Meanwhile the friendship remained. His being married could not make it
less; and his being unmarried would certainly not have made it more.
As there could be neither more nor less of it, he ought to have been
able to regard it as a simple, definite, solidly satisfactory thing.
But he had no sooner realized that so much at least was his than he
perceived that he had only the very vaguest notion as to the nature
and extent of it. Of all human relations, friendship was the
obscurest, the most uncertainly defined. At this point he remembered
one fatal thing about her; it had always been her nature to give
pleasure and be kind. The passion, he imagined, was indestructible;
and with a temperament like that she might be ten times his friend
without his knowing from one day to another how he really stood with
her. And hitherto one means of judging had been altogether denied to
him; he had never had an opportunity of observing her ways with other
men.

This third evening he watched her jealously, testing her dealings with
him by her behaviour to the boarders, and notably to Spinks and Soper.
For Lucia, whether she was afraid of hurting the feelings of these
people, or whether she hesitated to establish herself altogether in
Mr. Rickman's study, had determined to spend the first hours after
dinner in the drawing-room. Miss Roots protested against these weak
concessions to the social order. "You'll never be able to stand them,
dear," she said; "they're terrible."

But Lucia had her way. "You've stood them for five years," said she.

"Yes, but I've had my work, and I'm used to it; and in any case I'm
not Miss Lucia Harden."

"Mr. Rickman stands them."

"Does he? You wouldn't say so if you'd known him for five years."

"I wonder why he stayed."

"Do you? Perhaps Miss Flossie could enlighten you."

"Of course. I was forgetting her."

"Don't forget her," said Miss Roots drily; "she's important."

Miss Roots went up to the study, and Lucia turned into the
drawing-room. She owned to herself that what took her there was not so
much an impulse of politeness as an irresistible desire to know what
manner of people Keith Rickman had had to live among. In those
evenings the scene had grown familiar to her; the long room with the
three tall windows looking on the street; the Nottingham lace curtains
tied with yellow sashes in the middle; the vivid blue-green painting
of the wood-work, a bad match for the wall paper; the oleographs and
pier-glasses in their gilded frames; the carpet, with its monstrous
meaningless design in brown and amber; the table, secretary, and
cabinet of walnut wood whose markings simulated some horrible
discoloration of decay; the base company of chairs, and the villainous
little maroon velvet ottoman, worn by the backs of many boarders; and
beyond the blue-green folding doors the dim little chamber looking on
a mews. And the boarders, growing familiar, too, to her sensitive
impressionable brain; Miss Bramble, upright in her morning gown and
poor little lace cap and collar; Mrs. Downey sitting, flushed and
weary, in the most remote and most uncomfortable chair; Mr. Spinks
reading the paper with an air of a man engaged in profound literary
research; the two girls sitting together on the ottoman under the
gaselier; Mr. Soper wandering uneasily among them, with his
insignificant smile and his offerings of bon-bons; and Keith Rickman
sitting apart, staring at his hands, or looking at Flossie with his
blue, deep-set, profoundly pathetic eyes. For that pretty lady's sake,
how he must have suffered in those five years.

Rickman, from his retreat in the back drawing-room, watched her ways.
She was kind to Miss Bramble. She was kind to that old ruffian
Partridge whose neck he would willingly have wrung. She was kind, good
Heavens! yes, she was kind to Soper. When the commercial gentleman
approached her with his infernal box of bon-bons, she took one. He
could have murdered Soper. He was profoundly depressed by the
spectacle of Lucia's ways. If she behaved like that to every one, what
had he to go upon? Nothing, nothing; it was just her way. And yet, he
did not exactly see her sending messages to Soper.

He rose and opened the grand piano that stood in the back
drawing-room. He went up to her (meeting with a nervous smile
Flossie's inquiring look as he passed). He stood a moment with one arm
on the chimney-piece, and waited, looking down at Lucia. Presently she
raised her head and smiled, as surely she could never have smiled at
Soper.

"Do you want me to play for you?" she said.

"That is exactly what I wanted." He drew the flattering inference
that, while apparently absorbed in conversation with Miss Bramble, she
had been aware of his presence in the background, and of every
movement he had made.

"Well, I must ask our hostess first, mustn't I?"

She went to that lady and bent over her with her request.

If Lucia's aim was to give pleasure she had certainly achieved it.
Mrs. Downey may or may not have loved music, but she was visibly
excited at the prospect of hearing it. So were the boarders. They
settled themselves solemnly in their seats. Spinks crushed his noisy
newspaper into a ball and thrust it behind him; Miss Bramble put away
her clicking needles; while Mr. Soper let himself sink into a chair
with elaborate silence; one and all (with the exception of Mr.
Partridge, who slept) they turned their faces, politely expectant,
towards the inner room. It struck Lucia that in this the poor things
were better mannered than many a more aristocratic audience.

Rickman lit the candles on the piano and seated himself beside her.

"I know what I have got to play." said she.

"What?"

"The Sonata Appassionata, isn't it?"

"Fancy your remembering."

"Of course I remember. It isn't every one who cares for Beethoven. I'm
afraid the others won't like it, though."

"They've got to like it," he said doggedly.

And Lucia, with her fatal passion for giving pleasure, played. And as
the stream of music flowed through the half-lit room, it swept away
all sense of his surroundings, all memory of the love and truth and
honour pledged to his betrothed, and every little scruple of pity or
of conscience. It bore down upon the barriers that stood between him
and Lucia, and swept them away too. And the secret sources of his
inspiration, sealed for so many months, were opened and flowed with
the flowing of the stream; and over them the deep flood of his longing
and his misery rose and broke and mingled with the tumult. And through
it, and high above it all, it was as if his soul made music with her;
turning the Sonata Appassionata into a singing of many voices, a
symphony of many strings.

So lost was he that he failed to perceive the effect of her playing on
the audience of the outer room. Flossie sat there, very quiet in her
awe; Miss Bishop kept her loose mouth open, drinking in the sounds;
Mr. Soper leaned forward breathing heavily in a stupid wonder; there,
over the tops of the chairs, one up-standing ribbon on Miss Bramble's
cap seemed to be beating time to the music all by itself; while Mrs.
Downey flushed and swelled with pride at the astonishing capabilities
of her piano. He did not notice either that, as Lucia played the
tender opening bars of the Sonata, Mr. Partridge shook off the slumber
that bound him at this hour; that, as she struck the thundering chords
that signal the presto Finale, he raised his head like an old
war-horse at the sound of the trumpet. He stared solemnly at Lucia as
she came forward followed by Rickman; then he rose from his own
consecrated chair, heavily but with a certain dignity suited to the
moral grandeur of the act, and made a gesture of abdication.

"I was a professional myself once," said he. "My instrument was the
flute."

There was no doubt about the spirit of Lucia's reception that night.
Perhaps the finest appreciation of connoisseurs had never touched her
more than did the praise of that simple audience. Rickman was the only
one who did not thank her. For when her playing was over he had turned
suddenly very cold, seized with a fierce shivering, the reaction from
the tense fever of his nerves; and it was with difficulty that he
controlled the chattering of his teeth. But before they parted for the
night he asked if he might "call" some afternoon; his tone pointing
the allusion to the arrangement that permitted this approach, "We
can't talk very well here, can we?" he said.

She answered by inviting him and Miss Walker to tea the next day. He
was conscious of a base inward exultation when he heard poor Flossie
say that she could only look in later for a little while. In October,
work was heavy at the Bank, and the Beaver seldom got home till after
tea-time. His conscience asked him sternly if he had reckoned on that
too?

When to-morrow came, Miss Hoots was busy also, and disappeared after
tea. He had certainly reckoned on that disappearance.

There was a moment of embarrassment on his part when he found himself
alone with Lucia in the room (his room) that he had made ready for
her. He had done his work so thoroughly well that the place looked as
if it had been ready for her since the beginning of time.

She was tired. He remembered how tired she used to be at Harmouth; and
he noticed with a pang how little it took to tire her now. She leaned
back in his chair, propped by the cushions he had chosen for her
(chosen with a distinct prevision of the beauty of the white face and
dark hair against that particular shade of greenish blue). She had
been reading one of his books; it lay in her lap. Her feet rested on
his fender, they stretched out towards the warmth of his fire. If only
it were permitted to him always to buy things for her; always to give
her the rest she needed; always to care for her and keep her warm and
well. He wondered how things had gone with her those five years. Had
she been happy in that college in the south? Had they been kind to
her, those women; or had they tortured her, as only women can torture
women, in some devilish, subtle way? Or would overwork account for the
failure of her strength? He thought he saw signs in her tender face of
some obscure, deep-seated suffering of the delicate nerves. Well,
anyhow she was resting now. And in looking at her he rested, too, from
the labour of conscience and the trouble of desire. Heart and senses
were made quiet by her mere presence. If his hands trembled as they
waited on her it was not with passion but with some new feeling,
indescribable and profound. For brought so near to him as this, so
near as to create the illusion of possession, she became for him
something too sacred for his hands to touch.

He could count on about half an hour of this illusion before Flossie
appeared. Afraid of losing one moment of it, he began instantly on the
thing he had to say.

"All this time I've been waiting to thank you for your introduction to
Fielding."

"Oh," she said eagerly, "what did he say? Tell me."

He told her. As she listened he could see how small a pleasure was
enough to give life again to her tired face.

"I am so glad," she said in the low voice of sincerity; "so very
glad." She paused. "That justifies my belief in you. Not that it
needed any justification."

"I don't know. Your cousin, who is the best critic I know, would tell
you that it did."

"My cousin--perhaps. But he _does_ see that those poems are great.
Only he's so made that I think no greatness reconciles him to--well,
to little faults, if they are faults of taste."

"Did you find many faults of taste?"

She smiled. "I found some; but only in the younger poems. There were
none--none at all--in the later ones. Which of course is what one
might expect."

"It is, indeed. Did you look at the dates? Did you notice that all
those later things were written either at Harmouth, or after?"

"I did."

"And didn't that strike you as significant? Didn't you draw any
conclusions?"

"I drew the conclusion that--that the poet I knew had worked out his
own salvation."

"Exactly--the poet you knew. Didn't it occur to you that he might
never have done it, if you hadn't known him?"

He looked at her steadily. The colour on her face had deepened, but
her eyes, as they met his, were grave and meditative. She seemed to be
considering the precise meaning of his words before she answered.

"No, I didn't."

"What, never? Think. Don't you remember how you used to help me?"

She shook her head. "I only remember that I meant to have helped you.
And I was very sorry because I couldn't. But I see now how absurd it
was of me; and how unnecessary."

He knew that she was thinking now of her private secretary.

"It was beautiful of you. But, you know, it couldn't have happened. It
was one of those beautiful things that never can happen."

"That's why I was so sorry. I thought it must look as if I hadn't
meant it."

"But you did mean it. Nothing can alter that, can it?"

"No. You must take the will for the deed."

"I do. The will is the only thing that matters."

"Yes. But--it was absurd of me--but I thought you might have been
counting on it?"

"Did I count on it? I suppose I did; though I knew it was impossible.
You forget that I knew all the time it was impossible. It was only a
beautiful idea."

"I'm sorry, then, that it had to remain an idea."

"Don't be sorry. Perhaps that's the only way it could remain
beautiful. It wouldn't have done, you know. You only thought it could
because you were so kind. It was all very well for me to work for you
for three weeks or so. It would have been very different when you had
me on your hands for a whole year at a stretch. And it's much better
for me that it never came off than if I'd had to see you sorry for it
afterwards."

"If I had been sorry, I should not have let you see it."

"I should have seen it, though, whether you let me or not. I always
see these things."

"But I think, you know, that I wouldn't have been sorry."

"You would! You would! You couldn't have stood me."

"I think I could."

"What, a person with a villainous cockney accent? Who was capable of
murdering the Queen's English any day in your drawing-room?"

"Oh, no; whatever you do you'll never do that."

"Well, I don't know. I'm not really to be trusted unless I've got a
pen in my hand. I'm better than I used to be. I've struggled against
it. Still, a man who has once murdered the Queen's English always
feels, you know, as if he'd got the body under the sofa. It's like
homicidal mania; the poor wretch may be cured, but he lives in terror
of an attack returning. He knows it doesn't matter what he is or what
he does; he may live like a saint or write like an archangel; but one
aitch omitted from his conversation will wreck him at the last."

"You needn't be afraid; you never omit them."

"You mean I never omit them now. But I did five years ago. I couldn't
help it. Everybody about me did it. The only difference between them
and me was that I knew it, and they didn't."

"You _were_ conscious of it, then?"

"Conscious? Do you know, that for every lapse of the sort in your
presence I suffered the torments of the damned? Do you suppose I
didn't know how terrible I was?"

She shook her head, this time with disapproval. "You shouldn't say
these things."

"Do you mean, I shouldn't say them, or shouldn't say them to you?"

"Well, I think you shouldn't say them to me. Don't you see that it
sounds as if I had done or said something to make you feel like that."

"You? Good Heavens! rather not! But whatever you said or did, I
couldn't help knowing how you thought of me."

"And how was that?"

"Well, as half a poet, you know, and half a hair-dresser."

"That's funny; but it's another of the things you shouldn't say.
Because you know it isn't true."

"I only say them because I want you to see how impossible it was."

"For me to help you?"

"Yes."

"I do see it. It _was_ impossible--but not for any of the reasons you
suppose. If it had been possible--"

"What then?"

"Then, perhaps, I needn't have felt so sorry and ashamed. You know I
really _am_ a little bit ashamed of having asked a great poet to be my
private secretary."

It was thus that she extricated herself from the embarrassing position
in which his clumsiness had placed her. For he saw what she meant when
she told him that he should not say these things to her. He had made
her feel that she ought to defend him from the charges he had brought
against himself, when she knew them to be true, when her gentleness
could only have spared him at the expense of her sincerity. How
beautifully she had turned it off. He refrained from the obvious
pretty speeches. His eyes had answered her.

"If you knew that you _had_ done something for me; not a little thing
but a great one--" He paused; and in the silence they heard the sound
of Flossie's feet coming up the stair. He had only just time to finish
his sentence--"Would it please you or annoy you?"

She answered hurriedly; for as she rose, Flossie was knocking at the
door.

"It would please me more than I can say."

"Then," he said in a voice that was too low for Flossie to hear, "you
_shall_ know it."




CHAPTER LVI


It was impossible that Rickman's intimacy with Miss Harden should pass
unnoticed by the other boarders. But it was well understood by Miss
Roots, by Flossie and by all of them, that any attentions he paid to
her were paid strictly to his editor's cousin. And if there was the
least little shade of duplicity in this explanation, his conscience
held him so far guiltless, seeing that he had adopted it more on
Lucia's account than his own. Incidentally, however, he was not
displeased that it had apparently satisfied Flossie.

But if Flossie felt no uneasiness at the approaches of Mr. Rickman and
Miss Harden, the news that Lucia was staying under the same roof with
the impossible young poet could hardly be received with complacency by
her relations. It threw Edith Jewdwine into an agony of alarm. Horace
as yet knew nothing about it; for he was abroad. Even Edith had heard
nothing until her return from her autumn holiday in Wales, when a
letter from Lucia informed her that she would be staying for the next
week or two with Sophie Roots in Tavistock Place. Edith was utterly
unprepared for her cousin's change of plans. She had not asked Lucia
to go with her to Wales; for Lucia's last idea had been to spend
September and October in Devonshire with Kitty Palliser. Edith, eager
for her holiday, had not stopped to see whether the arrangements with
Kitty were completed; and Lucia, aware of Edith's impatience, had
omitted to mention that they were not. But what made Lucia's move so
particularly trying to Edith was the circumstance that relations
between them had latterly been a little strained; and when Edith
searched her heart she found that for this unhappy tension it was she
and not Lucia who had been to blame.

And now (while Lucia was resting calmly on Mr. Rickman's sofa), in
the grave and beautiful drawing-room of the old brown house at
Hampstead a refined and fastidious little lady walked up and down in a
state of high nervous excitement. That little lady bore in her slight
way a remarkable resemblance to her brother Horace. It was Horace in
petticoats, diminutive and dark. There was the same clearness, the
same distinction of feature, the same supercilious forehead, the same
quivering of the high-bred nose, the same drooping of the unhappy
mouth. Bat the flame of Edith's small steel black eyes revealed a
creature of more ardour and more energy.

At the moment Edith was visited with severe compunction; an intrusive
uncomfortable feeling that she had never before been thus compelled to
entertain. For looking back upon the past two years she perceived that
her conduct as mistress of that drawing-room and house had not always
been as fastidious and refined as she could wish. The house and the
drawing-room were mainly the cause of it. Before Horace became editor
of _The Museion_, Edith had been mistress of a minute establishment
kept up with difficulty on a narrow income. In a drawing-room
seventeen feet by twelve she received with difficulty a small circle
of the cultured; ladies as refined and fastidious as herself, and
(after superhuman efforts on the part of these ladies) occasionally a
preoccupied and superlatively married man. From this position,
compatible with her exclusiveness, but not with her temperament or her
ambition, Edith found herself raised suddenly to a perfect eminence of
culture and refinement as head of the great editor's house. She held a
sort of salon, to which her brother's reputation attracted many
figures if possible more distinguished than his own. She found herself
the object of much flattering attention on the part of persons anxious
to stand well with Horace Jewdwine. With a dignity positively
marvellous in so small a woman, her head held high and made higher
still by the raised roll of her black hair, Edith reigned for three
years in that long drawing-room. She laid down the law grandiloquently
to the young aspirants who thronged her court; she rewarded with
superb compliments those who had achieved. Happily for Edith those
gentlemen were masters of social legerdemain; and they conveyed their
smiles up the sleeves of their dress-coats adroitly unperceived.

And then, in the very flower of her small dynasty, Lucia came. Lucia,
with her music and her youth and her indestructible charm. And the
little court, fickle by its very nature, went over bodily to Lucia! To
Lucia who did not want it, who would much rather have been without it,
but must needs encourage it, play to it, sympathize with it, just to
satisfy that instinct of hers which was so fatal and so blind. And
Horace, who to Edith's great relief had freed himself from this most
undesirable attachment, who for three years had presented every
appearance of judicious apathy, Horace, perceiving that men's eyes
(and women's too) loved to follow and to rest upon his cousin,
discovering all over again on his own account the mysterious genius of
her fascination, had ended by bowing down and worshipping too. His
adoration was the more profound (and in Edith's shrewd opinion more
dangerous), because he kept it to himself; because it pledged him to
nothing in the eyes of Lucia and the world.

But the eyes of the world, especially of the journalistic world, are
exceedingly sharp; and if Lucia had not been charming in herself those
literary ladies and gentlemen would have found her so, as the lady
whom Horace Jewdwine was presumably about to marry. It was Hanson,
Hanson of the _Courier_, who sent the rumour round, "_La reine est
morte, vive la reine_." The superb despotic Edith saw herself not only
deserted, but deposed; left with neither court nor kingdom; declining
from the palace of royalty to the cottage of the private gentlewoman,
and maintaining her imperious refinement on a revenue absurdly
disproportioned to that end. Not that as yet there had been any
suggestion of Edith's abdication. As yet Lucia had only spent her
winter holidays at Hampstead. But when, at the end of the present
summer, Lucia suddenly and unexpectedly broke down and her salary
ceased with her strength, it became a question of providing her with a
home for three months at the very least. Even then, the revolution was
delayed; for Horace had gone abroad in the autumn. But with every
month that Edith remained in power she loved power more; and in her
heart she had been considering how, without scandal to the world, or
annoyance to Horace, or offence to Lucia, she could put her rival
delicately aside. She had long been on the look-out for easy posts for
Lucia, for posts in rich and aristocratic families in the provinces,
or better still for ladies in want of charming travelling companions.

But now, better, a thousand times better, that Edith should have been
forced to abdicate than that Lucia should have taken herself out of
the way in this fashion; a fashion so hideously suggestive of social
suicide; that she should be living within four miles of her fastidious
and refined relations in a fifth-rate boarding-house inhabitated by
goodness knows whom. If only that had been all! Of course it was
intolerable to think of Lucia mixing with the sort of people whom
nobody but Goodness ever does know; but, after all, she wouldn't mix
with them; she hadn't had time to; and if instantly removed from the
place of contamination she might yet be presented to society again
without spot or taint. But it was not all. Out of the many hundred
base abodes of Bloomsbury Lucia had picked out the one house she ought
to have avoided, the one address which for five years her cousin
Horace had been endeavouring to conceal from her; it being the address
of the one disreputable, the one impossible person of his
acquaintance. Rickman had appeared, as strange people sometimes did,
at Edith's court; an appearance easily explained and justified by the
fact that he was a genius of whom Horace Jewdwine hoped great things.
But he had never been suffered in that salon when Lucia had been
there. Horace had taken untold pains, he had even lied frequently and
elaborately, to prevent Lucia's encountering, were it only by
accident, that one impossible person; and here she was living,
actually living in the same house with him. Even if Rickman could be
trusted to efface himself (which wasn't very likely; for if there is
anything more irrepressible than a cockney vulgarian it is a poet; and
Rickman was both!), could they, could anybody trust Lucia and her
idiotic impulse to be kind? To be kind at any cost. She never
calculated the cost of anything; which was another irritating
reflection for Miss Jewdwine. Poor as she was, she thought nothing of
paying twenty-five or thirty shillings for her board and a miserable
lodging, when she might--she ought--to have been living with her
relations free of all expense. But there was the sting, the
unspeakable sting; for it meant that Lucia would do anything, pay
anything, rather than stop another week in Hampstead. And Edith knew
that it was she who had made Lucia feel like that; she who had driven
her to this deplorable step. Not by anything done, or said, or even
implied; but by things not done, things not said, things darkly or
passionately thought. For Lucia, with her terrible gift of intuition,
must somehow have known all the time what Edith hardly knew, what at
least she would never have recognized if she had not observed the
effect on Lucia. Edith had no patience with people who were so
abominably sensitive. It was all nerves, nerves, nerves. Lucia was and
always had been hopelessly neurotic. And if people were to be shaken
and upset by every passing current of another person's thought, it
was, Edith said to herself a little pathetically, rather hard upon the
other person. Nobody can help their thoughts; and there was something
positively indecent in the uncanny insight that divined them. All the
same, Edith, confronted with the consequences of these movements of
the unfettered brain, was stung with compunction and considerable
shame. Horace would be furious when he knew; more furious with Edith
than Lucia. Therefore Edith was furious with Sophia Roots, the cause
of this disaster, who must have known that even if Lucia was too
weak-minded to refuse her most improper invitation, that invitation
ought never to have been given. Edith had her pride, the pride of all
the Jewdwines and the Hardens; and her private grievances gave way
before a family catastrophe. She did not want Lucia at Hampstead; but
at all cost to herself Lucia must be brought back to her cousin's
house before anybody knew that she had ever left it. It was even
better that Horace should marry her than that they should risk the
scandal of a mesalliance, or even-a passing acquaintance with a man
like Rickman. She would go and fetch Lucia now, this very evening.

She went as fast as a hansom could take her, and was shown up into
Rickman's room where she had the good luck to find Lucia alone. Lucia
was too tired to go out very much; and at that moment of her cousin's
entrance she was resting on Mr. Rickman's sofa. As the poor poet had
been so careful to remove the more telling tokens of his occupation,
Edith did not see that it was Mr. Rickman's room; and she was a little
surprised to find Sophia Roots so comfortably, not to say luxuriously
lodged.

She lost no time in delivering her soul, lest Sophia should pop in
upon them.

"Lu-_chee_-a," she said with emphasis, "I think you ought to have told
me."

"Told you what?"

"Why, that you hadn't anywhere to go to, instead of coming here."

"But I didn't come here because I hadn't anywhere to go to. I came
because I wanted to see something of Sophie after all these years."

"You could have seen Sophie at Hampstead. I would have asked her to
stay with you if I'd known you wanted her."

"That would have been very nice of you. But I'm afraid she wouldn't
have come. You see she can't leave her work at the Museum--ever, poor
thing."

"Oh. Then you don't see so much of Sophie after all?"

"Not as much as I should like. But I must be somewhere; and I'm
perfectly happy here."

As she rose to make tea for Edith (at the poet's table, and with the
poet's brass kettle), she looked, to Edith's critical eyes, most
suspiciously at home. Edith's eyes, alert for literature, roamed over
the bookcases before they settled on the tea-pot (the poet's tea-pot);
but it was the tea-pot that brought her to her point. Did Lucia mix
with the other boarders after all?

"This isn't a bad room," she said. "I suppose you have all your meals
up here?"

"Only tea and breakfast."

"But, my dear girl, where do you lunch and dine?"

"Downstairs, in the dining-room."

"With all the other boarders?"

Lucia smiled. "Yes, all of them. You see we can't very well turn any
of them out."

"Really, Lucia, before you do things like this you might stop to
consider how your friends must feel about it."

"Why should they feel anything? It's all right, Edith, really it is."

"Right for you to take your meals with these dreadful people? You
can't say they're not dreadful, Lucia; for they are."

"They're not half so dreadful as you might suppose. In fact you've no
idea how nice they can be, some of them. Indeed I don't know one of
them that isn't kind and considerate and polite in some way. Yes,
polite. They're all inconceivably polite. And do you know, they all
want me to stay on; and I've half a mind to stay."

"Oh, no, my dear, you're not going to stay. I've come to carry you off
the very minute we've finished tea. Sophia should have known better
than to bring you here."

"Poor little Sophie. If she can stand it, I might."

"That doesn't follow at all. And if you can stand it, your relations
can't. So make up your mind that you're going back with me."

"It's extremely kind of you; but I should hurt Sophie's feelings
terribly if I went. Why should I go?"

"Because it isn't a fit place for you to be in. To begin with, I don't
suppose they feed you properly."

"You can't say I look the worse for it."

No, certainly she couldn't; for Lucia looked better than she had done
for many months. In the fine air of Hampstead she had been white and
languid and depressed; here in Bloomsbury she had a faint colour, and
in spite of her fatigue, looked almost vigorous. What was more, her
face bore out her own account of herself. She had said she was
perfectly happy, and she looked it.

A horrible idea occurred to Edith. But she did not mean to speak of
Rickman till she had got Lucia safe at Hampstead.

"Besides," said Lucia simply, "I'm staying for the best of all
possible reasons; because I want to."

"Well, if it's pleasant for you, you forget that it's anything but
pleasant for Horace and me. Horace--if you care what he thinks--would
be exceedingly annoyed if he knew about it."

"Isn't he just a little unreasonable?"

"He is not. Is it nice for him to know that you prefer living with
these people to staying in his house?"

"What would he say if he knew that one of these people lent us this
room?"

The words and the smile that accompanied them challenged Edith to
speak; and speak she must. But she could not bring herself to utter
the abominable name. "And was that on Sophie's account or yours?"

"On both our accounts; and it was beautifully done."

"Oh, if it was done beautifully there's no doubt on whose account it
was done. I should have thought you were the last person, Lucia, to
put yourself under such an obligation."

"There was no obligation. It was kinder to Mr. Rickman to take his
room than refuse it, that was all."

Lucia had no difficulty whatever in bringing out the name. And that,
if Edith's perceptions had not been dulled by horror, would have
struck her as a favourable sign.

"Young Rickman!" Edith's astonishment was a master stroke in all that
it ignored and in all that it implied of the impossibility of that
person. "Your notions of kindness are more than I can understand.
Whatever possessed you to take his room? If he'd offered it fifty
times!"

"But it wasn't wanted."

Edith relaxed the tension of her indignant body and sank back in her
chair (or rather, Mr. Rickman's chair) with an immense relief. "You
mean he isn't in the house at present?"

"Oh yes, he's in the house, I'm glad to say. Neither Sophie nor I
could stand very much of the house without him."

That admission, instead of rousing Edith to renewed indignation,
appeared to crush her. "Lucia," she murmured, "you are hopeless."

Another cup of tea, however, revived the spirit of remonstrance.

"I know you don't see it, Lucia, but you are laying yourself under an
obligation of the worst sort; the sort that puts a woman more than
anything in a man's power."

Lucia ignored the baser implication (so like Lucia). "I'm under so
many obligations to Mr. Rickman already, that one more hardly counts."
She hastened to appease the dumb distress now visible on her cousin's
face. "I don't mean money obligations; though there's that,
too--Horace knows all about it. I don't know if I can explain--" She
laid her hands in her lap and looked at Edith and beyond her, with
liquid and untroubled eyes; not seeing her, but seeing things very far
off, invisible from Edith's point of view; which things she must
endeavour, if possible, to make her see. "The kind of obligations I
mean are so difficult to describe, because there's nothing to take
hold of. Only, when you've once made a man believe in you and trust
you, so that he comes to you ever afterwards expecting nothing but
wonderful discernment, and irreproachable tact, and--and an almost
impalpable delicacy of treatment, and you know that you failed in all
these things just when he needed them most, you do feel some
obligations. There's the obligation to make up for your blunders; the
obligation to think about him in a certain way because no other way
does justice to his idea of you; the obligation to show him the same
consideration he showed to you; the obligation to take a simple
kindness from him as he would have taken it from you--"

"My _dear_ Lucia, you forget that a man may accept many things from a
woman that she cannot possibly accept from him."

"Yes, but they are quite another set of things. They don't come into
it at all. That's where you make the mistake, Edith. I've got--for my
own sake--to behave to that man as finely as he behaved to me. I owe
him a sort of spiritual redress. I always shall owe it him; but I'm
doing something towards it now." She said to herself, "I am a fool to
try to explain it to her. She'll never understand. I wish Kitty were
here. She would have understood in a minute."

Edith did not understand. She thought that Lucia's perceptions in
this matter were blunt, when they were only superlatively fine.

"All this," said she, "implies an amount of intimacy that I was not
aware of."

"Intimacy? Yes, I suppose it _is_ intimacy, of a sort."

"And how it could have happened with a man like that--"

"A man like what?"

"Well, my dear girl, a man that Horace wouldn't dream of allowing you
to meet, even in his own house."

"Horace? You talk about my being under an obligation. It was he who
helped to put me under it."

"And how?"

"By never delivering one of my messages to him; by letting him believe
that I behaved horribly to him; that I sent him away and never gave
him a thought--when he had been so magnificent. There were a thousand
things I wanted to explain and set right; and I asked Horace for an
opportunity and he never gave it me. He can't blame me if I take it
now."

"If Horace did all these things, he did them for the best possible
reasons. He knows rather more of this young man than you do, or could
have any idea of. I don't know what he is now, but he was, at one
time, thoroughly disreputable."

"Whatever _did_ he do?"

"Do? He did everything. He drank; he ran after the worst sort of
women--he mixes now with the lowest class of journalists in town; he
lived for months, Horace says, with a horrid little actress in the
next house to this."

Lucia's face quivered like a pale flame.

"I don't believe it. I don't believe it for a moment."

"It's absurd to say you don't believe what everybody knows, and what
anybody here can tell you."

"I never heard a word against him here. Ask Sophie She's known him for
five years. Besides, _I_ know him. That's enough."

"Lucy, when you once get hold of an idea you're blind to everything
outside it."

"I take after my family in that. But no, I'm not blind. He may have
gone wrong once, at some time--but never, no, I'm sure of it, since I
knew him."

"Still, when a man has once lived that sort of life, the coarseness
must remain."

"Coarseness? There isn't any refinement, any gentleness he isn't
capable of. He's fine through and through. Stay and meet him, Edith,
and see for yourself."

"I _have_ met him."

"And yet you can't see?"

"I've seen all I want to see."

"Don't, Edith--"

There was a sound of feet running swiftly up the stair; the door of
the adjoining room opened and shut, and a man's voice was heard
singing. These sounds conveyed to Edith a frightful sense of the
nearness and intimacy of the young man, and of the horror of Lucia's
position. As she listened she held her cousin by her two hands in a
dumb agony of entreaty.

"Horace is coming back," she whispered.

"No, Edith, it's no good. I'm going to stay till Kitty takes me."

Edith wondered whether, after all, Lucia was so very fastidious and
refined; whether, indeed, in taking after her family, she did not take
after the least estimable of the Hardens. There was a wild strain in
them; their women had been known to do queer things, unaccountable,
disagreeable, disreputable things; and Lucia was Sir Frederick's
daughter. Somehow that young voice singing in the next room rubbed
this impression into her. She stiffened and drew back.

"And am I to tell Horace, then, that you are happy here?"

"Yes. Tell him to come and see how happy I am."

"Very well."

As Edith opened the door to go, the voice in the next room stopped
singing, and the young man became suddenly very still.




CHAPTER LVII


Lucia lay back in her chair, wondering, not at Edith, but at herself.
Her cousin's visit had been so far effectual that it had made her
aware of the attitude of her own mind. If she had been told beforehand
that she could be happy in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, or within any
reasonable distance of such people as Miss Bishop and Mr. Soper, the
thing would have appeared to her absurd. And yet it was so. She was
happy among these dreadful people, as she had not been happy at
Hampstead among the cultured and refined. But when she came to examine
into the nature of this happiness she found that it contained no
positive element; that it consisted mainly of relief, relief from the
strain of an incessant anxiety and uncertainty. That the strain had
been divided between her and Horace had only made it worse, for she
had had the larger share of the anxiety, he of the uncertainty. Not
that he was more uncertain than in the old days at Harmouth. He was
less so. But she had never been anxious then. For after all they had
understood each other; and apparently it was the understanding now
that failed. Yet Horace had been right when he told himself that Lucia
would never imply anything, infer anything, claim anything, take
anything for granted on the sanction of that understanding. She would
not have hurried by a look or word the slow movements of the love
which somehow he had led her to believe in. Love between man and woman
to her mind was a sort of genius; and genius, as she said long ago to
poor Rickman, must always have about it a divine uncertainty. Yes,
love too was the wind of the divine spirit blowing where it listeth,
the kindling of the divine fire. She had waited for it patiently,
reverently, not altogether humbly, but with a superb possession of her
soul. Better to wait for years than rush to meet it, and so be tossed
by the wind and shrivelled by the fire. Then, when the crash came five
years ago, though she could hardly conceive it as altering her
cousin's attitude, she knew that it must alter hers. The understanding
had been partly a family affair; and her side of the family was now
involved in debt and poverty and dishonour. When the debts were paid
off, and the poverty reduced and the honour redeemed, it would be time
to re-consider the understanding. But, as it was just possible that
Horace, if not exactly fascinated by her debts and all the rest of it,
might feel that these very things bound him, challenged him in some
sort to protection, Lucia withdrew herself from the reach of the
chivalrous delivering arm. She took her stand, not quite outside the
circle of the cousinly relation, but on the uttermost fringe and verge
of it, where she entered more and more into her own possession. They
met; they wrote long letters to each other all about art and
literature and philosophy, those ancient unimpassioned themes; for, if
Lucia assumed nothing herself she allowed Horace to assume that
whatever interested him must necessarily interest her. In short,
perceiving the horrible situation in which poor Horace had been left
by that premature understanding, she did everything she could to help
him out of it.

And she succeeded beyond her own or Horace's expectation.

After three years' hard work, when all the debts were paid, and she
was independent, Lucia thought she might now trust herself to stay
with Horace in his house at Hampstead. She had stayed there already
with Edith when Horace was away, but that was different. And at first
all was well; that is to say, there was no anxiety and no uncertainty.
The calm and successful critic of _The Museion_ knew his own mind; and
Lucia said to herself that she knew hers. The understanding between
them was perfect now. They were simply first cousins; each was the
other's best friend; and they could never be anything else. She stood
very much nearer to the heart of the circle, in a place where it was
warm and comfortable and safe. If Horace could only have let her stay
there, all would have been well still. But a mature Lucia, a Lucia
entirely self-possessed, calm and successful, too, in her lesser way;
a Lucia without any drawbacks, and almost to his mind as uncertain as
himself; a Lucia who might be carried off any day before his eyes by
some one of the many brilliant young men whom it was impossible not to
introduce to her, proved fatally disturbing to Horace Jewdwine. And it
was then that the anxiety and uncertainty began.

They were at their height in the sixth year, when Lucia broke down and
came to Hampstead to recover. Fate (not Lucia, of course; you could
not think such things about Lucia) seemed anxious to precipitate
matters, and Jewdwine in his soul abhorred precipitancy. Edith, too,
was secretly alarmed, and Lucia could read secrets. But it was to
avoid both a grossly pathetic appeal to the emotions and an appearance
of collusion with the intrigues of Fate that Lucia had feigned
recovery and betaken herself to Sophie in Tavistock Place, before, and
(this was subtlety again), well before the return of Horace from his
holiday. And if the awful reflection visited her that this step might
prove to be a more importunate appeal than any, to be a positive
forcing of his hand, Edith had dissipated it by showing very plainly
that the appeal was to their pride and not their pity.

Lucia did not consider herself by any means an object of pity. She was
happy. The absence of intolerable tension was enough to make her so.
As for the society she was thrown with, after the wear of incessant
subtleties and uncertainties there was something positively soothing
in straightforward uninspired vulgarity. These people knew their own
minds, if their minds were not worth knowing; and that was something.
It seemed to her that her own mind was growing healthier every day;
till, by the time Edith visited her, there was no need to feign
recovery, for recovery had come. And with it had come many benign and
salutary things; the old delicious joy of giving pleasure; a new sense
of the redeeming and atoning pathos of the world; all manner of sweet
compunctions and tender tolerances; the divine chance, she told
herself, for all the charities in which she might have failed. There
had come Sophie. And there had come, at last, in spite of everything,
Keith Rickman.

As for Keith Rickman, her interest in him was not only a strong
personal matter, but it had been part of the cool intellectual game
she had played, for Horace's distraction and her own deception; a game
which Horace, with his subterfuges and suppressions, had not played
fair. But when, seeking to excuse him, she began to consider the
possible motives of her cousin's behaviour, Lucia was profoundly
disturbed.

It had come to this: if Horace had cared for her he might have had a
right to interfere. But he did not care. Therefore, no interference,
she vowed, should come between her and her friendship for the poet who
had honoured her by trusting her. She could not help feeling a little
bitter with Horace for the harm he had done her, or rather, might have
done her in Keith Rickman's eyes.

For all that she had now to make amends.




CHAPTER LVIII


Meanwhile the Beaver, like a sensible Beaver, went on calmly
furnishing her house. She thoroughly approved of Keith's acquaintance
with Miss Harden, as she approved of everything that gave importance
to the man she was going to marry. If she had not yet given a thought
to his work, except as a way (rather more uncertain and unsatisfactory
than most ways) of making money, she thought a great deal of the
consideration it brought him with that lady. She was prouder of Keith
now than she ever had been before. But the Beaver was before all
things a practical person; and she had perceived further that for
Keith to make up to people like Miss Harden was one of the surest and
quickest means of getting on. Hitherto she had been both distressed
and annoyed by his backwardness in making up to anybody. And when
Keith told her that he wanted to pay some attention to his editor's
cousin, if she was a little surprised at this unusual display of
smartness (for when had Keith been known to pay attention to any
editors, let alone their cousins?), she accepted the explanation as
entirely natural. She was wide awake now to the importance of
_Metropolis_ and Mr. Jewdwine. By all means, then, let him cultivate
Mr. Jewdwine's cousin. And if there had been no Mr. Jewdwine in the
case, Flossie would still have smiled on the acquaintance; for it
meant social advancement, a step nearer Kensington. So nobody was more
delighted than Flossie when Miss Harden invited Keith to tea in her
own room, especially as she was always included in the invitation.

It was Miss Bishop, primed with all the resources of her science, who
looked upon these advances with alarm. It struck Miss Bishop that Miss
Harden and Mr. Rickman were going it pretty strong. She wouldn't have
liked those goings on if she'd been Flossie. You might take it from
her that gentlemen never knew their own minds when there were two to
choose from; and Miss Bishop hadn't a doubt that it was a toss-up
between Flossie and Miss Harden. Miss Harden would be willing enough;
anybody could see that. Ladies don't keep on asking gentlemen to have
tea with them alone in their rooms if they're not up to something.

It was not only Miss Bishop's fatal science that led her to these
conclusions, but the still more fatal prescience of love. When Flossie
was once securely married to Mr. Rickman the heart of Spinks would
turn to her for consolation, that she knew. It was a matter of common
experience that gentlemen's hearts were thus caught on the rebound.
But if that Miss Harden carried off Rickman, there would be nothing
left for Flossie but to marry Spinks, for the preservation of her
trousseau and her dignity. Therefore Miss Bishop was more than ever
set on Flossie's marrying Mr. Rickman.

They were turning over the trousseau, the trousseau which might play
such a disastrous part in the final adjustment of Flossie's mind.

"Your dresses are orfully smart and that," said Ada; "and yet somehow
they don't seem to do you justice. It would have been worth your while
to go to a tip-top dressmaker, my dear. You'd have a better chance
than that Miss Harden any day. No, I don't like you in that powder
blue; I don't, really." Miss Bishop was nothing if not frank.

"I never go wrong about a colour," said Flossie passionately.

"No. It isn't the colour. It's the cut. It makes her look as if she
'ad a better figure than you; and that's nonsense. You've got a bust,
and she hasn't. Gentlemen don't care to look at a girl who's as flat
as two boards back and front. That's what I say, it's the cut that
gives her her style."

"No, it isn't. It isn't her clothes at all; it's the way she carries
them. She may look as if she was well dressed; but she isn't."

"Anyhow I like that coat of hers better than yours."

"It hasn't got the new sleeves," said Flossie, fondling her
powder-blue.

It was this immobile complacency of hers in the face of his own
profound and sundering agitations that stirred in Rickman the first
stinging of remorse. For he could see that the poor Beaver, with her
blind and ineradicable instinct, was going on building--you couldn't
call them castles in the air--but houses such as Beavers build, houses
of mud in running water. Her ceaseless winding in and out of shops,
her mad and furious buying of furniture, her wild grasping at any
loose articles that came in her way, from rugs to rolling-pins,
appeared to him as so many futile efforts to construct a dam. Over and
over again the insane impulse came on him to seize her little hands
and stop her; to tell her that it was no good, that the absurd thing
could never stand, that he alone knew the strength of the stream, its
sources and its currents. But he hadn't the heart to tell her, and the
Beaver went on constructing her dam, without knowing that it was a
dam, because she was born with the passion thus to build.

She could not see that anything had happened, and Heaven forbid that
he should let her see. He might abandon hope, but the Beaver he could
not abandon. That was not to be thought of for an instant. He was too
deeply pledged for that. Lest he should be in danger of forgetting, it
was brought home to him a dozen times a day.

The very moment when Flossie was making that triumphant display of her
wedding finery he had caught a glimpse of her (iniquitously) as he
passed her room on his way to Spinks's. She was standing, a jubilant
little figure, in the line of the half-open door, shaking out and
trailing before her some white, shiny, frilly thing, the sight of
which made him shudder for the terror, and sigh for the pity of it.
And the girls' laughter and the banging of the door as he went by,
what was it but a reminder of the proprieties and decencies that bound
him? A hint that he had pledged himself thrice over by that unlawful
peep?

It seemed to him that was the beginning of many unlawful glimpses,
discoveries of things he ought never to have seen. Was it that he was
more quick to see? Or that Flossie was less careful than she had been?
Or was it simply the result of living in this detestable
boarding-house, where, morally speaking, the doors were never shut?
Propinquity, that had brought them together, had done its best for
Flossie and its worst. It had revealed too little and too much. He had
only to forget her for a week, to come back and see her as she really
was; to wonder what he had ever seen in her. Her very prettiness
offended him. Her flagrantly feminine contours, once admired, now
struck him as exaggerated, as an emphasis of the charm which is most
subduing when subdued. As for her mind, good Heavens! Had it taken him
five years to discover that her mind was a _cul de sac_? When he came
to think of it, he had to own that intellectually, conversationally
even, he had advanced no farther with her than on the first day of
their acquaintance. There was something compact and immovable about
Flossie. In those five years he had never known her change or modify
an opinion of people or of things. And yet Flossie was not stupid, or
if she were her stupidity was a force; it had an invincible impetus
and sweep, dragging the dead weight of character behind it. It was
beginning to terrify him. In fact he was becoming painfully sensitive
to everything she said or did. Her little tongue was neither sharp nor
hard, and yet it hurt him every time it spoke. It did not always speak
good grammar. Sometimes, in moments of flurry or excitement, an
aspirate miscarried. Happily those moments were rare; for at bottom
Flossie's temperament was singularly calm. Remembering his own past
lapses, he felt that he was the last person to throw a stone at her;
but that reflection did not prevent a shudder from going down his back
every time it happened. And if her speech remained irreproachable, the
offending strain ran through all her movements. He disliked the way
she walked, and the way she sat down, the way she spread her skirts or
gathered them, the way she carried her body and turned her head, the
way her black eyes provoked a stare and then resented it, her changes
of posture under observation, the perpetual movement of her hands that
were always settling and resettling her hat, her hair, her veil; all
the blushings and bridlings, the pruderies and impertinences of the
pretty woman of her class, he disliked them all. He more than
disliked, he distrusted her air of over-strained propriety. He
detected in it the first note of falseness in her character. In a
thousand little things her instincts, her perceptions were at fault.

This was disagreeably borne in upon him that first Saturday after
Lucia's arrival, when he and Flossie were in the train going down to
Ealing. The compartment was packed with City men (how he wished
Flossie would turn her head and not her eyes if she must look at
them!); and as they got in at Earl's Court, one of them, a polite
person, gave up his seat to the lady. Flossie turned an unseeing eye
on the polite person, and took his seat with a superb pretence of
having found it herself after much search. And when Rickman said
"Thanks" to the polite person her indignant glance informed him that
she had expected support in her policy of repudiation.

"My dear Beaver," he said as he helped her on to the platform at
Ealing, "when you take another person's seat the least you can do is
to say Thank you."

"I _never_ speak to gentlemen in trains and buses. That's the way they
always begin."

"Good Heavens, the poor man was only being civil."

"Thank you. I've gone about enough to know what 'is kind of civility
means. I wasn't going to lay myself open to impertinence."

"I should have thought you'd gone about enough to know the
difference."

Flossie said nothing. She was furious with him for his failure to
defend her from the insulting advances of the City gentleman. But
perhaps she would hardly have taken it so seriously, if it had not
been significant to her of a still more intolerable desertion. Ada
Bishop had said something to her just before they started, something
that had been almost too much even for Flossie's complacency.

"I'm glad," she still heard Ada saying, "you're going to take him out
all day. If I were you I shouldn't let him see too much of that Miss
Harden."

There hadn't been much to take hold of in Ada's words, but Ada's
manner had made them unmistakable; and from that moment a little worm
had begun to gnaw at Flossie's heart.

And he, as he looked at her with that strange new sight of his that
was already bringing sorrow to them both, he said to himself that he
supposed it was her "going about," her sad acquaintance with unlovely
manners, that had made her as she was. Only how was it that he had
never noticed it before? Poor little girl; it was only last Saturday
when they had come back from looking over the house at Ealing that,
drawing upon all the appropriate resources of natural history, he had
called her a little vesper Vole, because she lived in a Bank and only
came out of it in the evening. What Flossie called him that time
didn't matter; it was her parsimony in the item of endearments that
provoked him to excesses of the kind. And now the thought of those
things made him furious; furious with himself; furious with Fate for
throwing Flossie in his way; furious with Flossie for being there. And
when he was ready to damn her because she was a woman, he melted, and
could have wept because she was a Beaver. Poor little girl; one day to
be called a vesper Vole, the next to be forgotten altogether, the next
to be remembered after this fashion.

And so they went on silently together, Flossie in pain because of the
little worm gnawing at her heart, he thinking many things, sad and
bitter and tender things, of the woman walking by his side. From time
to time she looked at him as she had looked at those City gentlemen,
not turning her head, but slewing the large dark of her eye into its
corner. Presently she spoke.

"You don't seem to have very much to say for yourself to-day."

"To-day? I'm not given to talking very much at any time."

"Oh, come, you don't seem to have any difficulty in talking to Miss
Harden. I've heard you. Wot a time you did sit yesterday. And you were
up there an hour or more before I came, I know."

"Three quarters of an hour, to be strictly accurate."

"Well, that was long enough, wasn't it?"

"Quite long enough for all I had to say."

Now that was playing into Flossie's hands, for it meant that he had
had nothing to say after her arrival. And she was sharp enough to see
it.

"That's all very well, Keith," said she, apparently ignoring her
advantage, "but Ada says they'll be talking if she keeps on asking you
up there just when she's all by herself. It's not the thing to do. I
wouldn't do it if it was me, no more would Ada."

"My dear child, Miss Harden may do a great many things that you and
Ada mayn't. Because, you see, she knows how to do them and you don't."

"Oh well, if you're satisfied. But it isn't very nice for me to 'ave
you talked about, just when we're going to be married, is it?"

"I think you needn't mind Ada. Miss Harden knows that I _have_ to see
her sometimes, and that I can't very well see her in any other way.
And I think you might know it too."

"Oh, don't you go thinking I'm jealous. I know _you're_ all right."

"If I'm all right, who's wrong?"

"Well--of course I understand what you want with _her_; but I can't
see what she wants with you."

"You _little_ fool. What should she want, except to help me?"

Flossie said nothing to that, for indeed her mind had not formulated
any clear charge against Miss Harden. Keith had annoyed her and she
wanted to punish him a little. She was also curious to see in what
manner the chivalry that had deserted her would defend Miss Harden.

He stood still and looked at her with brilliant, angry eyes.

"You don't understand a great deal, Flossie; but there's one thing you
_shall_ understand--You are not to say these things about Miss Harden.
Not that you'll do her any harm, mind, by saying them. Think for one
minute who and what she is, and you'll see that the only person you
are harming is yourself."

Flossie did think for a minute, and remembered that Lucia was the
daughter of a baronet and the cousin of an editor; and she did see
that this time she had gone a bit too far.

"And in injuring yourself, you know, you injure me," he said more
gently. "I don't know whether that will appeal at all to you."

It did appeal to her in the sense in which her practical mind
understood that injury.

"Do you really think she'll be able to help you to a good thing?"

He laughed aloud. "I think she'll help me to many good things. She has
done that already.

"Oh, well then, I suppose it's all right."

Though he said it was all right he knew that it was all wrong; that
she was all wrong too. He wondered again how it was that he had never
noticed it before. It seemed to him now that he must always have seen
it, and that he had struggled not to see it, as he was struggling now.

Struggle as he would, he knew that he was only putting off the
inevitable surrender. Putting off the moment that must face him yet,
at some turning of the stair or opening of a door, as they went from
room to room of the house that, empty, had once seemed to him
desirable, and now, littered with the solid irrevocable results of
Flossie's furnishing, inspired him with detestation and despair. How
could he ever live in it? He and his dream, the dream that Lucia had
told him was divorced from reality? She had told him too that his
trouble all lay there, and he remembered that then as now she had
advised a reconciliation. But better a divorce than reconciliation
with any of the realities that faced him now. Better even illusion
than these infallible perceptions. Better to be decently, charitably
blind where women are concerned, than to see them so; to see poor
Flossie as she was, a reality divorced from any dream.

A foolish train of thought that. As if he were only a dreamer. As if
it were a dream that had to do with it. As if his dream had not long
ago loved, followed, and embraced a divine reality. As if it had ever
fallen away after that one superb act of reconciliation.

He had done poor Flossie some injustice. She suffered in his eyes
because she came short, not of the dream, but of the reality. To be
placed beside Lucia Harden would have been a severe test for any
woman; but for Flossie it was cruelty itself. He had never subjected
her to that, not even in thought; for he felt that the comparison,
cruel to one woman, was profanation to the other. It was only feminine
Fate who could be so unkind as to put those two side by side, that he
might look well, and measure his love for Flossie by his love for
Lucia, seeing it too as it was. Maddox had not been far wrong there.
For anything spiritual in that emotion, he might as well have gone
back to Poppy Grace. Better; since between him and Flossie that gross
tie, once formed, could not be broken. Better; since there had at
least been no hypocrisy in his relations with the joyous Poppy. Better
anything than this baseness skulking under the superstition of
morality. If a man has no other feeling for an innocent woman than
that, better that a mill-stone should be hanged about his neck than
that he should offend by marrying her.