scruple on their tenderest susceptibilities, now went about
on tiptoe, and conversed in whispers on all the landings, and got in
the way of the doctor when he came downstairs. And they one and all
condemned Katharine for her indifference, because she refused to
enlarge on the subject at every meal.

"The conversation is never very exhilarating, at the best of times;
but when all those women take to gloating over a tragedy, it simply
isn't bearable," she was heard to exclaim; and the unlucky remark cost
her the last shred of her popularity at Queen's Crescent.

She was waiting at her usual post on the stairs, when they came to
tell her that Ted was downstairs. He had come at her bidding; that
was consoling, at all events. But when she walked into Miss Jennings'
private room and saw his face as he stood on the hearthrug, her heart
sank again, and she knew that she was not to find consolation yet. He
held out his hand to her silently, and pulled forward a slender,
white-wood chair tied up with yellow ribbons, and imperilled a bamboo
screen crowded with cheap crockery, and finally sat down himself on
the edge of the chintz-covered sofa. Neither of them spoke for a
moment or two, and Ted cleared his throat uncomfortably, and stared at
the ferrule of his walking-stick.

"I got your letter," he said at last, "and I've come."

"Yes," said Katharine, "you've come."

Having delivered themselves of these two very obvious remarks, they
again relapsed into silence; and Katharine glanced at the cuckoo
clock, and marvelled that so much concentrated wretchedness could be
crowded into something under five minutes.

"Ted," she forced herself to say, in a voice that did not seem to be
hers, "Ted, will you never come and see me any more?"

He lifted his head and looked at her; then looked away again.

"Not unless you want me to do anything for you," he said. "I don't
want to bother, you see."

She longed to cry out and tell him that he never bothered her; that
she wanted to see him more than she wanted anything in the whole
world. But something new and strange in his face, that told her he was
no longer a boy and no longer her willing slave, seemed to paralyse
her. To be proved inferior to the man she had always considered
inferior to her, was the hardest blow she had yet had to endure.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, lamely.

Ted hastened to be apologetic.

"I'm beastly sorry," he said, and cleared his throat again.

"I--I wish you would explain," she went on.

"Oh, that's all right, isn't it?" said Ted vaguely.

"It isn't all right; you know it isn't," she cried. "What makes you so
strange to me? You've never looked like that before. Is it I who have
changed you so, Ted?"

"Oh, it's nothing," he said. "You've hit me up rather, that's all.
Don't bother about me. Did you want me for anything particular?"

She looked in vain for any signs of relenting in his manner; but he
sat on the edge of the sofa, and played with his walking-stick, and
cleared his throat at intervals. In spite of the changed conditions of
their attitude towards one another, she felt that she was expected, as
usual, to take the initiative.

"I wanted to tell you all about it, to explain," she faltered. "I
thought you would help me."

"If it's all the same to you, I would rather not hear," said Ted, with
unexpected promptitude. "I know as much about it as I care to know,
thanks. _He_ wrote to me this morning, too."

"He wrote to you? Paul?"

"Wilton, yes," he replied, shortly, and glanced at her again. His
under lip was twitching, as it always did when he was hurt or
embarrassed.

"What for?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Oh, to explain, and all that! Hang the explanation! I didn't want him
to tell me he hadn't been a blackguard; I knew you,--so that was all
square. But I don't understand it now, and I don't want to. I can't
see any great shakes, myself, in playing about with a girl when you're
engaged to some one else. But I suppose that's because I'm such a
rotten ass. It's none of my business, any way; only, I think you'd
better be careful. But you know best, so that's all right."

Again she longed to tell him that she was not so bad as he thought
her, and yet, much worse than he thought her; but the words would not
come, and she sat self-condemned.

"You don't understand," she stammered presently. "I didn't know he was
engaged till yesterday. I saw no harm in it all; I only liked him very
much, as a friend. I liked you in quite a different way, I--"

"You didn't know he was engaged?" said Ted, rousing himself suddenly.
"Do you mean to say he has been playing fast and loose with you, the
blackguard? If I had thought that--"

"No, no!" she cried, in alarm at the fierceness of his expression. "He
never treated me badly; he made everything quite clear from the
beginning. It was my fault if I misunderstood him. But I never did; I
always knew we were just friends, and it was pleasant, and I let it go
on. Haven't you and I been friends, too, Ted? There was no harm in
that, was there?"

"Oh, no," he said, bitterly. "There was no fear of any harm in it!"

She realised his meaning, and blushed painfully as she felt that he
had spoken the truth.

"Ted, do you hate me, I wonder?" she murmured.

"What? Oh, that's all right. Don't bother about me. I was a rotten ass
ever to expect anything else."

"But, I mean, because--because of the other?" she went on anxiously.

Ted bit his lip, but did not speak.

"Do you think it was wrong of me?" she pleaded. "Ted, tell me! I
didn't know; I didn't really. It seemed quite right to me; I couldn't
see that it mattered, just because of what people said. Would you
think it wrong of a girl to come and see you, if she liked coming, and
didn't care what people said?"

Ted rose from his seat hurriedly, and picked up his hat.

"I never said you were wrong, did I?" he said, gently. "You see,
you're clever, and I'm not, and it's altogether different. I was only
sorry, that was all; I didn't think you went in for that sort of
thing, and I was hit up, rather. But it was my fault entirely; and of
course you're right,--you always are. I sha'n't bother you any more,
now I know."

"Ted, don't go," she said, imploringly, as he touched her hand again
and turned towards the door. "Don't you understand, Ted, that--that
_he_ only appealed to half of me, and-- I do care, Ted, and I want you
to come and see me again; I do really, Ted, I--"

But he only smiled as incredulously as before, and spoke again in the
same gentle tone.

"Thanks, awfully. But don't bother to spoof yourself about me; I shall
be all right, really. It was always my fault; I won't bother you any
more. Good-bye."

And, haunted by his changed manner and his joyless smile, she went
back to her seat on the stairs, and sat with her hands clasped over
her knees and her eyes staring vacantly into space, as she tried in
vain to discover what her real feelings were. "Perhaps I haven't got
any," she thought to herself. "Perhaps I am incapable of loving any
one, or of feeling anything. And I have sent away the best fellow in
the whole world, and it doesn't seem to matter a bit. I wonder if
_anything_ could make me cry now?" And she took a gloomy pleasure in
conjuring up all the incidents of the last unhappy week, and laughed
cynically when she found that none of them had any effect upon her.

"Why don't they light the gas?" complained the working gentlewomen,
when they came downstairs to supper. And when Katharine explained that
she had promised to light it herself and had forgotten to do so, they
passed on their way, marvelling that any one with so little feeling
should have her moments of abstraction like every one else. After they
had all gone down, she had a restless fit, and paced up and down the
landing until Polly Newland came out of the sick room, and stopped
her.

"You might choose another landing, if you want to do that," she said,
crossly. "You've woke her up now; but you can come in if you like. She
has just asked for you."

Katharine followed her in, rather awkwardly, and sat down on the chair
that was pointed out to her, and tried to think of something
appropriate to say. It was difficult to know how to begin, when she
looked round the room, and noted all the objects that seemed to have
belonged to some distant period in her life, before the world had
become so hard and cheerless. But Phyllis was looking the same as
ever, except that she was rather white, and her hair was strangely
tidy. She was the first to speak.

"Hullo," she said. "I've been wanting to see you. What's the matter
with you, child?"

The incongruity of being asked by the invalid for the cause of her own
malady did not immediately occur to Katharine. But the familiar tone
of sympathy went straight to her heart, and she broke down completely.
She had a dim notion that Polly remonstrated angrily, and that Polly
was sent out of the room; and after that she was conscious of nothing
except of the comfort of being able to cry undisturbed, until Phyllis
said something about red eyes, and they joined in a spasmodic laugh.

"Poor old girl, what have they been doing to you?" she asked.

"Everything has been horrid," gasped Katharine. "And you were ill, and
nobody understood, and oh, Phyllis!--I am a _prig_!"




CHAPTER XVI


Marion Keeley lay in an indolent attitude on the sofa by the window.
Her mother was addressing circulars at the writing-table, with the
anxious haste of the fashionable woman of business. Both of them
looked as though the London season, which a royal wedding had
prolonged this year, had been too much for them.

"He is coming again to-night," said Marion, throwing down a letter she
had been reading. Her tone was one of dissatisfaction.

"I know," replied her mother. "I asked him to come."

Marion made a gesture of impatience.

"Don't you think," she said, "that you might occasionally, for the
sake of variety, wait until his own inclination prompted him to come?"

"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Keeley, absently. "I asked him
because I wanted to make final arrangements with him about Lady
Suffolk's drawing-room meeting, at which he has promised to speak
to-morrow."

"It seems to me," observed Marion sarcastically, "that it would save a
lot of trouble if you were to marry him yourself."

"It is very surprising," complained her mother, "how you persist in
dragging the frivolous element into everything. If you were only like
your cousin, now,--so earnest and so sympathetic! How is it that you
are really my daughter?"

"I'm sure I don't know; in fact, I think it is the only subject on
which you have allowed me to remain ignorant," returned Marion,
calmly. "But you needn't bother about me; I am going out to dinner in
any case to-night, so you will be able to make your arrangements with
Paul without the distraction of the frivolous element. Meanwhile,
can't we have some tea?"

The Honourable Mrs. Keeley returned to her circulars with a sigh.

"One might almost think, to hear you talk, that you did not want to
marry him at all," she exclaimed.

"One almost might," assented Marion; and she tore her letter into
little pieces, and threw them deftly into the waste-paper basket. Her
mother looked at her a little apprehensively.

"How you can, even in fun, pretend to ignore the merits of a
character like Paul Wilton's is beyond my comprehension," she
grumbled. "What more can you want in a man, I should like to know?"

"More? I don't want any more; I want a good deal less. I'm not
ignoring his merits; I only wish I could. I would give anything to
find a few honest human imperfections in him. It is his eternal
excellence that is driving me to distraction. What a fool I was ever
to let him take me seriously! Of course I never should have done, if
he had not provoked me by being so difficult to fascinate. He is one
of those awful people who are going to make heaven unbearable!"

"Judging by your aggravating behaviour in this world, you won't be
there to help him," said her mother, who was losing her patience
rapidly after having wrongly addressed two wrappers.

"I hope I sha'n't. If all the people go to heaven who are popularly
supposed to be _en route_, I should think even the saints would be too
bored to stop there. As for Paul, I grant you that he is eminently
fitted for a son-in-law, but I don't see why I should be the victim of
his heaven-sent vocation."

"You are not married to him yet; and if you continue in this strain
much longer, I doubt if you ever will be."

"Oh," said Marion, with sudden animation, "do you really think there
_is_ a chance of his breaking it off?"

The opportune arrival of Katharine at this moment restored some of
Mrs. Keeley's good-humour. She approved very decidedly of Katharine,
not only because she was a working-woman, but also on account of her
patience as a listener. Katharine, she felt, would have made an ideal
daughter; Katharine understood the serious aspect of the political
situation, and she showed no signs of being bored when people gave her
their opinion of things. So she received her with genuine cordiality.

"I am so glad you have come," said Marion, offering her a perfunctory
embrace. "You have interrupted mamma, and made tea inevitable. It is
quite providential."

"I am glad to be the unwitting cause of so many blessings," said
Katharine drily. "I really came to say good-bye. I am going home
to-morrow."

"Holidays already?" exclaimed Mrs. Keeley, as though she grudged even
the working gentlewoman her moments of relaxation.

"They have not come too soon for me," observed Katharine, to whom the
last six weeks had seemed an endless period of waiting. "But I am
leaving town for good; so I suppose I shall not see you again for some
time. I mean to say, I have given up my teaching, and--"

"How charming of you!" exclaimed Marion, who felt that the last
barrier to a warm friendship with her cousin was now removed. "Are you
really going to be like everybody else, now?"

But the Honourable Mrs. Keeley was bitterly disappointed.

"It is incredible," she said. "Do you mean to say that you are going
to throw up your life's work, just as you are on the point of being a
brilliant success?"

"I think, on the contrary, I have merely been a failure," said
Katharine, with a patient smile. "You see, there are hundreds of
people who can do just what I am doing. But I am wanted at home, and I
am going back to my father; I ought never to have left him."

"Oh, these girls!" sighed Mrs. Keeley. "What is the use of trying to
make them independent? And I thought you were so different; I held you
up as an example to my own daughter--"

"I am so sorry," murmured Katharine, in parenthesis. Marion only
laughed.

"I was proud to own you as my niece," pursued Mrs. Keeley, increasing
in fervour as she went on. "You were doing what so few women succeed
in doing, and I had the keenest admiration for your courage and your
talent. And to give it all up like this! Surely, you have some
excellent reason for such an extraordinary course of action?"

"It seems to me quite sufficient reason that I am more wanted at home
than here," replied Katharine, with the same air of gentle endurance.
She had gone through a similar explanation more than once lately, and
it was beginning to blunt the edge of her newly made resolutions. It
also took away most of the picturesqueness of being good.

"But, indeed, you are very much mistaken," her aunt continued to urge.
"Who has been putting this effete notion of _duty_ into your head? I
thought we working-women had buried it for ever! Consider what you are
doing in throwing up the position you have carved out for yourself;
consider the bad effect it will have upon others, the example,--everything!
Your place is the world, Kitty, the great world! There cannot be any
work for you to do in a home like yours."

"There is always plenty to do in the village, and nobody to do it,"
said Katharine. "I have considered the matter thoroughly, Aunt Alicia,
and my mind is quite made up. Anybody can do my work up here in
London; you know that is so."

"Indeed, you are mistaken," said her aunt, vehemently. It seemed
particularly hard that her favourite protégée should have deserted her
principles, just as she had been driven to the last limit of endurance
by her own daughter. "Every woman must do her own work, and no one
else can do it for her."

"Then why do you always say the labour market is so overcrowded?"
asked Marion, making a mischievous application of the knowledge she
had so unwillingly absorbed. But she was not heeded.

"It is the mass we have to consider, not the individual," continued
the Honourable Mrs. Keeley, as though she were addressing the room
from a platform. "It is for lesser women than ourselves to look after
the home and the parish; there is a far wider sphere reserved for such
as you and I. It would be a perfect scandal if you were to throw
yourself away on the narrowness of the domestic circle."

Katharine felt a hysterical desire to laugh, which she controlled with
difficulty. She spoke very humbly, instead.

"It must be my own fault, if I have allowed you to think all these
things about me," she said. "There is nothing great reserved for me; I
am just a complete failure, and that is the end of all my ambition and
all my conceit. I wish some one had told me I was conceited, before I
got so bad."

The Honourable Mrs. Keeley was silenced at last. None of her
experience of working gentlewomen helped her to meet the present
situation. A woman with a great future before her had obviously no
right to be humble. But Marion realised gleefully that she had gained
a new and unexpected ally.

"I always said you were much too jolly to belong to mamma's set," she
observed; at which the angered feelings of her mother compelled her to
seek comfort in solitude, and she made some excuse for retiring to her
boudoir, and left the two rebels together. They looked at one another
and broke into mutual merriment. But Marion laughed the loudest,--a
fact that she herself was the first to appreciate.

"Kitty," she said suddenly, growing grave, "I am so sorry, dear!
What's up, and who has been treating you badly?"

She strolled away immediately to pour out tea, and Katharine had time
to recover from surprise at her unusual penetration.

"How did you know?" she asked, slowly.

"I guessed, because--oh, you looked like it, or something! Don't ask
me to give a reason for anything I say, _please_. It isn't my
business, of course, and I don't want to know a thing about it if you
would rather not tell; only, I'm sorry if you're cut up, that's all.
Did you chuck him, or did it never get so far as that? There, I really
don't want you to tell me about it. Of course, he was much older than
you, and much wickeder, and he flirted atrociously with you and you
were taken in by him, you poor little innocent dear! I know all about
it, and the way they get hold of girls like you who are not up to
their wiles. He was married, too, of course? They always are, the
worst ones."

It was too much trouble to correct her assumptions, and Katharine
allowed her to go on. After all, her sympathy was genuine, if it was a
little crudely expressed.

"I shouldn't think any more about him, if I were you," continued
Marion. "They're not worth it, any of them; go and get another, and
snap your fingers at the first. You're not tied to one, as I am."

"No," said Katharine, scalding herself with mouthfuls of boiling tea.
"I'm not."

"I know I would give anything to get rid of mine," said Marion
sorrowfully. "May you never know the awful monotony of being engaged!"

"I don't fancy I ever shall," observed Katharine.

"Always the same writing on the breakfast table," sighed Marion;
"always the same face on the back seat of the carriage; always the
same photograph all over the house,--oh, it's maddening! You wouldn't
be able to stand it for a day, Kitty!"

"Perhaps not," said Katharine. "Then your engagement is publicly
announced now?"

"I should rather think so! I am tired of being congratulated by a lot
of idiots, who don't even take the trouble to find out whether I want
to be married or not. And then, the boys! Bobby is going to shoot
himself, he says; but of course Bobby always says that. And Jack has
gone to South Africa; I don't exactly know why, except that every one
goes to South Africa when there isn't any particular reason for
staying in town. And Tommy--you remember Tommy, don't you? He was my
best boy for ever so long; I rather liked Tommy. Well, he has gone and
married that stupid Ethel Humphreys, and he always said she _pinched_.
I know why he did it, too. He was being objectionably serious, one
day, and said he would do anything on earth for me; so I asked him to
go and marry mamma, because then I should get eight hundred a year.
And he didn't like it a bit; Tommy always was ridiculously
hot-tempered. Oh, dear, I'm sick of it all! I believe you're the only
person I know, who hasn't congratulated me."

"Apparently, you do not consider yourself a subject for
congratulation," said Katharine, smiling faintly.

"Oh, you're not like all the others, and I should like to be
congratulated by you. You would mean what you said, anyhow."

"I certainly should," exclaimed Katharine.

"How earnestly you said that! It's frightfully nice of you to care so
much, though. I was telling Paul what a good sort you were, the other
day, and he quite agreed."

"Wasn't it rather dull for him?"

"Oh, no, I'm sure it wasn't; he takes a tremendous interest in you; he
says you are the cleverest woman he knows, and the pluckiest. He does,
really!"

"I have no doubt of it. He has always thought me clever and plucky,"
said Katharine.

"Well, it's more than he thinks about me, anyhow," said Marion
ruefully. "He doesn't think I am good for anything, except to play
with."

"And to fall in love with," added Katharine softly.

"Why didn't you come and meet him the other evening?" continued
Marion. "He seemed so disappointed. So was I; I wanted you to come,
for lots of reasons. I get so bored when I am left alone with him! I
like him ever so much better if there is some one else there; and you
are the only girl I know who would be safe not to flirt with him.
Bobby said, only the other day, that you were much too nice to flirt
with. And girls are so mean, sometimes,--aren't they? I was really
sorry when you refused."

"If you had told me the real reason for your invitation, instead of
the conventional one, I might have made more effort to come," said
Katharine.

"You old dear, don't be sarcastic; I never can endure sarcasm. But you
will come next time, won't you? Oh, dear, I am forgetting all about
your own trouble; what a selfish wretch I am! Are you sure there is
nothing I can do for you?"

"Nothing, thanks; at least, nothing I would let you do."

"Sure? Well, let me know if there is. Are you really very gone on him,
Kitty?"

"Please don't," said Katharine.

"All right, I won't. But I wish you would try a course of boys for a
time; it would make you feel so much happier. They're so fresh and
harmless."

"Even when they shoot themselves?" said Katharine.

"Oh, that's only Bobby. Must you really go? You old dear, you have
done me such a lot of good. What is it, Williams?"

Mr. Wilton was in the library, the man announced, and would be glad to
see either Mrs. Keeley or her daughter for a moment, and he would
rather not come upstairs, as he was in a hurry. Marion gave a petulant
little stamp.

"Oh, send mamma to him! How like Paul, not to care which of us he
sees! Just fancy, if it were Tommy, now! Stop, though, show him up
here, Williams. You will be able to congratulate him, Kitty; it will
put him in a good humour. Oh, nonsense! you can wait just for that,
and I haven't anything to say to him that he hasn't heard hundreds of
times before."

So Katharine found herself shaking hands with him once more, and
congratulating him on being engaged to her cousin, Marion Keeley. She
had not seen him since the night of the thunderstorm, when he had
stood in the old doorway in Essex Court, with the lamplight on his
face.

"You are very good; it is kind of you to take so much interest," he
was saying with frigid politeness.

They were silent after that, and Marion said she was sure they must
have crowds to talk about, and she would go upstairs and ask her
mother about Lady Suffolk's drawing-room meeting; and they both made
perfectly futile efforts to keep her in the room, and were ashamed of
having made them when she had gone, and they were left to face the
situation alone.

"I suppose," said Paul, with an effort, "that your holidays will soon
be beginning?"

"They have begun to-day," said Katharine. "This is the first day--of
my last holidays."

"Your--last holidays?" She felt, without seeing, that he had looked up
sharply at her.

"I don't suppose it will interest you," she went on, rousing herself
to be more explicit; "but I am giving up my work in London, and going
home for good."

There was the slightest perceptible pause before he spoke.

"Would you care to tell me why?"

"Because," said Katharine slowly, "I happened to find out, through a
friend, that I was a prig; and I am going home to try and learn not to
be a prig any more." She was looking straight at him as she finished
speaking. His face was quite incomprehensible just then.

"Was that a true friend?" he asked.

"People who tell us unpleasant things about ourselves are always said
to be our true friends, are they not?" she said, evasively.

"That is not an answer to my question; I was not dealing in
generalities when I asked it. But of course, you have every right to
withhold the answer, if it pleases you--"

"I don't think I know the answer," said Katharine. "I have always
found your questions too difficult to answer; and as to this one,--I
wish I could be sure that it was a friend at all." He moved his chair,
involuntarily, a little nearer hers.

"Can I do anything to make you feel more sure?" he asked.

She shook her head, and he moved away again. "Of course, you are the
best judge in the matter," he resumed, more naturally; "but it is
rather a serious step to take at the outset of your career, is it
not?"

"Perhaps," she said, indifferently; "but then, I am not a man, you
see. There is no career possible for a woman, because her feelings are
always more important to her than all the ambition in the world. A man
only draws on his feelings for his recreation; but a woman makes them
the whole business of her life, and that is why she never gets on. I
don't suppose you can realise this, because it is so different for
you. Everybody expects a man to get on; it is made comparatively easy
for him, and nobody ever disputes his way of doing it. A man can have
as much fun as he likes, as long as he isn't found out,--and it's easy
for a man not to be found out," she added, with a sigh.

"Easier than for a woman?" He spoke in the bantering tone that was so
familiar to her.

"Oh, a woman is dogged by detectives from her cradle, mostly drawn
from the ranks of her own sex. It is a compliment we pay ourselves, in
one sense. We dare not inquire into the private life of a man, because
of the iniquities he is supposed to practise; but there is so little
scandal attached to a woman's name, that we are anxious not to miss
any of it." She laughed at her small attempt to be frivolous, and Paul
brightened considerably. He could understand her when she was in this
mood, and his peace of mind was undisturbed by it.

"I suppose the man is still unborn who will take the trouble to
champion his sex, and explain that men are not all profligates before
they are married," he observed. "I wonder why women always think of us
as cads, and then take us for husbands. I can't think why they want to
marry us at all, though."

"And we can't think what reason there is for you to offer _us_
marriage, unless you do it for position or something like that,"
retorted Katharine, and then bit her lip and stopped short, as she
realised what she had said. In the embarrassing pause that followed,
Marion came back into the room.

"Well, you two don't look as though you'd had much conversation," she
remarked.

"We haven't," said Katharine, getting up to leave. "Mr. Wilton's
conversation, you see, is all bespoken already."

"Miss Austen is a little hard on me," said Paul. "I have had so little
practice in conversation with brilliant and learned young lecturers,
that--"

"That I will leave you to a less dismal companion," interrupted
Katharine, a little abruptly.

"Will you allow me to suggest," he went on, as he held her hand for a
moment, "that you should try and think more kindly of the particular
friend who was so unpleasantly frank to you?"

"If I thought that the friend in question were likely to be affected
by my opinion of him, perhaps I might," she said, as she turned away.

When she had gone, Marion asked him what he had meant.

"Merely a passing reflection on something she had been telling me,"
was his reply.

"Oh," said Marion, "did she tell you about her love affair?"

"My dear girl, Miss Austen is not likely to favour me with these
interesting disclosures, is she? I didn't know she had a love affair,
as you rather frankly express it."

"She isn't a bit the sort, is she? I only found it out this afternoon;
he's an awful beast, I should think,--led her on, and treated her
villainously, poor old Kitty! Isn't it a shame?"

"Did she tell you all that?"

"Don't look so surprised! Of course she did; at least, I guessed,
because she looked so miserable. I always know; I've had so much
experience, you see. But it's much worse for Kitty, don't you know,
because she takes things so seriously. It's a mistake, isn't it? I
would give a good lot to meet the man who has ill treated her,
though!"

"Yes? What would you do to him?"

"I would tell him he was a horrid little bounder, and that Kitty was
well rid of him."

"In which case there is no occasion to pity her, is there?"

"Oh, how unsympathetic you are! Of course it's just as bad, whatever
the man is like. It's always the saints like Kitty who break their
hearts for the most worthless men. I'm not made like that; I should
soon console myself with some one else, and make the first one mad.
But then, I'm not clever."

"Your cousin is a most interesting psychological study," said Paul
vaguely.

"What do you mean? She is a very nice girl indeed," cried Marion
indignantly; and Paul silently condemned the whole sex, without
reservation.

It was a particularly bright and sunny evening when Katharine returned
to her home,--a failure. She felt that, to be appropriate, it should
have been dull and dreary; but it was on the contrary quite at
variance with her feelings, and she grew unaccountably happier in
spite of herself, as the train sped past the familiar landmarks on the
way and brought her nearer every minute to the home of her childhood.
For there was a sneaking consideration for herself in her sudden
desire to serve others; she had felt out of tune with the world since
it had been the means of revealing her deficiencies to herself, and
she longed for the panacea of home sympathy, which was still connected
in her mind with the days when she had been supreme in a small circle,
a circle that believed in her if it did not precisely understand her.
She had found something wanting in the sympathies and interests which
had absorbed her for the last two years, and she turned instinctively
to those earlier ones which may have offered her no great allurements
at the time, but which at least contained no rude awakenings. She
forgot the petty discomforts and frequent annoyances of her life at
home, in her present desire for rest and peace; she was tired of
fighting hard for her happiness and gaining nothing but a moiety of
pleasure in return; and the weary condition of mind and body in which
she found herself at the end of it all, probably helped her to
exaggerate the advantages of that former existence of hers, and to
mistake its monotony for restfulness.

She had her first disillusionment as she hastened out of the station.
It was no one's fault that the Rector had been obliged to attend a
meeting of the archæological society, and that Miss Esther had been
detained in the village; but they had never omitted to meet her
before, and that they should have done so on this particular occasion
which was of so much import to her, appeared in the light of a bad
omen, and she set it down sadly as another penalty that she was to pay
for having neglected her real duty so long. But she had yet to learn
that her ardent desire to sacrifice herself for somebody did not bring
with it the necessary opportunity, and it was not encouraging to
discover that no one was particularly anxious to be the recipient of
her good works, and that her effort at well-doing was more resented by
those in authority than her previous and undisguised course of
self-indulgence. Even Miss Esther mistrusted her enthusiasm, and
evidently looked upon it as another freak on the part of her
capricious niece, which would probably prove as transient as the last;
and Katharine felt that she was touching the extreme limits of her
endurance in the first few days she spent at the Rectory.

"It is very hard," she complained to herself when she had been home
about a week, "that they should make it so much easier for me to be
bad than good. All the same," she added, with a touch of her old
defiant spirit, "I am going to be good, whether they like it or not!"




CHAPTER XVII


Ivingdon was one of those villages, common to the chalk district, that
cease to possess any charm in the wet weather. The small ranges of
round-topped hills which formed the only feature in the flat green
stretches of country entirely lost the few characteristics they
possessed, in the absence of sunshine, and presented neither charm nor
majesty in the heavy grey atmosphere that surrounded them. The
landscape appeared even less inspiriting than usual to Katharine, on a
rainy day in the late autumn, as she plodded through the most squalid
part of the village, and prepared to walk home through a kind of mist
that had none of the exhilarating qualities of the stormy rain that
always appealed to her. After four months of dull and virtuous
renunciation, such a day as this was likely to hasten the reaction
that had become inevitable. It was tea time when she reached the
Rectory; and the aspect of the precisely arranged table, with its
rigid erection of double dahlias in the middle, and the starched
figure of Miss Esther at the head of it, completed the feeling of
revulsion in her mind.

"My dear," said her aunt, as Katharine flung herself into a chair,
"have you no intention of making yourself tidy before we begin?"

"My only intention is that of having tea as speedily as possible,"
replied Katharine. "If Peter Bunce, or any other depressing personage
is likely to turn up, he may as well see me in my wet weather hat as
in anything else. Besides, I rather like myself in my wet weather hat,
in spite of the disapproval it has excited among the gods of the
neighbourhood."

She waited instinctively for the reproof that usually came as an
accompaniment to her criticism of the neighbourhood; but Miss Esther
for once was preoccupied, and allowed her to go on undisturbed. "Mrs.
Jones has got another baby," continued Katharine. "That's the seventh.
And Farmer Rickard seems to have seized the opportunity to turn her
husband off for the winter. There positively isn't another scrap of
news,--so may I have some tea?"

"Talking of babies," observed the Rector, looking up from his book,
"I heard this morning that some one was going to be married. Now,
whoever could it have been, I wonder!"

"I didn't know," said Katharine, "that any one was left to be married
in this village, above the age of sixteen."

"Ah, to be sure," continued the Rector, smiling at his unusual effort
of memory, "it was your cousin Marion. You remember Alicia Keeley, do
you not, Esther? Well, this is her daughter; they both came to stay
with us some years ago, if you remember; and she is to be married to a
barrister, whose name--my child, that is the third time I have passed
you the butter, and you have already helped yourself twice--whose name
is Paul Wilton. It's very odd," he added, with his nervous laugh,
"but, although the name is perfectly familiar to me, I do not seem to
recollect the man in the least. The only Wilton I can recall with
certainty is the exceedingly able and scholarly author of our best
work on copper tokens; but--"

"Well, this is his son, of course, Cyril," interrupted Miss Esther
impatiently. "I should not have thought it required much effort to
remember the man who enjoyed your hospitality for at least two
months. A very nice young man he was, too,--of an excellent family,
and with a delicate regard for propriety which was most fortunate
considering the embarrassing circumstances in which we were placed at
the time. So he is going to marry into the family? What a coincidence!
I don't remember much about Marion, she was so young when she stayed
here; but if she has grown up at all like that terribly advanced
mother of hers, poor Mr. Wilton will have his hands full. How did he
meet her, I wonder? Did you ever see him in Curzon street, Katharine?"

"Sometimes; they were engaged early in the summer. But it isn't a bit
important, is it?" said Katharine.

"You knew they were engaged, and you have kept it to yourself all this
time?" exclaimed her aunt. "I really think you are the most
exasperating girl, Katharine!"

"Why? I suppose it is rather cruel, though, to rob any one of the
smallest piece of gossip, in a place like this," observed Katharine
sarcastically.

"To be sure! to be sure! I remember him perfectly," the Rector was
chuckling gleefully. "A delightful young fellow, with some knowledge
of Oriental china. We must send them a little present, my
dear,--something he would be able to appreciate. There is a delightful
Elizabethan chest at Walker's--"

"I see no necessity for a wedding present at all," interrupted Miss
Esther. "We only know him very slightly, and we haven't seen the
Keeleys for years. If Katharine likes to send her cousin a little
remembrance, that is her own affair and she can do as she likes," she
added, with a princely condescension. "I really wonder, Cyril, that
you can make such an extravagant suggestion, with the poor crying out
at your very doors!"

The Rector reflected on the beauty of the old oak chest he had coveted
for weeks, and sighed deeply. Katharine roused herself, and laughed in
a distinctly forced manner.

"Send them your blessing, auntie," she said; "and congratulate Mr.
Wilton on his good fortune in entering our particular family. I am
sure it must be an alliance he has coveted ever since he first made
our acquaintance! It will only cost a penny stamp, and I am sure the
poor of the village will not grudge that for such a laudable object.
Hey-day, do let us talk about something else! Do you know the Grange
is put up for sale?"

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Miss Esther, who was as easily diverted
as a child. "Dear me! and poor Mrs. Morton hardly laid to her last
rest! The want of feeling that that young Edward has shown throughout
is almost incredible. To requite the lifelong devotion of his mother
by selling her old home a month after her death! Ah, well, I suppose
we have all done our work here, and it is time for us to follow her!"

"What rubbish!" cried Katharine hotly. "Why should he pretend to be
fond of his mother just because she is dead? She was never a bit fond
of him, when she was alive, and he wanted her affection badly enough
then. Besides, it can't matter to her whether the house is sold or
not, and I expect he wants the money."

"Money? Why, she has left him every penny she had,--so what more can
he want? I know she did, for a fact, because the housekeeper told me
so."

"I shouldn't dream of disputing such an excellent authority, but I do
know her generosity was purely accidental, and that she would have
made another will if she had not been taken ill so suddenly," said
Katharine, getting up and walking to the window. The view outside,
with the sodden lawn and the dripping trees, was as cheerless as the
conversation within.

"The house ought not to be allowed to stand," said the Rector, with an
indignation that he never bestowed on the human imperfections so
bitterly deplored by his sister. "A wretched modern thing, belonging
to the very worst period of domestic art!"

"They are doing it up," said Katharine from the window. "I wonder,"
she added softly to the sodden lawn and the dripping trees, "if he
knows that they have mended the gap in the hedge?" Perhaps it was only
the dulness of the weather that was depressing her, but her eyes, as
she laid her cheek against the window-pane, were full of tears. Miss
Esther continued her speculations unconsciously.

"I suppose he will travel," she said. "It amounts to seven hundred a
year, the housekeeper told me; and I'm sure it's seven hundred more
than he deserves, the unfeeling fellow!"

"It isn't his fault that he didn't get on with his mother," said
Katharine. "People can't choose their relations, can they? And I'm
sure, under the present system, every obstacle is put in the way of
our hitting it off with our own people."

She was almost surprised at her own vehemence in Ted's defence. She
had never seen him since the day he had called on her in Queen's
Crescent and rejected the affection she so tardily offered him, and
the smart of that rejection was still present with her, gently as he
had expressed it; but she could no more suppress her old instinct of
protection for him than she could control her thoughts.

"I find it quite impossible to understand you, when you are in these
heartless moods," said her aunt crossly.

"Am I heartless?" said Katharine, with her eyes still full of tears.
"I suppose that must be it; I wondered what was the matter with me
this afternoon. Of course I am in one of my heartless moods. Oh, dear,
how stupid it all is!" She sighed desperately, and turned away from
the dreary outlook. "I'm sorry I didn't gather any more news in my
excursion to the village," she went on presently, with an obvious
effort to be agreeable. "Oh, I forgot,--I met the doctor."

"Yes? What had he to say for himself?" asked Miss Esther, whose
dignity was always subject to her curiosity.

"He asked me to marry him, and I refused," answered Katharine; and she
broke into a peal of laughter at the immediate effect of her words.

"What? Really, Katharine, you are perfectly incorrigible," said Miss
Esther, in a tone that was expressive rather of incredulity than of
disapproval.

"It's very odd," observed Katharine, "that one has only to tell the
truth to be disbelieved. And I'm sure I was very sorry to be obliged
to refuse him, because I felt there was no one else in the place he
could possibly ask. Poor doctor!"

Miss Esther said a rapid grace to show how outraged she felt, and
walked out of the room without another word. Katharine sighed once
more and looked across at her father, who was apparently absorbed in
his book and oblivious of what had been passing. But Katharine's
acquaintance with the world, short as it had been, had considerably
widened her vision, and she knew somehow as she looked at him that he
was not reading at that moment.

"Daddy, dear daddy!" she cried, impetuously, "I couldn't help it this
afternoon, I couldn't, really! I believe I have a devil in me some
days, and this is one of them. Daddy, forgive me for being so selfish
and horrid; I hate myself for my abominable temper, I do indeed. I
think I have never been so miserable in my whole life before!"

"My child, what is it? I don't think I quite understand," said the
Rector gently. She came and sat on the arm of his chair, and he
stroked her hair mechanically.

"Of course you don't,--how should you?" she exclaimed, half laughing
to hide the shake in her voice. "But I wish I knew why I have these
bad fits; I would do just anything to get better, but _I can't_! When
I don't feel wretched I feel absurd, and that's ever so much worse.
Why is it that I feel like this, daddy?"

"Shall we send for the doctor?" asked the Rector innocently; and he
wondered why she seemed amused.

"I don't fancy he would care to come just yet," she said, demurely.
They were silent for a few moments. The Rector asked her presently if
she would like to go away again.

"I don't know; I don't seem to want anything. Ivingdon is intolerable;
but I said I would endure it for your sake, and it seems so feeble
merely to have failed again. After all, I haven't done the least atom
of good by giving up my work and coming home, have I?"

The Rector remembered many incidents in the last four months, and did
not contradict her; but his silence was so habitual to him that she
hardly noticed it.

"Self-sacrifice is all very well in theory," she went on
disconsolately, "but if nobody wants you to sacrifice yourself, what's
the good of it? I don't believe there is a single Christian virtue
that works properly, when you come to practise it; and I've wasted
four good months in finding it out. Oh, dear, what a mortal idiot I've
been! I wish you understood, daddy," she added wistfully.

"I'm not sure that I don't, Kitty," he said tentatively, and waited to
be contradicted.

"I believe you do; I believe you always have understood!" she cried.
"But I always expect too much from people, and I never can take any
one on trust. How I can be so unlike you is a mystery to me."

"You are like your dear mother, bless her," said the Rector with
unconscious humour; and they became silent again.

"Do you know," she went on presently, "if you'd promise not to mind,
daddy, I half think I'd like to go away again, for a while. I've still
got some money, you know, and I might try Paris, or some new place.
It seems hopeless to stay on here, and worry Aunt Esther by
everything I do or say; I know she considers me the cross she has to
bear, but it seems a waste of Christian resignation, doesn't it?"

"Paris?" said the Rector with animation. "By all means go to
Paris,--the most delightful place in the world! When I was a boy in
Paris-- Dear, dear, how it all comes back to me! That was before I was
ordained, to be sure; ah, those were days to be remembered! I can give
you an introduction to a friend of mine in Paris, Monsieur--Monsieur--
Ah, it's gone now. But I can tell you the names of all his books. A
charming fellow; knew everything and did everything; there was nothing
too daring for him in those days. You'll get on with him, Kitty; the
most delightful companion a man could have, in fact!" The old Rector
was laughing like a schoolboy at his reminiscences.

"That's all very well," said Katharine rather cruelly; "but what will
Aunt Esther say?"

"Ah," said the Rector, looking about him apprehensively, "there is
certainly Esther to be considered."

"Yes, there is!" sighed Katharine. And she added impetuously, "Poor
daddy! what a saint you must have been all these years! I wonder why I
never realised it before?"

"Oh, no," said the Rector, smiling. "I'm nothing but an old fool, who
was never fit to have a daughter at all. Your mother ought to have
left me to vegetate among my books, bless her heart!"

Katharine looked at him reflectively.

"I am beginning to understand," she said, in her quaint, thoughtful
manner. "It has puzzled me all these months, but you have made it come
quite clear at last. I see now what they meant by calling me a prig:
it is because I have none of the qualities that would prevent you from
ever becoming one."

"A prig?" said her father inquiringly.

"Ah," said Katharine, "it is something of too modern a growth to have
come within your ken." She slipped off her seat, and began pacing
restlessly up and down the room.

"A prig," she continued, more to herself than to her father, who was
watching her narrowly nevertheless, "a prig is one who tries to break
what the ordinary person is pleased to call the law of Nature, and to
substitute the law of his own reason instead. It doesn't matter that
this is what we are brought up to do, for the ordinary person insists
on our forgetting that we are intelligent beings, and only wants us to
run in the same rut as himself. And the ordinary person is very happy,
so perhaps he is right. Education makes us all prigs, and we have to
sit and wait for the particular experience that is to undo the effects
of our education. It is great waste of time to be educated, isn't it?
We are told that it is priggish to have ideals, and that is why being
young is generally equivalent to being priggish. The world won't
tolerate ideals; it sneers at us for trying to find out new ways of
being good, and it likes to see us for ever grubbing among the same
old ways of being bad. Did you know all this before, daddy? But you
never told me, did you? Do parents ever tell their children anything
useful, I wonder? Oh, I don't think so; we just have to go on until we
find it all out, and break our hearts over it, most likely!" She
paused to give a little bitter laugh. The Rector had an intent look on
his face that was foreign to it. "I should like to know," she went on,
more gently, "if it isn't possible to be brave, or steadfast, or true,
without being a prig; it simply means that we have got to go on trying
to be better than we are, and pretending that we don't know it all
the while. It is such an anomalous position for a thinking person,
isn't it? And yet, if we are honest about it we proclaim ourselves
prigs at once. _I_ am a prig, daddy. Did you know that too? I have
gloried all my life in being above the ordinary littlenesses of
womanhood; and then, when my hour came, I just learned that I was the
same old woman after all. I was proud of knowing so much, and all the
time I did not know what every ignorant woman in the world could have
told me. Oh, the world is right, after all; I know it! But it has such
uncomfortable ways of convincing us, hasn't it? I'm not bothering you,
daddy, am I?" She stopped, and looked at him anxiously. The Rector did
not speak. "Nothing will ever make you a prig," continued Katharine as
she resumed her restless walk, "or Ted either, or Marion Keeley.
Lovable people are never priggish, are they? Oh, I am never going to
try to be anything, again. I shall become as much like the ordinary
person as I can; I will let boys like Monty make love to me, and
pretend that I like it; I will let myself go, and hide away my old
feelings which were real ones, and invent a whole set of new ones for
everyday use. Oh, dear, how absurd it all is! To make one's life a
long course of deception, in order to prove to the world that we are
real! And yet, that is the only way to avoid being called a prig. It
is ridiculous to pretend that we care for what the big people think of
us. We don't. It is the little, commonplace, ordinary folk, with the
commonplace minds and the commonplace views, who make up our audience;
and we acknowledge it all our lives by being afraid of their
criticism. We play to them, and to them only, from the moment we begin
to think for ourselves, until Providence is good enough to ring down
the curtain. We make a wretched compromise with our real selves, in
order to get through life without being laughed at for taking it
seriously. And the end of it all is that we have to suffer our own
contempt, instead of the commonplace person's. But everybody does the
same, so it must be right, mustn't it? Daddy," she added suddenly, as
she came to a standstill before him, "daddy, do you think, if I don't
try to be good any more, that I shall ever become just an ordinary
pleasant person,--someone whom people will care to fall in love with?
It would be so comforting to feel that people cared to fall in love
with me. I am so tired of being thought clever and nothing else;
cleverness seems like a kind of blight that helps one to miss the
biggest thing in life. At least, I have missed it, and everybody says
I am clever. Why don't you answer me, daddy? Why, daddy! I--I do
believe you're crying!"

"No, my child, you are mistaken," said Cyril Austen hastily. "I have
been overworking my eyes lately, that is all. You mustn't talk like
that, little girl; it--it makes me unhappy. I should never have
allowed you to go away by yourself, should I? I'm a useless old-- But
there, it is too late now. Let us talk about this Paris plan of yours.
What if I were to come too, eh?"

"It would be beautiful!" cried Katharine. "But there is still Aunt
Esther, isn't there?"

"Ah, yes!" said the Rector ruefully. "So stupid of me to forget!"

They made themselves very happy for a day or two over the Paris plan.
They met like guilty conspirators when Miss Esther was out of the way,
and amused themselves by arranging a scheme which they knew quite well
she would never allow them to carry out. Katharine's spirits recovered
something of their old vigour; and Miss Esther felt more bewildered
than ever when she suddenly appeared in this new mood, and refused to
have anything more to do with the parish.

"I am tired of good works," she announced vigorously. "They don't
answer, and they destroy one's self-respect. Some people are cut out
for that sort of thing, but I am not, and I am going to leave it to
those who are. I am never again going to make myself uncomfortable by
visiting people in their unpleasant homes. I don't want to go, for one
thing; and it isn't good for them to be patronised, for another.
Besides, they can't refuse to see me in any case, and I don't like
forcing myself upon people in that uninvited manner. I am going to be
happy in my own way, and that will give them a much fairer chance of
being happy in theirs. I've done with the whole thing." And she
returned cheerfully to the map of Paris.

But her new-found contentment was not to be allowed a long duration. A
letter came for her a few days later, which altered the whole aspect
of affairs, and finally quenched the Paris plan. The writing was
unfamiliar to her, and she had to turn to the end of the closely
written pages to discover who had sent it to her.

"Dear Miss Austen," it ran:--

     "It may be a matter of great surprise to you to hear from me
     in this unexpected manner. Nothing but the deep interest I
     feel in one who is, I have reason to believe, as great a
     friend of yours as of mine would give me the courage to take
     up my pen and write to you. I have for some time past been
     observing Ted's career with distress, if not with the deepest
     concern. You probably know that he gave up his work in the
     city on the death of Mrs. Morton, so I will not trouble you
     with more details than necessity compels you to hear. Of
     course you will understand the diffidence with which I
     approach you on so delicate a matter; but my great friendship,
     or what I might call our _mutual_ friendship, for Ted Morton
     has given me the requisite courage. I do not know the reason
     for what I am about to break to you; in fact, to be explicit,
     I have not the slightest idea of what led him to take such a
     step, but I have my own conjectures about the matter, and
     these I will lay before you as briefly as the occasion
     demands. For some time past, indeed, I may say for months, he
     has been very depressed, and has tried to drown his trouble,
     whatever it might be, in distractions of various kinds. Do not
     for one moment suppose that I am making any insinuation
     detrimental to Ted's reputation; far from it! But there is no
     doubt that he has grown somewhat reckless in disposition,
     owing possibly to this same mysterious trouble of his, and
     this has hurried on the crisis which it is now my business to
     communicate to you. But to avoid unnecessary details, let me
     at once tell you in plain language what has happened to him.
     Three days ago I met him in the Strand about seven o'clock,
     and asked him to come and dine with me. He refused, with none
     of the punctilious courtesy that usually characterises him,
     and I left him thinking, strange as it might seem, that he
     preferred to be alone. But on going to look him up at his
     chambers last night, I found him in the condition which it has
     become my obvious duty to describe to you. Fortunately, the
     ingenuous disposition, which has made him feel his trouble
     much longer than most men, has also saved him from this last
     and worst step of all; for, in his ignorance, he took too
     large a dose of laudanum, and the effect has mercifully been
     injurious instead of fatal. He is now--"

Katharine read no more. Nothing further could be of importance after
she had learnt so much. Ted had tried to destroy himself, and it was
on her account.

"Whatever is the matter, Katharine? I have asked you the same question
three times," Miss Esther was saying crossly. Katharine stared at her
in reply, with large, terrified eyes. Her aunt repeated her question,
and tried to possess herself of the letter. Katharine came to herself
with a start, and snatched it back again, and thrust it into her
father's hand.

"Read it, daddy," she tried to say, but no sound came; she seemed
possessed of a great horror that robbed her of every faculty. The
Rector smoothed out the letter silently, glanced at the florid
signature, "Barrington Montague," and began to read it without waiting
to put on his glasses. Miss Esther looked from one to the other, and
was divided between her curiosity and her annoyance.

"Really, Katharine, you are quite devoid of manners. Am I not to have
the right to ask a simple question in my own house? Who is the letter
from, and what is it all about?"

Dorcas lingered by the door as long as she dared, under pretence of
being wanted; but Miss Esther, who never relaxed her vigilance even in
a crisis, detected the subterfuge and ordered her sharply out of the
room. The accustomed tone of reproof helped Katharine to recover
herself. She drew a deep breath, and made an effort to speak.

"Ted is dying," she said. "They are afraid to tell me, but I know it
is so. And it is I who have killed him, _I_! I am going to him at
once."

The Rector was blinking his eyes as he finished reading the letter.
Miss Esther held out her hand again.

"I insist upon your giving me that letter, Cyril," she said in her
discordant voice. Katharine struck down her hand fiercely. Her
numbness was giving way to a kind of passionate frenzy.

"Leave it alone, Aunt Esther!" she cried vehemently. "It is no
business of yours; you don't understand; nobody understands. I have
made Ted take his life. I am going to him _now_."

The last sentence was the only one that reached Miss Esther's
comprehension; she at once took up her usual attitude of disapproval.

"Indeed, Katharine, you will do nothing of the kind," she exclaimed
querulously. "What are we coming to next, I wonder? I sincerely trust,
Cyril, that you will point out to your daughter that it is quite
impossible for her to visit a young man in his chambers. I really wish
that tiresome young Edward would emigrate, or marry, or do something
that would put him out of the way. What has he been doing now, I
wonder?"

Katharine paid no heed; her eyes were fixed feverishly on her father's
face.

"Ted is ill, and he wants me. You will let me go, daddy, won't you?"
she said imploringly.

"I beg you to assert your authority, Cyril, by forbidding such a mad
piece of folly," cried the shrill tones of Miss Esther. Katharine
turned upon her furiously.

"_You_, what can _you_ know about it? You have never known what it is
to want to protect some one; you don't know the awful emptiness of
having no one to care for. Daddy! you understand, don't you? I may go,
mayn't I?"

The Rector glanced from one to the other. He had not put on his
glasses, but he did not seem to want them just then. Slowly the
tyranny of twenty years was losing its terrors for him; he even forgot
to laugh nervously as the two women stood awaiting his answer; and
although there was a smile on his face as he looked at them, it had
only been called there by a reflection on his folly in the past. He
marvelled at himself, as his eyes rested on the glowing features of
his daughter, for ever having hesitated to support her.

"The child is in the right, Esther," he said, mildly. "I--I am fond of
the dear boy myself, and he must not be left in the hour of his need.
We will go together, eh, Kitty?"

Miss Esther stared at him dumbly. She had never heard him speak like
that before. After all, nothing is so convincing as the sudden
assumption of power by the oppressed; and few things are more
complete than the humiliation of the oppressor.

"Let me see," continued the Rector: "we cannot catch anything before
the 1.28. That will give us time for an early lunch, if you will
kindly see to it, Esther. Kitty, my child, do not fret over the boy;
we will soon put him to rights, eh?"

Katharine remained immovable, with Monty's letter crunched in her
hand. "Ted has tried to kill himself--for _me_," were the words that
ran remorselessly in her mind.

Cyril Austen walked out of the room with a firm step. Miss Esther
rattled her keys, muttered something to herself, and followed him
almost immediately.

She was dethroned at last.




CHAPTER XVIII


The landlady had gone out of the room and closed the door. Katharine
stepped softly to the side of the bed, and looked at the sleeping
face. It was just the same as she had always known it, rounded and
beardless, without a line or a wrinkle, and with the hair as loose and
rumpled as it had been in the days before manhood had claimed its
submission. "Dear old Ted," she murmured to herself with a half smile,
"I don't believe he _could_ look ill, however much he tried." She
stole about the room, putting flowers in the vases, and lightening
some of its London dinginess, until the sound of her name brought her
back again to the bedside.

"Dear old man, don't look so scared," she laughed. "We heard you were
ill, and we came up to look after you, daddy and I. Daddy is still
downstairs; he discovered an old print in the hall, and he hasn't got
any further yet. There are a lot of old prints in the hall, so I
suppose it will be ever so long before he does get any further. Isn't
it like daddy?"

She smoothed his hair gently, and he laughed contentedly in reply. He
did not seem at all surprised to see her; Kitty always had turned up,
all his life, when he had got himself into a scrape; and it did not
occur to him at the moment that she was more or less answerable for
his present scrape.

"Just see how hit up I am!" he said. "So poor, isn't it?"

Her face clouded.

"Oh, Ted, how could you do it? Ought I to have stayed in London and
looked after you?" she said reproachfully; and he saw that it was
useless to try to conceal anything from her.

"It's all right, Kit," he hastened to explain in his humble manner.
"Don't swear, old chum! I couldn't help it, on my honour I couldn't. I
got so sick, and I just had to. And after all I played so poorly, you
see, that it didn't come off."

Except for the subject of their conversation, they might have been
back again in the lanes at Ivingdon. They had dropped naturally into
their old boy and girl attitude, and hers was as before the stronger
personality. But there was a subtle difference in their relations
which she was the first to feel.

"I--I am glad it didn't come off, Ted," she said, trying to speak
lightly. Ted gripped her hand for a moment, and then let it go again,
as though he were half ashamed of his momentary show of sentiment.

"You see," he went on, in a very gruff voice, "that was the only part
I left to Providence, and Providence muffed it. I'm such a rotten
ass,-- I always was, don't you know? If it had been you, now, you
wouldn't have bungled it at all, would you?"

"Providence never has any sense of humour," said Katharine; and she
got up hurriedly, so that he should not see her face. She poured out
some medicine, and brought it to him.

"I say, it's awfully ripping to have you to look after me like this,"
he observed. "What did Miss Esther say?"

"She seemed upset," said Katharine, smiling slightly. "But you can
always square Aunt Esther, when it's a question of illness; there are
such a lot of texts in the Bible about illness, don't you know? By the
way, when did you last have something to eat?"

Ted had no idea, beyond a vague notion that some one had brought him
something on a tray in the morning, which he had not looked at. So
she left him to interview the landlady, whom she found in the middle
of a long history of the print in the hall and of the part it had
played in the history of her own family as well, to which the Rector
was listening patiently though with obvious inattention. Katharine
managed to procure what she wanted, and returned with it to the sick
room. The invalid was looking more flourishing than ever.

"You see," he explained, between the spoonfuls with which she fed him,
"he's such an awfully snide doctor. He won't let me get up, and of
course, I'm as right as rain, really. So cheap of him, isn't it?"

In spite of his assertion, however, he was very glad to play the
invalid when she brought him some warm water, and proceeded to bathe
his hands and face. It was pleasant, after the desolation of his life
for the past six months, to lie back in a lazy attitude without
feeling particularly ill, and allow the girl he liked best in the
world to do things for him.

"It's so rum," he remarked, "that our hands never wear out with being
washed so often. I can't think why they don't want soling and heeling
after a time, like boots."

"I think you are right, and that your doctor _is_ rather 'snide,'" was
all Katharine said, as she carried away the basin, and looked for his
hair brushes. Ted's toilet table was characterised by a luxurious
confusion, and she lingered for a moment to arrange the silver-topped
bottles in some kind of order. "You never used to care for this sort
of thing," she remarked, holding up a bottle of _eau de toilette_; "I
remember how you teased me once, when I told you I put lavender water
in my cold bath."

"Oh, well, of course it's beastly rot and all that," owned Ted; "but
it's the thing to do, and one must, don't you know? Hullo, what are
you playing at now?"

"I wish you would not be quite so languid," retorted Katharine. "How
am I to brush your hair if you persist in behaving as though you were
dying? I believe you are putting it on."

"It's not my fault if I'm not so beastly energetic as you," grumbled
Ted. "Don't play about any more, Kit; come over here and talk. And you
needn't fold up those towels; they're not used to it, really."

"I shouldn't think they were, from the look of them. Well, what have I
got to talk about?"

She came and sat down on the chair by his side, and he shifted his
position so that he could see her face. She could have laughed aloud
at his expression of utter contentment.

"Oh, some rot; anything you like. You've always got lots to gas about,
haven't you? How is Ivingdon, and the Grange; and does Peter Bunce
still come in on Sunday afternoons; and has the doctor got any new
dogs? Fire ahead, Kit! you've been down there doing nothing all this
time, and you must know all there is to know, unless you're as half
alive as you used to be. Hasn't anything happened to the old place?"

"Yes," said Katharine, smiling back at him frankly. "They have mended
the gap in the hedge."

"The devil they have!" cried Ted. "We'll have it broken open again at
once, won't we? Why didn't you stop them? You knew I wasn't there to
tell them myself. Just like their confounded impertinence!"

"Hush," interrupted Katharine. "You mustn't get excited, old man; it
isn't good for you."

She smoothed his pillows and arranged his coverlet with nervous
rapidity, and Ted, submitting happily to her services, wondered
innocently what she was blushing about. But he did not trouble
himself to find out.

"I am beastly glad I poisoned myself," he murmured, with lazy
satisfaction.

She was glad of the diversion when the Rector arrived at last, and she
was allowed to escape into the next room.

"Well, my boy, and how has the world gone with you?" she heard her
father say in his genial tones.

"It's a beastly jolly world, and I'm the jolliest brute in it," was
Ted's reply.

They took rooms in the next street, and came in every day to look
after him; and when neither the conscience of the "snide" doctor, nor
the desire of the invalid to be nursed proved sufficient to preserve
the farce of his illness any longer, they still lingered on under
pretence of being wanted, and sent carefully worded letters to Miss
Esther from which she was forced to conclude that their presence in
town was urgently required, much as they would have wished it
otherwise. What really happened was, that Ted and Katharine regularly
conducted the old Rector to the British Museum every morning, and
passed the day alone together until it was time to fetch him away
again in the afternoon. And in the evenings they initiated him into
the joys of a music hall, or introduced him to a new comedian; and the
Rector was happier than he had ever been since the well-remembered
days in Paris. As for Katharine, her feelings defied her own powers of
description; she only knew that she had the sensation of waking up
from a long, bad dream. Perhaps Ted felt the same. "You've cured the
biggest hump I ever had in my life," was the way he expressed it.

Looking back on the even tenor of those few weeks, afterwards,
Katharine was at a loss to remember what she had talked about to Ted
in the many hours they had spent together. Perhaps they had not talked
at all; at the time it never seemed to matter whether they did or not;
at all events, their conversation usually lacked the personal element
that alone makes conversation distinctive. There was nothing
surprising to Katharine in this: as long as she could remember Ted had
been the one person in the world to whom it was impossible to talk
about one's self; and his sympathy for her was as completely
superficial as her love for him was mainly protective.

Once or twice she was led inadvertently into making a confidant of
him.

"I wonder why I never seem to feel things acutely now," she said to
him one day as they were strolling along the Embankment. "I don't seem
to care a bit what happens next, except that I have a sort of
conviction it is going to be pleasant. I seem to want waking up again.
Do you know what I mean, Ted?"

"Oh, it's nothing; you're feeling played, that's all," answered Ted,
reassuringly. "My experience is that you're either played, or you're
not played; and when you are, you'd better have a drink to buck you
up. We'll have a cab, and lunch somewhere. Where shall we go to-day?"

And Katharine laughed at his practical view of things, and wondered
why she had expected him to understand. Another time, it was Ted
himself who gave the conversation a personal turn.

"Humps are deuced odd things," he observed, rather suddenly. It was a
dull, warm afternoon in December, and they had been sitting idly for
some minutes on one of the benches in the park, overlooking the
Serpentine. "You feel that everything is awfully decent, and bills be
hanged, and all that; and you curse your tailor and have a good time,
and it doesn't matter if it snows. And then, when it's rather a bore
to be under an obligation to a rotten little tradesman, or you want a
new coat or something, and you pay up and feel awfully virtuous and
don't owe a blessed halfpenny in the world, except for shirts and
things that never expect to be paid for,--_then_, you go and get the
very deuce of a hump."

"Whole books might be written on the psychological aspect of the
hump," murmured Katharine.

"Look at those bounders, now," said Ted, who had not heard her. "It
doesn't matter to _them_ that rowing on the Serpentine on Saturday
afternoon isn't the thing to do, especially in frock coats and
bowlers. It makes one quite sorry for them, to see how little they
know; they don't even know they are bounders, poor devils! But _they_
never get the hump, confound them!"

"All the same," said Katharine, "it is a big price to pay for an
immunity from humps, isn't it?"

"Life must be awfully easy, if you're a bounder," continued Ted. "You
haven't got to be in good form, and you can walk about with any sort
of girl you please, and you needn't worry about the shape of your
hat, and it doesn't matter if you are seen on a green Brixton 'bus. It
saves so much thinking, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Katharine. "But you have to be a bounder all the same, and
you know you can't even contemplate such a possibility, or
impossibility, without shuddering. By the way, is all this intended to
convey that you have got the hump this afternoon?"

"Oh, no," said Ted, with restored cheerfulness. "I ought never to have
been born, of course; but that's quite another matter."

Late that evening the Rector proposed returning to Ivingdon. They had
just been to the theatre, and Ted had asked them in to supper
afterwards. Every trace of his mood of that afternoon had disappeared,
and he was wrangling with Katharine over the strength of the Rector's
toddy with all the energy of which his languid nature was capable.
Katharine put down the tumbler she was holding and looked swiftly
round at her father.

"Oh, daddy, not yet!" she cried impetuously. "I am happy now; don't
let us spoil it all by going home. I feel as though something horrible
would happen if we went home now. Can't we wait a little longer? I
have never been happy like this before."

The Rector murmured something about its being three weeks to
Christmas, but his sense of duty was obviously a perfunctory one, and
he soon found he was not being listened to. And Ted's hand closed over
her fingers as he took the hot glass from her, and his face shone with
pleasure and his voice trembled, as he whispered, "Thank you for that,
dear."

She did not shrink from him as she had done once before when he had
looked at her with that same eager expression in his eyes.

"I don't know a bit whether I love him in the real way," she told her
mirror that night. "I don't know anything about myself at all. I
believe the prig is inborn in me, after all, and that it would suit me
far better to fight for a living in the world, than to stay at home
and just make Ted happy. But all the same, if he asks me again I shall
marry him. It has been so peaceful lately, and I have felt so happy,
and marriage with Ted will mean peace if it doesn't mean anything more
thrilling than that. Dear old Ted; why isn't he my brother, or my son,
or some one I could just mother, and go on living my own life the
while? Ah, well, he is going to be my husband; how strange it sounds!
I wonder if women like me are ever allowed to be happy in their own
way, gloriously and completely happy as I know I could be? But I
suppose it is only the prig in me that thinks so. And Ted shall never
know that I want more than he can possibly give me. Oh, Ted, old chum,
I do love you so for loving me!"

A visit to Queen's Crescent slightly unsettled her. She took her
father with her and introduced him to Phyllis Hyam, and tried to
convince herself that she was glad she was not coming back any more;
but in spite of the unfamiliarity of being there as a visitor, and the
difficulty of finding topics of conversation for the Rector and Miss
Jennings, who obviously misunderstood each other's attempts to be
friendly, the sight of the dingy little hall and of Phyllis's round,
good-humoured face, brought enough reminiscences to her mind to make
her a little regretful as well.

"Do you still have bread and treacle, and is Polly Newland glad I have
gone, and does any one ever talk about me?" she asked with interest.
Even Phyllis looked strange, as though her best dress had been thrown
on hurriedly and the distinction of being admitted to "Jenny's" room
were rather too much for her; but there was a familiarity about her
style of conversation that was consoling.

"Oh, yes," she replied in her off-hand way; "when we have a new one
put into our room we always remember how blue you looked the first
night you came. We haven't had a 'permanent' in our room since you
left; and there have been some cheerful specimens, too! One was a
nurse, who made the place smell eternally of disinfectants; and
another kept bits of food in her drawer, and encouraged mice; and a
third insisted on having the window shut. The curtains haven't been
washed, either, since you made that row about them. I say, when are
you coming back again?"

"You don't offer much inducement," laughed Katharine. "But I am not
coming back, in any case."

"Going to get married?" asked Phyllis sharply. Katharine smiled, and
did not contradict her. It was not an insinuation that one would be
anxious to contradict in a place like Queen's Crescent, however
diffident one might feel about it elsewhere. Phyllis shrugged her
shoulders. "Well, don't go and make a hash of it," she said. "You're
not the sort to be happy with any one, especially if it's made too
easy for you. Well off? Of course; and worships the ground you tread
on, I suppose! Oh, well, it's none of my business, and I only hope you
haven't made a mistake. It's a risky thing at the best; and you were
very happy here most of the time, and you've got to better that, you
know. I wish you luck, I'm sure, but it takes a woman to understand
any one like you, and I should like to see the man who thinks he does
it as well."

"I hope you will some day," said Katharine, politely. But Phyllis did
not respond with any warmth, and Katharine was glad to return to the
masculine indifference of Ted. It was difficult to worry about the
future in Ted's company; even the fact that he had not yet formally
proposed to her did not seem to cause him any anxiety. It certainly
made no difference in the freedom of their intercourse; and, as long
as there was no immediate necessity for action, Ted was not the one to
take the initiative. "I believe I shall have to propose to him
myself," was the thought that sometimes crossed her mind as she
studied his placid, good-looking face. But after her visit to Queen's
Crescent, she began to wish he would not be quite so casual about it;
for, without allowing even to herself that Phyllis's want of
encouragement had in any way affected her decision, she had a
lingering feeling that the present state of things could not go on for
ever, and that it would be better for her, at all events, to have the
matter definitely settled. So she made a kind of attempt, a day or two
later, to rouse his apprehensions.

"Phyllis was wondering if I was ever coming back again to my work,"
she said to him abruptly.

"Oh, was she? Rather a nice girl, Phyllis, if she didn't dress so
badly," observed Ted unconsciously. They were at a Wagner concert in
the Queen's Hall, and the Siegfried Idyll had just drawn to a close.
It seemed to her an auspicious moment.

"I said I was never coming back," pursued Katharine, studying his
profile critically.

"Of course not," said Ted, humming the refrain they had just heard.

For once, Katharine felt faintly annoyed with him for his want of
proper sentiment.

"I don't believe you care whether I do or not," she said in a piqued
tone.

"Eh, what?" said Ted, staring round at her in blank amazement. "Ought
I to have said anything else? But you settled that long ago, Kit,
didn't you? There is nothing more to be said about it, is there?"

"Oh, no, of course not," said Katharine, in what seemed to him a most
unreasonable manner; "but all the same, I'm not at all sure that I
sha'n't go back when the term begins again."

Ted stared more than ever.

"Oh, rats!" he exclaimed, heartily. "What's wrong, Kitty? Have you
been hit up to-day, or anything? I'm such a rotten ass, I never know.
Of course you're never going to grind any more; what an idea!"

"Why not?" asked Katharine, with uncomfortable persistence. Ted began
to make fresh assertions, but paused in the middle and hesitated. He
suddenly realised that there was only one answer to her question, and
that he would have to make it now. He looked down and made havoc with
his programme, and stammered hopelessly until Katharine took pity on
him and came to his assistance with a laugh.

"It's all right, old man; I am never going back, of course," she said;
and Ted brightened up again when he found that he need not propose to
her yet, and was obviously relieved at the establishment of their old
relations. She did nothing more to change them, and the only result of
her abortive attempt was, that Ted was more attentive to her than
before, and constantly made little plans for taking her to some
unfrequented museum or picture gallery, evidently with some design in
his mind which he had not the courage to carry out.

"Poor old Ted," she thought to herself, after they had spent a dull
and silent afternoon at the Royal Institute among the colonial
produce; "I wonder if he will ever get it out!"

Curiously enough, through all the weeks she spent in town, the thought
of Paul Wilton rarely crossed her mind; and when it did she felt that
it referred to some former life of hers, with which this present calm
existence had no connection. Sometimes she wondered idly whether he
were married yet, and if so, whether he ever gave a thought to her;
but she could think of Marion as his wife without a regret, and she
was glad to find that she had no desire whatever to see him again. The
impression he seemed to have left in her mind, after all these months,
was that of a disturbing element which had brought the greatest
unhappiness into her life she had ever been forced to endure. It was
inconsequent, perhaps, that, thinking thus, she should have been
emphatic in her refusal to go and see the Keeleys; but although she
was incapable of explaining why she felt so strongly about such a
small matter, she was at least genuine in her belief that he had no
further place in her thoughts.

And then, two days before they left town, she met him at last.

It was in Bury Street, late on a foggy afternoon, as she was on her
way to the Museum with Ted. She had stopped with an exclamation of
delight in front of an old book shop, and the owner, who was talking
to an intending purchaser inside, came out good-naturedly and offered
to light the gas jet over the tray of dusty volumes. "I shall have to
stop now," whispered Katharine; "supposing you go on for daddy and
bring him back here?"

The light flared up, and made a bright semicircle in the gloom that
was fast closing up round the shop. The customer who was inside
concluded his purchase, and came out just as Ted was strolling off.
Apparently they did not see each other, and the fog soon swallowed up
the retreating form; but Katharine turned round at this moment from
the book she was examining, and met the stranger face to face.

"Ah," he said, quietly; "at last!"

"Yes," she repeated; "at last!"

It did not strike her until afterwards that it was not at all the mode
of address with which she would have greeted him had she been more
prepared; but at the time it came quite naturally to her lips. He
still held her hand as he went on speaking.

"And Ted? Where have you sent him? Will he be long?"

She resented the implication in his words.

"I have not sent him anywhere. He has gone to fetch my father from the
Museum; they will be back directly. Do you mean to say you recognised
Ted in that instant?"

"Why, surely! Did you not recognise me, although I was standing back
there in the shadow?"

"Of course I didn't," cried Katharine hotly, as she pulled away her
hand. "I never saw you until you came out into the light. I should
have stopped Ted if I had."

"Oh, to be sure; pardon my mistake. Of course you would have detained
Ted in that case." And he smiled as though he were faintly amused at
something.

She had noticed his glad look of recognition, and she hated him for
it. What right had he to be glad to see her? And now that he was
laughing at her and making insinuations about Ted, true insinuations
moreover, she hated him still more for his acuteness.

"So you are back in town?" he was saying, with what appeared to be
meant for a kindly interest. "I am not surprised, though. I always
knew you would have to come back."

"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling more annoyed than ever. It was
so like him to know everything about her without being told, and then
to put a complexion upon it that he gave her no opportunity of
contradicting. "We came up, daddy and I, because Ted was ill; and we
are going back again on Wednesday."

"Really? My mistake again. It is difficult to imagine Ted except in
the complete enjoyment of his health. Not seriously ill, I hope?"

"Oh, no," she said, with an uncomfortable conviction that she was
being made to expose herself in all her weakness; "but there was no
one to nurse him, so I came. He is all right now."

"So I should judge from the brief glimpse I had of him just now. Lucky
fellow, Ted! He looked very jolly, I thought; no doubt he has good
cause for his happiness. You are looking well too, if I may say so. It
is very delightful to be young, is it not?"

She felt a wild rage against him for detecting the situation so
absolutely, and for making it merely a subject for his raillery. She
did not know how she would have wished him to take it, but she hated
him all the same for so calmly accepting it.

"I don't understand you," she said, speaking rapidly. "It isn't a bit
delightful; you know it isn't. You know I hate you; you know I am the
most miserable person in the whole world. You know everything there is
to know about me; and I hate you! Why did you come back to spoil it
all, when I was trying so hard to be happy?"

Her own words amazed her. She knew they were true as she spoke them;
but she had not known it ten minutes ago.

"I'm sorry," he said, gravely. "Shall I go?"

He had completely dropped his jesting tone, but she hated him for his
pity even more than she had hated him for his ridicule; she tried to
speak, but her anger choked her utterance.

"When will you be at Ivingdon again?" he asked. "Did you say
Wednesday? And you are going to leave Ted in town?"

She asked herself why he did not go, instead of standing there and
making conversation by inventing questions to which he could not
possibly want to know the answers. But she mechanically made a
gesture in the affirmative to both of them; and he repeated his former
inquiry with gentle insistence.

"Shall I go now?"

"Yes, go!" she cried fiercely, and ignored the hand he proffered her,
and let him go without another word.

The fog swallowed him up, and she stood and gazed at the place where
he had stood, and wondered vaguely if he had been there at all or if
she had not dreamt the whole incident. For one moment the wild impulse
seized her to rush after him into the fog and the darkness, and to
implore him to take her with him anywhere, so long as she might be
with him. And then a smile flickered across her face as the bookseller
came out and spoke to her; and she paid for the first volume she
picked up; and the Rector and Ted emerged from the fog into the
semicircle of light, and life resumed its ordinary aspect again.

"Has he gone?" asked Ted.

"Who? Mr. Wilton? I did not know you saw him. Oh, yes; he went some
time ago. Isn't this a jolly little thing I have picked up?" said
Katharine lightly; and Ted apparently thought no more about it.

That evening she was almost feverishly gay. The Rector sat and smiled
happily as she turned everything that occurred into ridicule, and made
every passer-by a subject for her wit. They did not go to a theatre,
on account of the bad weather; and when Monty dropped in to coffee
later on, she kept him in a perpetual condition of adoring approval
until the fact of Ted's gloomy silence was gradually forced upon her,
and she blamed herself hotly for her stupidity. She was very cool to
Monty after she had realised her blunder; and the poor fellow, who was
quite ignorant of his offence, took the first opportunity to depart.
Even then, in spite of her efforts to be kind to him, Ted did not
wholly recover his spirits; and she sighed inwardly as she reflected
that she could not even be sure of accomplishing the one task she had
set herself to perform.

And the next day her old restlessness possessed her again. All the
work of the past six weeks seemed to have been suddenly undone;
nothing brought her any happiness, she reflected bitterly; she was
incapable of happiness and it was absurd of her to have expected to
find it. All the same, perhaps if Ted were to say something to
her--but Ted still said nothing, and went about making plans for her
enjoyment on this her last day in town, as though their coming
separation were of no matter at all; and he seemed as unconscious of
her change of mood as he had been all along of her unusual
contentment. The day was not a success; their little improvised
amusements had been far more satisfactory than the carefully planned
ones of to-day, and Ted's silence on the one subject of interest grew
more marked as the time wore on, and ended in raising an uncomfortable
barrier between them. Once she felt sure that he would have spoken if
the Rector had not come in unexpectedly; and once, he startled her by
suddenly taking both her hands in his and looking into her eyes for a
full minute, while she waited passively for him to speak. But he
turned very red instead, and called himself a fool and hurried out of
the room, and left her half amused and half regretful. She felt very
tender towards him after that; and the old desire to mother him was
very strong within her when they stood together at last on the
platform at Euston, and had only a few moments left in which to say
what was in their minds.

"God bless you, dear! I shall see you again soon?" was all she could
bring herself to say in that last moment.

"No--yes--perhaps. I am going to write to you quite soon. I'm a rotten
ass, as you know, but--you will try and understand, won't you, Kitty?"

The train went on, and she leaned out of the window and laughed.

"I am sure I shall understand," she said.




CHAPTER XIX


She waited in vain during the next two days for Ted's letter. His
parting words to her, however, seemed to have again restored her peace
of mind; and the virtuous mood in which she returned to Ivingdon was
so unprecedented as to rouse surprise rather than the admiration it
deserved. The climax was reached when Miss Esther insisted on giving
her a tonic.

"It is very ridiculous," she remonstrated, "that one is never allowed
to drop one's characteristic attitude for a moment. If I had come home
and behaved as childishly as I usually do, you would have been quite
satisfied; but just because I am inclined to be civilised for a
change, you choose to resent it. One would think you had taken out a
patent for all the virtues."

"My dear, that is doubtless very clever, but I wish you would drink up
this and not keep me standing," returned her aunt, who was, as ever,
occupied with actions and not with theories about them; and Katharine
had to seek consolation for her temporary discomfort in the absurdity
of the situation.

She wondered slightly why Ted had not written to her at once, but
after the vacillation he had already shown she was not unprepared for
a further delay; it was more than likely that he found the
complexities of writing what he could not speak to be greater than he
supposed, and it amused her to conjecture that he would probably end
in coming to her for the help he had learnt to expect from her in all
the crises of his life. Meanwhile, there was a whole lifetime before
them in which they could work out the effects of their action, and in
her present mood she saw no satisfactory reason for hurrying it; she
did not realise how persistently she was recalling every instance of
Ted's kindness to her, as if to strengthen her resolution, and she was
unconscious of the doggedness with which she avoided dwelling on a
certain episode in the London visit which she had never even mentioned
to her father. She had cheated herself, by degrees, into a complacency
that she mistook for resignation.

At last, by the mid-day post on Saturday morning, she received her
letter. It came with another one, written in a hand that brought
association without distinct recollection to her mind; and she opened
the latter first, principally because it was the one that interested
her least. The first page revealed its identity; it was from Mrs.
Downing, and was characteristically full of underlined words and
barely legible interpolations, and she was obliged to read it through
twice before she was able to grasp its meaning. The drift of it was
that the enterprising lady principal was about to open a branch of her
school in Paris, where everything was to be French, "_quite_ French,
you know, my dear Miss Austen,--staff, conversation, cooking, games,
_everything_; a place to which I can send on the dear children from
here when they want finishing. The French are such _delicious_ people,
are they not? _So_ unique, and _so_ French!" The morals, however, were
to be English; so, in spite of the unique French element in the French
character, there was to be an English head to the establishment, and
it was this position that she proceeded in a maze of extravagant
compliments to offer to her former junior mistress. "Not a duenna, of
_course_, for that will be supplied in the person of the excellent
Miss Smithson, who will act nominally as housekeeper, and make an
_exquisite_ background to the whole. There are always some of those
dear foolish mammas who will insist on placing propriety before
education,--so benighted, is it not? But Miss Smithson was intended by
Nature, I am sure, to propitiate that kind of mamma; while _you_, my
dear Miss Austen, I intend to be something more than a background. I
look to you to give a _tone_ to the school, to manage the working of
it all,--the amusements, the lectures, indeed, the whole _régime_; to
be responsible for the dear children's happiness, and to see that they
write happy letters home every week,--to take _my_ place, in fact. I
could tell you _all_ in two minutes, etc., etc."

Katharine laid down the letter with an involuntary sigh; the position
it offered was full of attractions to her, and the salary would have
been more than she had ever hoped to demand. "I wish she had asked me
six weeks ago," she said aloud, and then accused herself fiercely of
disloyalty and picked up Ted's letter, and studied the boyish
handwriting on the envelope as though to give herself courage to open
it. She had wanted to be alone with his letter, and had carefully
watched her father out of the house before shutting herself into the
study; so the sound of a footstep on the gravel path outside brought a
frown to her face, and she remained purposely with her back to the
window so that the intruder, whoever he was, should see that she did
not mean to be disturbed. But the voice in which she heard her name
spoken through the open window arrested her attention.

She dropped the unopened letter on the table, and turned slowly round
to face the speaker. The strangeness of his coming, when she had been
obstinately putting him out of her thoughts since last Monday, had a
paralysing effect upon her nerves; and Paul swung himself over the low
window seat, and reached her side in time to save her from falling.
She recovered herself immediately, however, and shrank back from his
touch.

"I do not understand why you are here," she found herself saying with
difficulty.

"That is what I have come to explain," he replied. "I could hardly
expect you to understand."

His tone was curiously gentle. It struck her, as she looked at him
again, that he was very much altered. She had not noticed his
appearance much as he stood outside the book shop, with the dark fog
at his back; but now, as the light from the window behind fell full
on his head she saw the fresh streaks of white in the black hair, and
the sight affected her strangely. Perhaps, while she in her arrogance
had believed him to be living in an ill-gotten contentment, he, too,
had had something to suffer.

"Won't you sit down?" she said, and took a chair herself, and waited
for him to begin. The one idea in her mind was that he should not
suspect her of nervousness.

"You were kind enough, when we last met in the summer," began Paul,
"to congratulate me on my engagement to your cousin. I am going to ask
you to extend your kindness now, and to congratulate us both on being
released from that engagement."

Katharine looked wonderingly at him. But there was nothing to be
gathered from his face. She smiled rather sadly.

"Poor Marion!" she said, softly. "Isn't anybody to be allowed to
remain happy?"

"You mistake me," he corrected her carefully. "Your cousin took the
initiative in the matter; she is obviously the one to be
congratulated."

"And you?"

"I? Oh, I suppose I have only my own ignorance to blame. If I had had
more knowledge of women, I should have known better what was expected
of me. As it is, my engagement has proved a complete failure."

There was a pause, till Katharine roused herself to speak in a
lifeless kind of voice that did not seem to belong to her.

"I am sorry if it has made you unhappy," she said. Paul looked at her
critically.

"Are you sure?" he asked, smiling.

Katharine folded and unfolded her hands uneasily, and wished he would
go away and remove his disquieting presence from her life for ever.

"Oh, yes," she said. "One is always sorry when people are unhappy, of
course."

"Only that?" His voice had a touch of disappointment in it, and she
began to tremble for her composure. He got up and walked to the window
and looked across the lawn, where the wintry sun was struggling
through the bare branches of the elm trees and making faint intricate
patterns on the whitened grass below. "This is where I first met you,
three years ago," he went on as though he were talking to himself.
"You were only a child then, and you interested me. I used to wonder
what there was about you that interested me so much, a mere child like
you! You were very sweet to me in those days, Katharine."

"I--I wish you wouldn't," said Katharine. But he did not seem to hear
her.

"Most men would have behaved differently, I suppose," he went on,
still looking away from her. "It is very fatal to admit the
possibility, even to ourselves, of making a new system for an effete
civilisation like ours; and I was a fool to suppose that women could
be dealt with by any but the obvious methods. It is my own fault, of
course, that in my anxiety to keep your respect I managed to destroy
your affection."

She wanted to vindicate herself, to protest against what seemed to her
his confident self-righteousness; but the old influence was creeping
over her again, and it numbed her.

"I wish you would not say those things," she said, weakly. The
unopened letter lying on the red table-cloth seemed like a protest
against the futility of the scene that was passing, and she found
herself controlling a desire to laugh at the mockery of it all.

He turned round again with a half-suppressed sigh, and took out his
watch.

"Just twelve," he said, reflectively. "I must be off if I mean to
walk to the station. You will forgive me for having worried you with
all this? I had a sort of feeling that I should like to tell you about
it myself; our old friendship seemed to demand that little amount of
frankness, though I suppose you will think I have no right to talk
about friendship any longer. I acknowledge that I have given you every
reason to be vexed with me; if I can ever do anything to remove the
disagreeable impression from your mind, I hope you will let me know.
Good-bye."

"You--you are not going?" She had risen too, and was standing between
him and the door. She did not know why she wished to keep him, but she
knew she could not let him go.

"Unless you can show me a satisfactory reason for remaining," was his
reply. She was trembling violently from head to foot.

"I cannot bear that you should leave me like this," she said in a low
voice.

"It rests with you to say whether I am to go or not," said Paul in the
same tone. She was looking straight into his eyes; but what she saw,
for all that, was the unopened letter on the red table-cloth. She put
out her hands as if to push him away from her, but he mistook her
movement and grasped them both in his own.

"Don't, oh, don't!" she cried, struggling feebly to release herself.
"I want you to go away, please. I thought it was all over and that I
should never see you again, and I was beginning to feel happy, just a
little happy; and now you have come back, and you want it to begin all
over again, and I can't let it,--I am not strong enough! Oh, won't you
go, please?"

"If you send me, I will go," said Paul, and waited for her answer. But
none came, and he laughed out triumphantly. She had never heard him
laugh so thoroughly before.

"I knew you couldn't, you proud little person," he said, with a sudden
tenderness in his smile. "The woman in you is so strong, is it not,
Katharine? Ah, I know far more about you than you know yourself; but
you don't believe that, do you? Shall I tell you why I came to you
to-day? It was just to say to you that I could not live without you
any longer. Isn't that strange? I have been brutally frank with you
to-day, Katharine, there is not another woman in the world who would
have taken it as you have done. I knew you would, before I came to
you; and the knowledge gives me courage to tell you one thing more.
You know the failure of my attempt to marry for ambition; will you, in
your sweetness, help me to marry for love?"

He dropped her hands and moved away from her. The delicacy of his
action, slight though it was, appealed to her strongly. She turned her
back to the table to avoid seeing the white letter on the red
table-cloth.

"I cannot marry you," she said, hurriedly. "I would have been your
slave a few months ago, but I cannot be your wife now."

Except for a tightening of his lips, he did not move a feature.

"That is not true; I cannot believe it," he said shortly.

"Why not?" she asked in a tired voice. She hoped he would not guess
how near she was to submission.

"Because it is not possible. You are not the kind of woman who
changes. You must love me now, because you loved me then. You cannot
deny that you loved me then?"

"No," said Katharine, "I cannot deny it."

"Then why do you pretend that you do not love me still? I do not
believe it is because of my engagement to your cousin. You are made of
finer clay than others, and--"

"Oh, no; that is not the reason," she said, interrupting him
impatiently.

"Will you not tell me why it is?" he asked, approaching her again.
There was no mistaking the tenderness in his tone now, and she cast
about in her mind for some excuse to dismiss him before she completely
lost her power of resistance. "Have I made you so angry that you will
never forgive me?"

"No, no; you never made me angry," she protested. "But you made me
feel absurd, and that is ever so much worse. I cannot be sure, now,
that you are not merely laughing at me. Have you forgotten that you
once thought me a prig? I have not altered; I am still a prig. How can
you want to marry me when you have that image of me in your mind? It
is hopeless to think of our marrying,--you with a secret contempt for
me, and I with a perpetual fear of you!"

The man in him alone spoke when he answered her.

"Surely, it is enough that we love each other?"

She shook her head.

"Ah, you know it is not," she replied, with the strange little smile
that had so often baffled him. "I--I do so wish you would
understand--and go. Or shall I find my father and tell him that you
are here?"

He laid his hand against her cheek, and watched her closely.

"Is it all over,--our friendship, your love for me, everything?" he
whispered. "Do you remember how sweetly you nursed me three years ago?
Have you forgotten the jolly talks we had together in the Temple? And
all the fun we had together in London? Is it all to come to an end
like this?"

"I can't marry you; I don't love you enough for that," she said,
moving restively under his touch. He stroked her cheek gently.

"Then why do you thrill when I touch you?" he asked. "Why do you not
send me away?" It was his last move, and he watched its effect
anxiously. She looked at him helplessly.

"I--I do send you away," she said faintly, and he made her join feebly
in the laugh against herself. There was something contemptible in her
surrender, she felt, as he folded her in his arms and looked down at
her with a manly air of possession.

"If this is not love what is it, you solemn little Puritan?" he
murmured.

"I don't know," said Katharine dully. She submitted passively to his
embrace, and allowed him to kiss her more than once.

"Of course you don't know," he smiled. "What a woman you are, and how
I love you for it! Don't be so serious, sweetheart; tell me what you
are thinking about so deeply?"

It was pity for him, her old genuine love for him reawakening, that
made her at last rouse herself to tell him the truth.

"Will you please let me go, Paul?" she asked submissively. And as he
loosened his arms and allowed her to go, she took one of his hands and
led him with feverish haste round to the table, where Ted's letter
still lay like a silent witness against herself. They stood side by
side and looked at it, the white envelope on the red table-cloth, and
it was quite a minute before the silence was broken. Then Katharine
pulled him away again and covered up the letter with her hand and
looked up in his face.

"Do you know what is in that letter?" she asked, and without waiting
for a reply went on almost immediately. "It is from Ted, to ask me to
be his wife."

"And you are going to say--"

"Yes."

Paul smiled incredulously.

"It is impossible," he said. "I decline to believe what you say now,
after what you said to me on Monday afternoon."

"Ah," she cried, "I was mad then. You always make me mad when I am
with you. You must not talk any more of Monday afternoon; you must
forget what I said to you then, and what I have said to you to-day;
you must forget that I have allowed you to kiss me--"

"Forget?" interrupted Paul. "Are _you_ going to forget all this?"

She turned away with a little cry.

"You make it so hard for me, Paul; and it seemed so easy before you
came!"

"Then it doesn't seem so easy now?"

She evaded his question. "I know I am right, because I thought it all
out when you were not here," she went on piteously. "I cannot trust
myself even to think properly when you are there; you make me quite
unlike myself. That is why I am going to marry Ted. Ted is the sanest
person I know; he leaves me my individuality; he doesn't paralyse me
as you do; and I am simply myself when I am with him."

"Simply yourself!" echoed Paul. "My dear little girl, whatever in
heaven or earth has allowed such a misapprehension to creep into your
head?"

"I know what you mean," she said. "I have thought that out, too. You
know more about me than anybody in the whole world; Ted will never
know as much as you know, although I am going to be his wife. You are
the only person I could ever talk to about myself; you are the only
person who understands. I know all that. But one does not want that in
a husband; one wants some one who will be content with half of one's
self, and allow the other half to develop as it pleases. You would
never be content with less than the whole, would you, Paul? Ah, that
is why I loved you so madly! It is so queer, isn't it, that the very
things that make us fall in love are the very things that make
marriage impossible?"

He did not speak, and she put her arms round his neck impulsively and
drew his head down to hers.

"Don't you understand, dear?" she said. "It is impossible to find
everything we want in one person, so we have to be content with
satisfying one side of ourselves, or accept the alternative and not
marry at all. Ted wants me badly, or I would rather choose not to
marry at all. But he must have some one to look after him,--he can't
live alone like some men; and I have always looked after him all my
life. He has come in my way again now, so I am going to look after him
to the end. I am very fond of Ted, and we have learnt to be chums, so
I don't think it will be a failure. Oh, do say you understand, Paul?"

"Do you love him?" asked Paul.

"Yes," she replied.

"As you loved me?"

"No," said Katharine, simply. "I could never love any one again like
that. I wore myself out, I think, in my love for you. Oh, I know I am
spoiled; I know I have only the second best of myself to give to Ted;
but if he is content with that, ought I not to be glad to give it?"

"But _you_, your own happiness," he urged brokenly. "Have you no
thought for your own happiness?"

"Happiness?" she said, smiling again. "Oh, I do not expect to find
happiness. Women like me, who ask for more than life can possibly give
them, have no right to expect the same happiness as the people who
have found out that it is better to make a compromise and to take
what they can get! Oh, I shall never be greatly happy, I know that.
But I do not mind much; it is enough for me that I did once taste the
real, glorious happiness, if it was only in snatches."

"Won't you taste it again?" he said, drawing her suddenly to him.
"Won't you give up this impossible scheme of yours, and come to me? We
will be married over there by your father,--now,--this very day. We
will go abroad, travel, do what you will. Only come with me,
Katharine. You belong to me, and to me only; you dare not deny it.
Come with me, Katharine."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I am not going to spoil your life,
as you have spoilt mine. You will be a great man, Paul, if you do not
marry me."

"Listen," he said, without heeding her. "This is the last time I shall
ask you; this is the last time I shall hold you in my arms,--_so_. I
shall go away after this, and you will never see me again, nor hear of
me again. I shall never kiss you any more, nor ask you to come away
with me, nor tell you I love you as I never loved another woman. If
you come to me on your knees and beg me to love you again, I will not
relent. Do you understand me? This is the last, the very last time.
_Now_ what have you to say? Will you come with me?"

She threw back her head and met his gaze as he bent over her.

"No," she said again. He covered her face with kisses.

"And now?"

"No," she repeated desperately; and she crept away from him at last,
and took her letter from the table and tried to walk to the door.

A slippered footstep shuffled along the hall and stopped outside the
library door. The next moment the Rector was in the room.

"Kitty, my child, have you seen my hat anywhere? I feel convinced I
put it down somewhere, and for the life of me--"

He paused as he saw Paul, and held out his hand with a smile of
welcome.

"Delighted to see you again, my dear sir, delighted! That is to say,"
added the old man, looking to Katharine for assistance, "I suppose I
_have_ seen you before, though for the moment I cannot quite recall
your name. But my memory is getting a bad one for names, a very bad
one, eh, Kitty? Anyhow, you will stop to lunch, of course; and
meanwhile, if I can only find my hat--"

"Daddy, it is Mr. Wilton," explained Katharine, making an effort to
speak in her usual voice. Strange to say, it did not seem difficult to
become usual again now that her father was in the room. "He stayed
with us once, a long time ago; you remember Mr. Wilton, don't you?"

"To be sure, to be sure; of course I remember Mr. Wilton perfectly!"
said the Rector, shaking hands with him again. "I can remember
distinctly many of our little talks on archæology and so forth. Let me
see, any relation to the great numismatist? Ah, now I know who you are
quite well. There was an accident, or a calamity of some sort, if I
recollect rightly. Kitty, my child, have you found my hat?"

"Will you stay to lunch?" Katharine was asking him.

"Of course he will stay to lunch," cried the Rector, without giving
him time to reply. "I've picked up some fine specimens of old
Sheffield plate that I should like to show you, Mr. Wilton. Stay to
lunch? Why, of course. Dear me, I know I saw it somewhere-- Got to
catch the two-thirty? Oh, that's all right; we'll drive you to the
station after lunch. That child will like a chat with you, eh, Kitty?
You used to be great friends, and she has something--no, no, I've
looked there twice--something of interest to tell you, something of
very great interest, eh, Kitty? A nice young fellow he is, too,"
continued the old man, stopping for a moment in his fruitless search.
"By the way, you know him, don't you? It's young-- Ah, now I remember!
I left it in the vestry; so stupid of me!"

Paul stopped him as he was hurrying out of the room.

"I must be off, thank you, sir. I am not going to catch the two-thirty
at all. I think I will walk on somewhere and catch something else, if
there happens to be anything. I am sure I wish Miss Katharine every
happiness. Good-morning."

He went out by the window as he had come, and they watched him as he
walked across the lawn, the neat figure crowned by the conventional
felt hat. He had not shaken hands with Katharine nor looked at her
again.

The Rector glanced after him and smoothed his hair thoughtfully.

"Curious man that," he remarked with his simple smile. "He always
looks to me as though there were a tragedy in his life."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Katharine, coldly. "It is only his
manner. He takes a joke tragically. Besides, he has never married
unhappily, or anything like that."

"That may be," said Cyril Austen, with one of his occasional flashes
of intuition; "but it means a tragedy to some men if they haven't got
married at all, and I fancy that's one of them. Ah, well, his father
was one of our best--"

Miss Esther's voice came shrilly down the passage, and the Rector
hastened out of the room without finishing his sentence.

"The annoyances of life," thought Katharine cynically, "are much more
important than the tragedies."

She picked up her letter once more and tore it open. Even then she did
not read it at once, but looked out of the window first and beyond the
garden, where a man's felt hat was moving irregularly along the top of
the hedge. She made an impatient gesture and turned her back to the
light, and unfolded Ted's letter at last. And this is what it
contained:--

     "By the time you get this, I shall have cleared out. I may be
     an infernally rotten ass, but I won't let the best girl in the
     world marry me out of kindness, and that is all you were going
     to do. I tried to think you were a little keen on me a few
     weeks ago, but of course I was wrong. Don't mind me. I shall
     come up smiling again after a bit. It was just like my
     poorness to think I could ever marry any one so clever and
     spry as yourself. Of course you will buck up and marry some
     played-out literary chap, who will gas about books and things
     all day and make you happy. Good old Kit, it has been a
     mistake all along, hasn't it? When I come back, we will be
     chums again, won't we? I am off to Melbourne in the morning
     and shall travel about for a year, I think. You might write to
     me--the jolly sort of letters you used to write. Monty knows
     all my movements.

          Yours ever,

               Ted."

The letter fell from her hand, and she turned and gazed blankly out of
the window. The felt hat was no longer to be seen at the top of the
hedge.




CHAPTER XX


High up in one of the houses on the shady side of the Rue Ruhmhorff,
Katharine sat on her balcony and thought. Her reflections were of the
desultory order begotten of early spring lethargy and early spring
sunshine, relating to street cries innumerable and to the mingled
scent of violets and asphalt in the air, to the children playing their
perpetual game of hop-scotch on the white pavements, and to the
artisan opposite who was mixing his salad by the open window with a
naïve disregard for the public gaze. Her pupils were all in the Bois
under the able supervision of the excellent Miss Smithson, and there
was temporary calm in the three _étages_ that formed Mrs. Downing's
Parisian establishment for the daughters of gentlemen.

"Will he ever have done, I wonder?" speculated Katharine lazily. She
was taking quite a languid interest in the progress of the salad, and
smiled to herself when the man took off his blue blouse and attacked
it afresh in his shirt sleeves. His wife joined him after a while,
evidently, to judge from her emphatic gestures, with critical intent.
But the man received her volley of suggestions with an expressive
shrug of the shoulders, and they finally went off to their mid-day
meal.

"What pitiable jargon we talk, all the world over, about the triumph
of mind over matter," murmured Katharine, yawning as she spoke. "And
all the while matter goes on triumphing over mind on every conceivable
occasion! It even gets into the street cries," she added with another
yawn, as a flower vender came along the street below and sent up his
minor refrain in unvarying repetition. "Des violettes pour embaumer la
chambre," he chanted, "du cresson pour la santé du corps!"

It was more than a year since she had accepted Mrs. Downing's offer
and settled here in Paris; more than a year since Ted had gone abroad
and Paul Wilton had bidden her farewell. But she never looked back on
those days now, though not so much from design as from lack of
incentive; for her life had strayed into another channel, and her days
were full of the kind of occupation that leaves no room for the luxury
of reminiscence. It never even occurred to her to wonder whether she
was happy or not; she seemed to have completely lost her old trick of
wanting a reason for everything she thought or felt, and for the time
being she had become eminently practical. Even now, in spite of the
enervating effect of the first spring weather, her thoughts returned
to the business of the moment, and she wondered why the father of her
newest pupil, who had made an appointment with her for eleven o'clock,
was so late in coming. A ring at the electric bell seemed to answer
her thought, and the maid came in almost immediately with a
gentleman's card on a tray.

"British caution," was Katharine's criticism, as Julie explained that
the English monsieur had not attempted to teach her his name. By the
merest chance she glanced at the card before her visitor came in, and
was spared the annoyance of betraying the surprise she must otherwise
have felt. As it was, she had time to recover from her astonishment,
even to remark how different the familiar name and address seemed to
her when, for the first time as now, she saw them transcribed on a
visiting card,--"Mr. Paul Wilton, Essex Court, Temple."

"I am so glad to see you," she exclaimed, with a look that did not
contradict the welcome in her voice. And Julie, who had never seen
her mistress look so joyous before, went back to Marie in the kitchen
with a highly coloured account of the meeting she had just witnessed,
which explained to that frivolous but astute little person how it was
that Madame always looked so leniently on her flirtations with the
_charcutier_ round the corner.

"I have never caught you idling before," said Paul, referring to the
attitude in which he had seen her through the open door before she had
turned round with that glad look in her eyes.

"I don't suppose you have," she said. "It isn't so very long since I
learnt how to idle. Do you remember how bitterly you used to complain
because I never wanted to lounge? I often lounge now; and my greatest
joy is to think about nothing at all. Don't you know how restful it is
to think about nothing at all?"

"You must have altered a good deal," he observed.

"Do you think I have, then?"

"Ask me that presently," he replied, with an answering smile. "I have
got to hear all the news first,--how keeping school agrees with you,
and everything there is to tell about yourself. So make haste and
begin, please."

"Oh, there is nothing to tell about myself; at least, nothing more
than you can learn from the prospectus! Would you like to see one? You
can read it and learn what an important person I am, while I go and
leave a message for Miss Smithson."

When she came back, he regarded her with a look of amused interest.

"This is a very novel sensation," he remarked.

"I am glad it amuses you," said Katharine; "but I never knew before
that the prospectus was funny."

"Oh, no; it isn't that," he explained. "The humour of a prospectus is
the kind of grim joke that could only be expected to appeal to a
parent. What I meant was the fact of your appearing to me for the
first time in the character of hostess."

"I wondered how it was that I did not feel so awed by your presence as
usual," she remarked. "Now I know it is because you, even you, are
sensible to the chastening atmosphere of the home of the young idea.
You had better come round the establishment at once, before the
favourable impression begins to wear off."

"Oh, please!" he implored. "You will surely let me off? I haven't a
daughter or a niece, or any kind of feminine relation who could be of
the least commercial value to you. And I really don't feel equal to
facing crowds of unsophisticated girls in short frocks, with pocket
editions of their favourite poets in their hands. Girls of that age
always expect you to be so well informed, and I haven't run a
favourite poet for years."

"When you first met me," she said emphatically, "_I_ was an
unsophisticated girl in a short frock, with a whole list of favourite
poets. And I distinctly remember one occasion on which I bored you for
half an hour with my views on Browning."

"I am not here to deny it," said Paul. "It is only an additional
reason for my wishing to stay and talk to you, now that you have
ceased to have any views on any subject whatever. Besides, I exhausted
the subject of unsophistication in short frocks when I first had the
pleasure of meeting you, four years ago. And, interesting as I found
it then, I have no particular wish to renew it now."

"All of which is an unpleasant reflection on the enormous age I seem
to have acquired in four years," she cried. "They must have been
singularly long years to you!"

"With the exception of the last one," said Paul, "they were much the
same as any other years to me."

"Now, that's odd," she remarked; "because last year has seemed to go
more quickly than any other year in my life. I wonder why it seemed so
long to you?"

"It didn't," he replied promptly. "It was the other three that did
that, because I spent them in learning wisdom."

"And the last one in forgetting it? How you must have wasted the other
three! Ah, there are the girls at last," she added, springing to her
feet. "That means déjeûner, and I am as hungry as two wolves. You will
stop of course?"

"More developments," he murmured. "You used to scorn such mundane
matters as meals, in the days when the poets were food enough for you.
But please don't imagine for a moment that I am going to face that
Anglo-French crowd out there; I would almost as soon listen to your
opinion of Browning."

"Do you mean to say," she complained, "that you expect me to minister
to your wants in here? What will Miss Smithson say, what will the dear
children say in their weekly letters home? You don't really mean it?"

"On the contrary," he replied, placidly, "I am going to take you out
to lunch in the most improper restaurant this improper city can
produce. So go and put on that Parisian hat of yours, and be as quick
as you like about it. I am rather hungry, too."

"You really seem to forget," she said, "that I am the respectable head
of a high-class seminary for--"

"I only wish you would allow me to forget it," he interrupted. "It is
just because you have been occupying yourself for a whole year, and
with the most lamentable success, in growing elderly and respectable,
that I intend to give you this opportunity of being regenerated. May I
ask what you are waiting for, now?"

"I am waiting for some of the conventional dogma you used to preach to
me in the days when _I_ wanted to be improper," she retorted. "It
would really save a great deal of trouble if our respective moral
codes could be induced to coincide sometimes, wouldn't it?"

"It would save a great deal of trouble if you were to do as you are
told, without talking quite so much about it. It is now half-past--"

"I tell you it is impossible," she protested. "You must have your
déjeûner here, with unsophistication twenty-five strong--and Miss
Smithson. What is the use of my having acquired a position of
importance if I deliberately throw it away again by behaving like an
improper schoolgirl?"

"What is the use of a position at all," replied Paul, "if it doesn't
enable you to be improper when you choose? Don't you think we might
consider the argument at an end? I am quite willing to concede to Miss
Smithson, or to any other person in authority, that you have made all
the objections necessary to the foolish possessor of a conscience, if
you will only go and tell her that you do not intend to be in to
lunch."

"I have told her," said Katharine inadvertently, and then laughed
frankly at her own admission. "I always spoil all my deceptions by
being truthful again too soon," she added plaintively.

"Women always spoil their vices by incompletion," observed Paul. "They
have reduced virtue to an art, but there is a crudity about their vice
that always gives them away sooner or later. That is why they are so
easily found out; it is not because they are worse than men, but
because they are better. They repent too soon, and your sins always
find you out when you begin to repent."

"That's perfectly true," said Katharine, half jestingly. "You would
never have discovered that I was a prig if I had not become partly
conscious of it first."

"That," said Paul deliberately, "is a personal application of my
remarks which I should never have dreamed of making myself; but, since
you are good enough to allow it, I must say that the way you have
bungled the only vice you possess is quite singular. If you had been a
man no one would have detected your priggishness at all; at its worst
it would have been called personality. It is the same with everything.
When a woman writes an improper book she funks the crisis, and gets
called immoral for her pains; a man goes the whole hog, and we call it
art."

"According to that," objected Katharine, "it is impossible to tell
whether a man is good or bad. In fact, the better he appears to be the
worse he must be in reality; because it only means that he is cleverer
at concealing it."

"None of us are either good or bad," replied Paul. "It is all a
question of brains. Goodness is only badness done well, and morality
is mostly goodness done badly. I should like to know what I have said
to make you smile?"

"It isn't what you have said," laughed Katharine; "it is the way you
said it. There is something so familiar in the way you are inventing a
whole new ethical system on the spur of the moment, and delivering it
just as weightily as if you had been evolving it for a lifetime. Do go
on; it has such an additional charm after one has had a holiday for
more than a year!"

"When you have done being brilliant and realised the unimportance of
being conscientious, perhaps you will kindly go and get ready," said
Paul severely. And she laughed again at nothing in particular, and
raised no further objection to following what was distinctly her
inclination.

When they had had déjeûner and were strolling through the Palais
Royal, he alluded for the first time to their parting at Ivingdon more
than a year ago. She gave a little start and reddened.

"Oh, don't let us talk about that; I am so ashamed of myself whenever
I think of it," she said hastily.

"I am sorry," he replied with composure, "because I particularly wish
to talk about it just now. You must remember that, until I met Ted in
town last week, I had no idea you were not married."

She turned and stared at him suddenly.

"I never thought of that," she said, slowly.

"Of course you didn't. In fact, all your proceedings immediately
following that particular day in December seem to have been
characterised by the same lack of reflection. You might have known
that there was no one who could tell me of your erratic actions. And
how was I to guess that you would go flying off to Paris just when
everything was made easy for you to stop in England? I was naturally
forced to conclude, as I neither saw nor heard from you again, that
you had carried out your absurdly heroic purpose of marrying Ted. I
must say, Katharine, you have a wonderful faculty for complicating
matters."

"Nothing of the sort," she said indignantly. "And your memory is no
better than mine, for you seem to forget that it was you who made our
parting final. You were so tragic that of course I thought you meant
it."

"Before we criticise my own action in the matter," said Paul, "I
should rather like to know why you did come and bury yourself here,
without telling anybody?"

"Oh, it is easy for you to smile and be sarcastic! I had to come, of
course; it was the only thing to be done. Nature had made me a prig,
and everything was forcing me to continue to be a prig, and all my
attempts at being anything else didn't come off. What chance is there
for any one with priggish tendencies in a world like ours? It simply
bristles with opportunities for behaving in a superior way, unless you
resolutely make up your mind to skim over the surface of it and never
to think deeply at all. What was I to do? Ted had gone abroad to
escape from my overbearing superiority, and you had left in disgust
because marrying for love wasn't good enough for me; and then I had
Mrs. Downing's letter, and she persisted in thinking that I was the
only person in the world who could manage the mothers of her
fashionable pupils. It seemed as though I were destined to remain a
superior person to the end of my days, and I wasn't going to fight
against my natural tendencies any longer. I determined that if I had
got to be a prig at all, I would at least make as good a prig as
possible. Now do you understand why I came?"

"Before I attempt to do that, do you mind mentioning where you are
going to take me?" said Paul casually. She looked round quickly and
found that they had wandered down to the Seine and were close to the
landing-stage of the boats that went to St. Cloud; and an importunate
proprietor was representing to them in broken English the charms of a
trip down the river.

"Oh, let us go!" she cried impulsively. "It would be so beautiful!
Miss Smithson will never respect me again, but I don't feel as though
I _could_ go back to all those girls just yet. Oh, don't be so musty!
It _won't_ be chilly, and you are not a bit too old, and you have just
got to come. Oh, don't I remember those moods of yours when everything
was too youthful for you! I never knew any one with such a plastic age
as yours."

He smiled perfunctorily, and gave in; and they were soon journeying
down the Seine. Katharine was in a mood to appreciate everything, and
she leaned over the side of the boat and made a running commentary on
the beauty of the scene as they glided along between the banks. Paul
tried two or three seats in succession, and finally chose one with an
air of resignation and felt for his tobacco pouch.

"There is a smell of oil," he said. "And the chestnuts at Bushey are
far finer."

"Can't you lower your standard just for this one afternoon?" she
suggested mockingly. "It would be so pleasant if you were to allow
that Nature, for once, was almost good enough for you. I am so glad it
is always good enough for me; it gives one's critical faculty such a
rest."

"Or proves the non-existence of one," added Paul.

"It is surprising," she continued in the same tone, "how you always
manage to spoil the light side of life by treating it seriously. Do
you ever allow yourself a happy, irresponsible moment?"

"Perhaps I haven't seen as much of the light side as you have," he
returned, quite unmoved. "And it is always easier to play our tragedy
than our comedy; the _mise en scène_ is better adapted to begin with.
That is why the mediocre writer generally ends his book badly; he gets
his effect much more easily than by ending it well."

"What has made you so cynical, I wonder?" she asked lazily.

"Principally, the happiness of the vulgar," returned Paul promptly.
"It is not our own unhappiness that makes us cynical, but the badly
done happiness of others. Quite an ordinary person may be able to
bear misfortune more or less nobly, but it takes a dash of genius to
be happy without being aggressive over it."

"I can't imagine your taking the trouble to be aggressive over
anything," observed Katharine. "That is probably why you prefer to
remain sombre, whether the occasion demands it or not. It is very
prosaic to have to acknowledge that a man's most characteristic pose
is merely due to his laziness. On the whole, I am rather glad I am
quite an ordinary person; I would much sooner be happy, even if it
does make me vulgar."

"Happiness is like wine," said Paul, without heeding her. "It
demoralises you at the time, and it leaves you flat afterwards. The
most difficult thing in life is to know how to take our happiness when
it comes."

"It is more difficult," murmured Katharine, "to know how to do without
it when it doesn't come."

They landed at St. Cloud, and walked up through the little village and
into the park where the ruins of the palace were. They had strayed
away from their fellow passengers by this time, and the complete
solitude of the place and its atmosphere of decay affected them both
in the same way, and they gradually dropped into silence. He was the
first to break the pause.

"Don't you think it is time we brought this farce to an end?" he asked
with a carelessness of manner that was obviously assumed.

"Who is being farcical?" she returned just as lightly.

"You did that admirably, but it hasn't deceived me," said Paul
serenely. "You know as well as I do that it is futile to go on any
longer like this. We have tried it for a year, and I for one don't
think very much of it. Your experiences have doubtless been happier
than mine; but if you mean to tell me that they have taught you to
prefer solitude to companionship, then you are as thorough a prig as
you came over here to become. And that I don't believe for a moment,
for at your worst you were always inconsistent, and inconsistency is
the saving grace of the prig."

"I appreciate the honour of your approval," replied Katharine with
exaggerated solemnity; "but, for all that, I still think that living
with unsophistication in short petticoats is likely to be less tiring,
on the whole, than living with some one for whom nothing in heaven or
earth has yet been brought to perfection."

She ended with a peal of laughter. Paul strolled on at the same
measured pace as before.

"Besides," she added, "I thought we had both done with the matter a
year ago. What is the use of dragging it up again?"

"I thought," added Paul, "that we had also done with taking ourselves
seriously, a year ago. But you seem to wish the process to be renewed.
Very well, then; let us begin at the beginning. The initial
difficulty, if I remember rightly, was the fact that we were very much
in love with each other."

"I know _I_ wasn't," said Katharine hotly. "I never hated any one so
much in my life, and--"

"Which gets over the initial difficulty, does it not? Secondly then,
you determined in the most unselfish manner possible that a wife would
inevitably cripple what you were kind enough to call my career. I need
hardly say how touched I felt by your charming consideration, but I
should like to point out--"

"It is perfectly detestable of you to have come all this way on
purpose to laugh at me," cried Katharine.

"I should like to point out," repeated Paul, "that I feel quite
capable of pursuing my career without any suggestions from my wife at
all, and that, engrossing as her presence would undoubtedly prove--"

"It seems to me," interrupted Katharine, "that you don't want a wife
at all; you only want an audience."

"I don't think," said Paul, smiling indulgently, "that we need quarrel
about terms, need we? Well, as I was saying, my career would probably
continue to take care of itself, even if there were two of us to be
asked out to dinner, instead of one. And that disposes of the second
obstacle, doesn't it? The third and last--"

"Last? There are millions of others!"

"The third and last," resumed Paul, "was, I think, the trifling fact
that I had once presumed to call you a prig, in consequence of which
you chose to pretend you were afraid of me. Wasn't that so?"

"Afraid of you? What a ridiculous idea!" she exclaimed. "Why, I was
never afraid of you in my life!"

"Which disposes of the third and last difficulty," said Paul promptly.

Katharine stamped her foot and walked on in front of him.

"You don't seem to think," she said, "that I might not _want_ to marry
you."

"Oh, no," said Paul; "I don't."

She said no more, but continued to walk a little way in front of him
so that he could not see her face. She only spoke once again on their
way down to the boat.

"How was Ted looking when you saw him?" she asked abruptly. "Perhaps
you didn't notice, though?"

"Oh, yes," said Paul, blandly. "I've never seen him looking better; he
seemed to have had a splendid time out there. He asked after you, by
the way, and seemed rather surprised that I hadn't heard from you."

She made no comment, and they reached the boat in silence.

"You will come back to tea with me?" she said, as they stood waiting
for it to start.

"With you,--or with unsophistication?"

"Oh, with me of course! Don't you think you have been funny enough for
one afternoon?"

"Our best jokes are always our unconscious ones," murmured Paul.
"Seriously, though, I think I won't bother you any more. I shall only
be in the way if I stay any longer."

"Now what have I done," she demanded indignantly, "to make you think
you are in the way?"

"Oh, of course--nothing. So foolish of me!" said Paul humbly. "I shall
be delighted to return with you; there are still so many things we
want to say to each other, are there not?"

However, they did not say them on the way home, for Katharine soon
became thoughtful again, and he made no further attempt to draw her
out but remained studiously at the other end of the boat until they
landed; and after that, the noise of the cab in which they drove
across Paris was sufficient excuse for refraining from anything like
conversation. At the top of the stairs, as they stayed for a moment
outside her _appartement_ to recover their breath, she suddenly turned
to him with one of her unaccountable smiles.

"Well?" he said.

"You know I didn't mean to be cross, don't you?" she asked him in a
hurried undertone.

"You absurd little silly!" was all he said.

They sat for a long time over tea, and neither of them felt inclined
to talk. But the silence was not embarrassing. And the early spring
day drew to a close and the room grew dark with shadows; and still
they sat there, and it did not occur to either of them to make
conversation. At last, Katharine stirred in her seat at the end of the
sofa and looked towards the dim outline of his figure against the
window, and finished her reflections out loud.

"After all," she said thoughtfully, "the great thing is to be sane.
Nothing else matters much if one can only be sane about things. There
are heaps of reasons why you and I should not marry, if we were to
begin hunting them up; but why bother about it? You know and I know
that we have simply got to try the experiment, and chance the rest.
One must risk something. And it can't be much worse than going on
alone like this."

"No," said Paul, "it can't be worse than that."

He came and sat on the sofa, too, and there was silence once more. He
put out his hand to find hers, and she gave it him and laughed softly.

"I have an idea," she said irrelevantly. "We must marry Ted to
Marion."

"We?" said Paul, smiling. And she laughed again.

"Isn't it ridiculous," she said, "after all our views about marriage
and so on,--to end in behaving just like any one else who never had
any views at all?"

"Yes," agreed Paul. "We haven't even stuck to our priggishness."

"_We?_" exclaimed Katharine.

But there is always a limit to a man's confessions, and Paul's was
never finished.




BY THE SAME AUTHOR.


_AT THE RELTON ARMS._

Miss Evelyn Sharp is to be congratulated on having, through the mouth
of one of her characters, said one of the wisest words yet spoken on
what is rather absurdly called "The Marriage Question" (page 132). It
is an interesting and well-written story, with some smart
characterisation and quite a sufficiency of humour.--_Daily
Chronicle._

A delightful story. The most genuine piece of humour in a book that is
nowhere devoid of it, is that scene in the inn parlour where Digby
finds himself engaged to two young women within five minutes; while
the two brief colloquies of the landlady and her cronies make one
suspect that the author could produce an admirable study of village
humour.--_Athenæum._

A distinctly clever book, of a fresh conventionality.--_Academy._


_WYMPS: FAIRY TALES._

_With 8 coloured Illustrations and decorated cover by Mabel Dearmer._

Of the stories it is impossible to speak too highly; they are true
fairy literature, and the most exigent taste will be satisfied with
them.--_Truth (London)._

[Illustration]

A FLY-LEAF POEM.

(_To a little girl with a story-book,--"Wymps," by_ EVELYN SHARP).

     Here, in this book, the wise may find
     A world exactly to their mind.
     From fairy kings to talking fish,
     There's everything such people
     wish.

     Sweeter little maid than you
     Never read a story through.
     Through a sweeter little book
     Little maid shall never look.

     MR. WILLIAM WATSON
     in _The Academy_.

The simple brilliancy of the cover alone reveals something of the
hidden delights of these charming new stories.--_Punch._

Quite the most gorgeously coloured book of the season. In a red,
green, and yellow cover that puts to the fade even a French poster,
and with most marvellous pictures, excelling even the cover, the
volume must take a literally blazing place on a child's book-shelf.
"Wymps" has other attractions,--six, _original_ fairy stories. Now,
originality is a rare thing in fairy stories, so that altogether we
find the book unique.--_Literary World (Boston)._




JOHN LANE

     THE
     BODLEY
     HEAD
     VIGO ST
     W.
     _Telegrams_
     "BODLEIAN
     LONDON"

CATALOGUE _of_ PUBLICATIONS _in_ BELLES LETTRES


     LIST OF BOOKS
     IN
     BELLES LETTRES

     Published by John Lane
     The Bodley Head
     VIGO STREET, LONDON, W.

=Adams (Francis).=

     ESSAYS IN MODERNITY. Crown 8vo.
     5s. net.                                         [_Shortly._

     A CHILD OF THE AGE. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=A. E.=

     HOMEWARD: SONGS BY THE WAY.
     Sq. 16mo, wrappers, 1s. 6d. net.          [_Second Edition._

     THE EARTH BREATH, AND OTHER POEMS. Sq. 16mo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Aldrich (T. B.).=

     LATER LYRICS. Sm. fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. net.

=Allen (Grant).=

     THE LOWER SLOPES: A Volume of Verse. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

     THE WOMAN WHO DID. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
                                         [_Twenty-third Edition._

     THE BRITISH BARBARIANS. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
                                               [_Second Edition._

=Atherton (Gertrude).=

     PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES. Crown 8vo. 6s.
                                                [_Third Edition._

=Bailey (John C.).=

     ENGLISH ELEGIES. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.      [_In preparation._

=Balfour (Marie Clothilde).=

     MARIS STELLA. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Beeching (Rev. H. C.).=

     IN A GARDEN: Poems. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

     ST. AUGUSTINE AT OSTIA. Crown 8vo, wrappers. 1s. net.

=Beerbohm (Max).=

     THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM. With a Bibliography by JOHN LANE.
     Sq. 16mo. 4s. 6d. Net.

     THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE. Sq. 16mo. 1s. net.

=Bennett (E. A.).=

     A MAN FROM THE NORTH. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.  [_In preparation._

=Benson (Arthur Christopher).=

     LYRICS. Fcap. 8vo, buckram. 5s. net.

     LORD VYET AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Bridges (Robert).=

     SUPPRESSED CHAPTERS AND OTHER BOOKISHNESS. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
     net.                                      [_Second Edition._

=Brotherton (Mary).=

     ROSEMARY FOR REMEMBRANCE. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Brown (Vincent).=

     MY BROTHER. Sq. 16mo. 2s. net. ORDEAL BY COMPASSION. Crown
     8vo. 6s.                                  [_In preparation._

     TWO IN CAPTIVITY. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.      [_In preparation._

=Buchan (John).=

     SCHOLAR GIPSIES. With 7 full-page Etchings by D. Y. CAMERON.
     Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

     MUSA PISCATRIX. With 6 Etchings by E. PHILIP PIMLOTT. Crown
     8vo. 5s. net.

     GREY WEATHER. Crown 8vo. 5s.              [_In preparation._

     JOHN BURNET OF BARNS. A Romance. Crown 8vo. 6s.
                                               [_In preparation._

=Campbell (Gerald).=

     THE JONESES AND THE ASTERISKS. A Story in Monologue. 6
     Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.
                                               [_Second Edition._

=Case (Robert H.).=

     ENGLISH EPITHALAMIES. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

=Castle (Mrs. Egerton).=

     MY LITTLE LADY ANNE. Sq. 16mo, 2s. net.

=Chapman (Elizabeth Rachel).=

     MARRIAGE QUESTIONS IN MODERN FICTION. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

=Charles (Joseph F.).=

     THE DUKE OF LINDEN. Crown 8vo, 5s.        [_In preparation._

=Cobb (Thomas).=

     CARPET COURTSHIP. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.      [_In preparation._

     MR. PASSINGHAM. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.        [_In preparation._

=Crane (Walter).=

     TOY BOOKS. Re-issue of. 2s.

     This LITTLE PIG'S PICTURE BOOK, containing:

     I. THIS LITTLE PIG.
     II. THE FAIRY SHIP.
     III. KING LUCKIEBOY'S PARTY.

     MOTHER HUBBARD'S PICTURE-BOOK, containing:

     IV. MOTHER HUBBARD.
     V. THE THREE BEARS.
     VI. THE ABSURD A. B. C.

     CINDERELLA'S PICTURE BOOK, containing:

     VII. CINDERELLA.
     VIII. PUSS IN BOOTS.
     IX. VALENTINE AND ORSON.

     Each Picture-Book containing three Toy Books, complete with
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     end-papers, decorative cloth cover, and newly written Preface
     by WALTER CRANE, 4s. 6d. The Nine Parts as above may be had
     separately at 1s. each.

=Crackanthorpe (Hubert).=

     VIGNETTES. A Miniature Journal of Whim and Sentiment. Fcap.
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=Craig (R. Manifold).=

     THE SACRIFICE OF FOOLS. Crown 8vo, 6s.

=Crosse (Victoria).=

     THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.
                                                [_Third Edition._

=Custance (Olive).=

     OPALS: Poems. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Croskey (Julian).=

     MAX. Crown 8vo. 6s.

=Dalmon (C. W.).=

     SONG FAVOURS. Sq. 16mo. 3s. 6d. net.

=D'Arcy (Ella).=

     MONOCHROMES. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

     POOR HUMAN NATURE. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.     [_In preparation._

=Dawe (W. Carlton).=

     YELLOW AND WHITE. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

     KAKEMONOS. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Dawson (A. J.).=

     MERE SENTIMENT. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

     MIDDLE GREYNESS. Crown 8vo. 6s.

=Davidson (John).=

     PLAYS: An Unhistorical Pastoral; A Romantic Farce; Bruce, a
     Chronicle Play; Smith, a Tragic Farce; Scaramouch in Naxos, a
     Pantomime. Small 4to. 7s. 6d. net.

     FLEET STREET ECLOGUES. Fcap. 8vo, buckram. 4s. 6d. net.
                                                [_Third Edition._

     FLEET STREET ECLOGUES. 2nd Series. Fcap. 8vo, buckram. 4s. 6d.
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     A RANDOM ITINERARY. Fcap. 8vo, 5s. net.

     BALLADS AND SONGS. Fcap. 8vo, 5s. net.    [_Fourth Edition._

     NEW BALLADS. Fcap. 8vo, 4s. 6d. net.      [_Second Edition._

=De Lyrienne (Richard).=

     THE QUEST OF THE GILT-EDGED GIRL. Sq. 16mo. 1s. net.

=De Tabley (Lord).=

     POEMS, DRAMATIC AND LYRICAL. By JOHN LEICESTER WARREN (Lord de
     Tabley). Five Illustrations and Cover by C. S. RICKETTS. Crown
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     POEMS, DRAMATIC AND LYRICAL. Second Series. Crown 8vo. 5s.
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=Devereux (Roy).= THE ASCENT OF WOMAN. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Dick (Chas. Hill).= ENGLISH SATIRES. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
                                               [_In preparation._

=Dix (Gertrude).=

     THE GIRL FROM THE FARM. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
                                               [_Second Edition._

=Dostoievsky (F.).=

     POOR FOLK. Translated from the Russian by LENA MILMAN. With a
     Preface by GEORGE MOORE. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Dowie (Menie Muriel).=

     SOME WHIMS OF FATE. Post 8vo. 2s. 6d. net.

=Duer (Caroline, and Alice).=

     POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Egerton (George)=

     KEYNOTES. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.         [_Eighth Edition._

     DISCORDS. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.          [_Fifth Edition._

     SYMPHONIES. Crown 8vo. 6s.                [_Second Edition._

     FANTASIAS. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

     THE HAZARD OF THE HILL. Crown 8vo. 6s.    [_In preparation._

=Eglinton (John).=

     TWO ESSAYS ON THE REMNANT. Post 8vo, wrappers, 1s. 6d. net.
                                               [_Second Edition._

=Farr (Florence).=

     THE DANCING FAUN. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Fea (Allan).=

     THE FLIGHT OF THE KING: A full, true, and particular account
     of the escape of His Most Sacred Majesty King Charles II.
     after the Battle of Worcester, with Sixteen Portraits in
     Photogravure and over 100 other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 21s.
     net.

=Field (Eugene).=

     THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

     LULLABY LAND: Poems for Children. Edited, with Introduction,
     by KENNETH GRAHAME. With 200 Illustrations by CHAS. ROBINSON.
     Uncut or gilt edges. Crown 8vo. 6s.

=Fifth (George).=

     THE MARTYR'S BIBLE. Crown 8vo. 6s.        [_In preparation._

=Fleming (George).=

     FOR PLAIN WOMEN ONLY. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Flowerdew (Herbert).=

     A CELIBATE'S WIFE. Crown 8vo. 6s.         [_In preparation._

=Fletcher (J. S.).=

     THE WONDERFUL WAPENTAKE. By "A SON OF THE SOIL." With 18
     Full-page Illustrations by J. A. SYMINGTON. Crown 8vo. 5s. 6d.
     net.

     LIFE IN ARCADIA. With 20 Illustrations by PATTEN WILSON. Crown
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     GOD'S FAILURES. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

     BALLADS OF REVOLT. Sq. 32mo. 2s. 6d. net.

     THE MAKING OF MATTHIAS. With 40 Illustrations and Decorations
     by LUCY KEMP-WELCH. Crown 8vo. 6s.

=Ford, (James L.).=

     THE LITERARY SHOP, AND OTHER TALES. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Frederic (Harold).=

     MARCH HARES. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.       [_Third Edition._

     MRS. ALBERT GRUNDY: OBSERVATIONS IN PHILISTIA. Fcap. 8vo. 3s.
     6d. net.                                  [_Second Edition._

=Fuller (H. B.).=

     THE PUPPET BOOTH. Twelve Plays. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

=Gale (Norman).=

     ORCHARD SONGS. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. net.

=Garnett (Richard).=

     POEMS. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

     DANTE, PETRARCH, CAMOENS, cxxiv Sonnets, rendered in English.
     Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Geary (Sir Nevill).=

     A LAWYER'S WIFE. Crown 8vo. 6s.           [_Second Edition._

=Gibson (Charles Dana).=

     DRAWINGS: Eighty-Five Large Cartoons. Oblong Folio. 20s.

     PICTURES OF PEOPLE. Eighty-Five Large Cartoons. Oblong folio.
     20s.

     LONDON: AS SEEN BY C. D. GIBSON. Text and Illustrations. Large
     folio, 12 × 18 inches. 20s.               [_In preparation._

     THE PEOPLE OF DICKENS. Six Large Photogravures. Proof
     Impressions from Plates, in a Portfolio. 20s.

=Gilliat-Smith (E.).=

     THE HYMNS OF PRUDENTIUS. In the Rhythm of the Original. Pott
     4to. 5s. net.

=Gleig (Charles).=

     WHEN ALL MEN STARVE. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

     THE EDGE OF HONESTY. Crown 8vo. 6s.       [_In preparation._

=Gosse (Edmund).=

     THE LETTERS OF THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. Now first edited. Pott
     8vo. 5s. net.

=Grahame (Kenneth).=

     PAGAN PAPERS. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. net.
                                      [_Out of Print at present._

     THE GOLDEN AGE. Crown 8vo 3s. 6d. net.   [_Seventh Edition._

     _See_ EUGENE FIELD'S LULLABY LAND.

=Greene (G. A.).=

     ITALIAN LYRISTS OF TO-DAY. Translations in the original metres
     from about thirty-five living Italian poets, with
     bibliographical and biographical notes. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Greenwood (Frederick).=

     IMAGINATION IN DREAMS. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Grimshaw (Beatrice Ethel).=

     BROKEN AWAY. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Hake (T. Gordon).=

     A SELECTION FROM HIS POEMS. Edited by Mrs. MEYNELL. With a
     Portrait after D. G. ROSSETTI. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Hansson (Laura M.).=

     MODERN WOMEN. An English rendering of "DAS BUCH DER FRAUEN" by
     HERMIONE RAMSDEN. Subjects: Sonia Kovalevsky, George Egerton,
     Eleanora Duse, Amalie Skram, Marie Bashkirtseff, A. Ch. Edgren
     Leffler. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Hansson (Ola).=

     YOUNG OFEG'S DITTIES. A Translation from the Swedish. By
     GEORGE EGERTON. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Harland (Henry).=

     GREY ROSES. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

=Hay (Colonel John).=

     POEMS INCLUDING "THE PIKE COUNTY BALLADS" (Author's Edition),
     with Portrait of the Author. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

     CASTILIAN DAYS. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

     SPEECH AT THE UNVEILING OF THE BUST OF SIR WALTER SCOTT IN
     WESTMINSTER ABBEY. With a Drawing of the Bust. Sq. 16mo. 1s.
     net.

=Hayes (Alfred).=

     THE VALE OF ARDEN AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Hazlitt (William).=

     LIBER AMORIS; OR, THE NEW PYGMALION. Edited, with an
     Introduction, by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. To which is added an
     exact transcript of the original MS., Mrs. Hazlitt's Diary in
     Scotland, and letters never before published. Portrait after
     BEWICK, and fac-simile letters. 400 Copies only. 4to, 364 pp.,
     buckram. 21s. net.

=Heinemann (William).=

     THE FIRST STEP; A Dramatic Moment. Small 4to. 3s. 6d. net.

=Henniker (Florence).=

     IN SCARLET AND GREY. (With THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL by FLORENCE
     HENNIKER and THOMAS HARDY.) Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
                                               [_Second Edition._

=Hickson (Mrs. Murray).=

     SHADOWS OF LIFE. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.        [_In preparation._

=Hopper (Nora).=

     BALLADS IN PROSE. Sm. 4to. 6s.

     UNDER QUICKEN BOUGHS. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Housman (Clemence).=

     THE WERE WOLF. With 6 Illustrations by LAURENCE HOUSMAN. Sq.
     16mo. 3s. 6d. net.

=Housman (Laurence).=

     GREEN ARRAS: Poems. With 6 Illustrations, Title-page, Cover
     Design, and End Papers by the Author. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

     GODS AND THEIR MAKERS. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

=Irving (Laurence).=

     GODEFROI AND YOLANDE: A Play. Sm. 4to. 3s. 6d. net.
                                               [_In preparation._

=Jalland (G. H.).=

     THE SPORTING ADVENTURES OF MR. POPPLE. Coloured Plates. Oblong
     4to, 14 x 10 inches. 6s.                  [_In preparation._

=James (W. P.).=

     ROMANTIC PROFESSIONS: A Volume of Essays. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Johnson (Lionel).=

     THE ART OF THOMAS HARDY: Six Essays. With Etched Portrait by
     WM. STRANG, and Bibliography by JOHN LANE. Crown 8vo. 5s. 6d.
     net.                                      [_Second Edition._

=Johnson (Pauline).=

     WHITE WAMPUM: Poems. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Johnstone (C. E.).=

     BALLADS OF BOY AND BEAK. Sq. 32mo. 2s. net.

=Kemble (E. W.).=

     KEMBLE'S COONS. 30 Drawings of Coloured Children and Southern
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=King (K. Douglas).=

     THE CHILD WHO WILL NEVER GROW OLD. Crown 8vo. 5s.

=King (Maud Egerton).=

     ROUND ABOUT A BRIGHTON COACH OFFICE. With over 30
     Illustrations by LUCY KEMP-WELCH. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

=Lander (Harry).=

     WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE. Crown 8vo. 6s.

=The Lark.=

     BOOK THE FIRST. Containing Nos. 1 to 12. With numerous
     Illustrations by GELETT BURGESS and Others. Small 4to. 6s.
     BOOK THE SECOND. Containing Nos. 13 to 24. With numerous
     Illustrations by GELETT BURGESS and Others. Small 4to. 6s.
                                                [_All published._

=Leather (R. K.).=

     VERSES. 250 copies. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. net.

=Lefroy (Edward Cracroft.).=

     POEMS. With a Memoir by W. A. GILL, and a reprint of Mr. J. A.
     SYMONDS' Critical Essay on "Echoes from Theocritus." Cr. 8vo.
     Photogravure Portrait. 5s. net.

=Le Gallienne (Richard).=

     PROSE FANCIES. With Portrait of the Author by WILSON STEER.
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THE YELLOW BOOK

=An Illustrated Quarterly.=

_Pott 4to. 5s. net._

     I. April 1894, 272 pp., 15 Illustrations.   [_Out of print._

     II. July 1894, 364 pp., 23 Illustrations.

     III. October 1894, 280 pp., 15 Illustrations.

     IV. January 1895, 285 pp., 16 Illustrations.

     V. April 1895, 317 pp., 14 Illustrations.

     VI. July 1895, 335 pp., 16 Illustrations.

     VII. October 1895, 320 pp., 20 Illustrations.

     VIII. January 1896, 406 pp., 26 Illustrations.

     IX. April 1896, 256 pp., 17 Illustrations.

     X. July 1896, 340 pp., 13 Illustrations.

     XI. October 1896, 342 pp., 12 Illustrations.

     XII. January 1897, 350 pp., 14 Illustrations.

     XIII. April 1897, 316 pp., 18 Illustrations.


BALLANTYNE PRESS