On the other hand, she was always ready to talk about Stanistreet and
his doings. She would listen for hours to his mess-room stories, his
descriptions of the people and the places he had seen, the engagements
he had taken part in. For a whole evening one Sunday they had talked
about nothing but fortification. Now it was impossible that Mrs. Nevill
Tyson could be interested in fortification. As for Vedic philosophy, she
cared for Brahma about as much as Stanistreet did for Brahms.

He was walking with her in Hyde Park; they had turned off into the
path by the flower-beds on the Park Lane side. It was April, between
six and seven in the evening, and, except for a few stragglers, they
had the walk to themselves. Louis had been giving her the history of
his first campaign in the Soudan, and she was listening with a dreamy,
half-suppressed interest, which rose gradually to excitement. He sat down
and drew on the gravel with the point of his walking-stick a rude map of
the country, showing the course of the Nile and the line of march, with
pebbles for stations, and bare patches for battlefields. He then began to
trace out an extremely complicated plan of the campaign. She followed the
movements of the walking-stick with an intelligence which he would
hardly have credited her with. And, indeed, it was no inconsiderable
feat, seeing that for want of a finer instrument Louis's plan was
hopelessly mixed up with his line of march and other matters.

"Was Nevill there?" she asked, casually, at the close of a spirited
account of his last engagement.

"No. He was with the volunteers, farther south." He looked at her and her
eyes dropped.

"Which is north and which is south?"

The walking-stick indicated the points of the compass.

"I see. And you were there in that great splodge in the middle. Go on.
What did you do then?"

The walking-stick staggered in a wavering line eastwards. But before it
could join the Nile, Mrs. Nevill Tyson had rubbed out the map, campaign
and all, with the tips of her shoes.

"There's a park-keeper coming," said she, "he'll wonder why we're making
such a mess of his nice gravel-walk."

The park-keeper came, he looked at the gravel and frowned, he looked at
Mrs. Nevill Tyson, smiled benignly, and passed on. Perhaps he wondered.

They got up and walked as far as the Corner, where they looked at the
Achilles statue. Under the shadow of the pedestal Mrs. Nevill Tyson took
a bunch of violets from her waistband.

"What are you going to do with that?" said Louis.

"I'm going to stick it in Achilles' buttonhole. Oh, I see, Achilles
hasn't got a buttonhole. I must put it in yours then."

She put it in.

Louis's dark face flushed. "Why did you do that?"

"I did that--Because you are a brave man, and I like brave men."

Still under the shadow of the pedestal, he took her by both hands and
looked into her eyes. "What are you going to do now?" said he.

"Nothing. We must go back. We have gone too far," said she.

"Too far?" He dropped her hands.

She smiled in the old ambiguous, maddening way. "Yes; much too far. We
shall be late for dinner."

They turned back by the way they had come. Near the Marble Arch a small
crowd was gathered round a poor street preacher with a raucous voice.
They could hear him as they passed.

"We're all sinners," shouted the preacher. (They stopped and looked at
each other with a faint smile. All sinners--that was what Nevill used to
say, all sinners--or fools.) "We're all sinners, you and me, but Jesus
can save us. 'E loves sinners. 'E bears their sins; your sins an' my
sins, dear brethren; 'e bears the sins of the 'ole world. Why, that's
wot 'e came inter the world for--to save sinners. Ter save 'em from death
an' everlasting 'ell! That's wot Jesus does for sinners."

Oh, Molly, Molly, what has he done for fools?

He took her to Ridgmount Gardens, and left her at the door of the flat.

She was incomprehensible, this little Mrs. Tyson. But up till now his
own state of mind had been plain. He knew where he was drifting; he had
always known. But where she was drifting, or whether she was drifting at
all, he did not know; that is to say, he was not sure. And up till now he
had not tried very hard to make sure. He was a person of infinite tact,
and could boast with some truth that he had never done an abrupt or
clumsy thing. By this time his attitude of doubt had given a sort of
metaphysical character to this interest of the senses; he was almost
content to wait and let the world come round to him. It was to be
supposed that Mrs. Nevill Tyson, being Mrs. Nevill Tyson, would have
fathomed him long ago if he had been of the same clay as her engaging
husband. He was of clay, no doubt, but it was not the same clay; and it
was impossible to say how much she knew or had divined; other women were
no rule for her, or else--No. One thing was certain, he would never have
betrayed Tyson until Tyson had betrayed her. As it was, his relations
with her were sufficiently abnormal to be exciting; it was not passion,
it was a rush of minute sensations, swarming and swirling like a dance of
fire-flies--an endless approach and flight.

After all, he would not have had it otherwise. The charm, he told
himself, was in the levity of the situation. The thread by which she held
him was so fine that it could be broken any day. There would be no pangs
of conscience, no tears, no reproaches; no tyrannies of the heart and
revolutions of the soul. It was to Mrs. Nevill Tyson's eternal credit
that she made no claims. Clearly, when a tie can be broken to-morrow,
there is no urgent necessity for breaking it to-day.

So in the afternoon Stanistreet called again at Ridgmount Gardens.

Whether or no Mrs. Nevill Tyson ignored the possibility of passion, she
had the largest ideas of the scope and significance of friendship. She
made no claims, but she exacted from Louis a multitude of small services
for which he was held to be sufficiently repaid in smiles. Whether she
knew it or not, she had grown dependent on him. She had always shown an
affecting confidence in the integrity of masculine judgment, and she
consulted him about her dividends and the pattern of her gowns with
equally guileless reliance.

To-day he found her in a state of agitated perplexity. She put a letter
into his hands. He was to read it; he might skip the first page, it was
all about calico. There--that was what she meant.

The letter was from Mrs. Wilcox imploring her to go back to Drayton "till
this little cloud blows over."

"I don't want to go to Drayton, to those people. They talk. I know they
talk, and I don't like them. Besides, I want to stay in London. Nobody
knows me here except you."

"Do I know you?"

"Well, if you don't, you ought to--by now. I wonder if mother wants me.
She might come here, though I'd rather she didn't. She talks too, you
know; she doesn't mean to, but she can't help it. What I like about you
is--you never talk."

"You won't let me."

"What ought I to do?" she asked helplessly. "Must I go?"

"No," said Louis emphatically. "Don't."

"Why not?"

He tossed the letter aside, and their eyes met.

"It would look like defeat."




CHAPTER XIII

MRS. WILCOX TO THE RESCUE


So Nevill Tyson had left his wife. This was the most exciting act in the
drama that had entertained Drayton Parva for two years. He had brought
down the house. Presently it seemed that Drayton Parva was not unprepared
for the catastrophe. Miss Batchelor was sadly afraid that something of
this sort had been going on for long enough. But she had not condemned
Nevill Tyson wholesale and without a hearing; in these cases there are
always faults on both sides. A man as much in love with his wife as he
was would never have left her without some grounds. (I cannot think why
Miss Batchelor, being so clever, didn't see through Tyson; but there is
a point at which the cleverness of the cleverest woman ceases.) Anyhow,
if Mrs. Nevill Tyson was as innocent as one was bound to suppose, why did
she not come back to Drayton, to her mother? That was the proper thing
for her to do under the circumstances.

Have you ever sat by the seashore playing with pebbles in an idle mood?
You are not aiming at anything, you are much too lazy to aim; but some
god directs your arm, and, without thinking, you hit something that, ten
to one, you never would have hit if you had thought about it. After that
your peace is gone; you feel that you can never leave the spot till you
have hit that particular object again, with deliberate intent. So Miss
Batchelor, sitting by the shore of the great ocean of Truth, began by
throwing stones aimlessly about; and other people (being without sin)
picked them up and aimed them at Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Sometimes they hit
her, but more often they missed. They were clumsy. Then Miss Batchelor
joined in; and, because she found that she was more skillful than the
rest, she began, first to take a languid interest in the game, then to
play as if her life depended on it. She aimed with mathematical
precision, picking out all the tiny difficult places that other people
missed or grazed. Amongst them they had ended by burying Mrs. Nevill
Tyson up to her neck in a fairly substantial pile of pebbles. It only
needed one more stone to complete the work. Still, as I said before, Mrs.
Nevill Tyson's enemies were not particularly anxious to throw it.

This was reserved for another hand.

It was impossible for Mrs. Wilcox to live, even obscurely, in Drayton
Parva without hearing some garbled version of the current rumor. At first
she was a little shocked at finding her son-in-law under a cloud. But
if there is one truth more indisputable than another, it is that every
cloud has a handsome silver lining to it. (Though, indeed, from Mrs.
Wilcox's account of the matter, it was impossible to tell which was the
lining and which was the cloud.) The more she thought of it the more she
felt that there was nothing in it. There must be some misunderstanding
somewhere. Her optimism, rooted in ignorance, and watered with vanity,
had become a sort of hardy perennial.

Then it came to Mrs. Wilcox's knowledge that certain reflections had been
made on her daughter's conduct. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was said to be making
good use of her liberty. No names had been mentioned in Mrs. Wilcox's
hearing, but she knew perfectly well what had given rise to these
ridiculous reports. It was the conspicuous attention which Sir Peter had
insisted on paying Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Not that there was anything to be
objected to in an old gentleman's frank admiration for a young (and
remarkably pretty) married woman. No doubt Sir Peter had been very
indiscreet in his expression of it. What with calling on her in private
and paying her the most barefaced compliments in public, he had made her
the talk of the county. Mrs. Wilcox went further: she was firmly
convinced that Sir Peter had fallen a hopeless victim to her daughter's
attractions, and she had derived a great deal of gratification from the
flattering thought. But now that Molly was being compromised by the old
fellow's attentions, it was another matter.

That anybody else could have compromised her by his attentions did not
once occur to Mrs. Wilcox. By its magnificent unlikelihood, the idea that
Sir Peter Morley, M.P., was fascinated by her daughter extinguished every
other. So possessed was Mrs. Wilcox by the idea of Sir Peter that she had
never thought of Stanistreet. In any case Stanistreet was the last person
she would have thought of. He came and went without her notice, a
familiar, and therefore insignificant, fact of her daily life.

Of course Molly was a desperate little flirt; but it was absurd that her
flirtations should be made responsible for "this temporary separation."
(That was the mild phrase by which Mrs. Wilcox described Tyson's
desertion of his wife.) As for her encouraging Sir Peter in her husband's
absence, that was all nonsense. Mrs. Wilcox was a woman of the world, and
she would have passed the whole thing off with a laugh, but that, really,
the reports were so scandalous. They actually declared that her daughter
had been seen going about with Sir Peter in the most open and shameless
manner, ever since she had been left to her own devices.

Well, Mrs. Wilcox could disprove _that_ by the irrefragable logic of
facts.

It was high time something should be done. Her plan was to go quietly and
call on Miss Batchelor, and mention the facts in a casual way. She would
not mention Sir Peter.

So with the idea of Sir Peter in her head and a letter from Molly in
her pocket, Mrs. Wilcox called on Miss Batchelor. There was nothing
extraordinary in that, for the ladies were in the habit of exchanging
half-yearly visits, and Mrs. Wilcox was about due.

She stood a little bit in awe of a woman who took up all sorts of
dreadful subjects as easily as you take up an acquaintance, and had such
works as "The Principles of Psychology" lying about as the light
literature of her drawing-room table. But Miss Batchelor was much more
nervous than her visitor, therefore Mrs. Wilcox had the advantage at
once.

She knew perfectly well what she was going to do. She was not going to
make a fuss; that would do more harm than good. She had simply to mention
the facts in a casual way, without mentioning Sir Peter. As for the
separation, that was not to be taken seriously for a moment.

She began carelessly. "I heard from Molly this morning."

"Indeed? Good news, I hope?"

"Very good news. Except that she's disappointed me. She's not coming to
Thorneytoft after all."

"I didn't know she was expected."

"Well, I wanted her to run down and entertain me a little, now that she
can get away."

"It would be rather a sacrifice for her to leave town just at the
beginning of the season."

"That's it. She has such hosts of engagements--always going out
somewhere. She tells me she thinks nothing of five theatres in one week."

Miss Batchelor raised her eyebrows.

"She must be very much stronger than she was at Thorneytoft."

"She's never been so well in her life. Thorneytoft didn't agree with her
at all. She's been a different woman since they left it." (This to guard
against any suspicion of an attraction in the neighborhood.) "Nevill was
never well there either."

"I never thought it would suit Mr. Tyson."

"No; it wasn't the life for him at all. He's got too much go in him to
settle down anywhere in the country. Look how he's roamed about the
world." (Now was her opportunity.) "You know, Miss Batchelor, there's
a great deal of nonsense talked about this separation."

"There's a great deal of nonsense talked about most things in this
place."

"Well--but really, if you think of it, what is there to talk about? He's
just gone away in a huff, and--and he'll come back in another. You'll
see. He has a very peculiar temper, has Nevill; and Molly's too--too
suscept--too emotional. People can't always hit it off together."

"No--"

"No. And I think it's a very good plan to separate for a time. For a
time, of course. It's her own wish."

(Oh, Mrs. Wilcox! But strict accuracy is an abject virtue when pride and
the honor of a family are at stake.)

"That's all very well, my dear Mrs. Wilcox, but in the meanwhile people
will talk."

"_That_ won't break Molly's heart. She'd snap her fingers at them. And
the more they talk, the more she'll go her own way. That's Molly all
over. You can't turn her by talking, but she'd go through fire and
water for any one she loves."

Poor vulgar, silly Mrs. Wilcox! But try her on the subject of her
daughter, and she rang true.

Miss Batchelor smiled. She didn't know about going through fire; but Mrs.
Nevill had certainly been playing with the element, and got her fingers
badly scorched too.

"Well," said she, "of course, so long as Mrs. Nevill Tyson doesn't break
her heart over it."

"Does it look as if she were breaking her heart? Five theatres in one
week."

"No; I can't say I think it does."

"Shockingly dissipated, isn't she?"

"Well--rather more dissipated than we are in Drayton Parva. You must miss
her dreadfully, Mrs. Wilcox?"

"I don't mind that so long as she's happy. You see, it's not as if she
hadn't friends. I know she's well looked after."

Mrs. Wilcox felt that she was making a remarkably good case of it. And
she had not once mentioned Sir Peter.

All was well so long as you did not mention Sir Peter.

"I'm very glad to hear it."

"Of course _I_ want her to get away out of it all. I know that people are
making very strange remarks about her staying--"

"They might make stranger remarks if she came, that's one consolation.
Still--"

"Well, Miss Batchelor, the child is perfectly willing to come if I want
her. But--er--er--a friend"--(Mrs. Wilcox was determined to be discreet,
and leave no loophole for scandal)--"a friend has strongly advised
her to stay."

"Oh, no doubt she is perfectly right. Sir Peter is in town again, I
believe?"

Miss Batchelor said it abruptly, as if she were trying to change the
subject. And at the mention of Sir Peter Mrs. Wilcox lost her head and
fluttered into the trap. There are fallacies in the logic of facts.

"No, no," she said, getting up to go. "It was Captain Stanistreet I
meant."

Again Miss Batchelor smiled.

This was proof positive--the last stone.




CHAPTER XIV

THE "CRITERION"


Mrs. Nevill's account of herself, though somewhat highly colored, was
substantially true. When Stanistreet suggested defeat, it was his first
allusion to her husband's desertion of her; and like most of Louis's
utterances, it was full of tact.

Defeat? She had brooded over the idea, and then apparently she had an
inspiration.

From that day, wherever there was a sufficiently important crowd to see
her, Mrs. Nevill Tyson was to be seen. She was generally with Louis
Stanistreet, who was not a figure to be overlooked; she was always
exquisitely dressed; and sometimes, not often, she was delicately painted
and powdered. Mrs. Nevill Tyson hated what was commonplace and loud; and
she had to make herself conspicuous in a season when women dressed
_fortissimo_, and a fashionable crowd was like a bed of flowers in June.
Somehow she managed to strike some resonant minor chord of color that
went throbbing through that confused orchestra. Everywhere she went
people turned and stared at her as she flashed by; and apparently her one
object was to be stared at. She became as much of a celebrity as any
woman with a character and without a position "in society" can become.
If she were counterfeiting a type, enough of the original Mrs. Nevill
Tyson remained to give her own supernatural _näiveté_ to the character.
Stanistreet was completely puzzled by this new freak; it looked like
recklessness, it looked like vanity, it looked--it looked like an
innocent parody of guilt. He had given in to her whim, as he had given
In to every wish of hers, but he was not quite sure that he liked the
frankness, the publicity of the thing. He wondered how so small a woman
contrived to attract so large a share of attention in a city where pretty
women were as common as paving-stones. Perhaps it was partly owing to the
persistence and punctuality of her movements: she patronized certain
theatres, haunted certain thoroughfares at certain times. She had an
affection for Piccadilly, a sentiment for Oxford Circus, and a passion
for the Strand. Louis could sympathize with these preferences; he, too,
liked to walk up and down the Embankment in the summer twilight--though
why such abrupt stoppages? Why such impetuous speed? He could understand
a human being finding a remote interest in the Houses of Parliament, but
he could not understand why Mrs. Nevill Tyson should love to linger
outside the doors of the War Office.

Her ways were indeed inscrutable; but he had learnt to know them all, not
a gesture escaped him. How well he knew the turn of her head and the
sudden flash of her face as they entered a theatre, and her eyes swept
the house, eager, expectant, dubious; how well he knew the excited touch
on his sleeve, the breath half-drawn, the look that was a confidence and
an enigma; knew, too, the despondent droop of her eyes when the play was
done and it was all over; the tightening of her hand upon his arm, and
the shrinking of the whole tiny figure as they made their way out through
the crowd. She had spirit enough for anything; but her nerves were all on
edge--she was so easily tired, so easily startled.

Day after day, and night after night; it was evident that at this
rate she and Tyson were bound to see each other some time, somewhere.
Stanistreet wondered whether that thought had ever occurred to her. And
if they met--well, he could not tell whether he desired or feared to see
that meeting. In all probability it would put an end to doubt. Was it
possible that he had begun to love doubt for its own sake?

At last they met, as was to be expected, and Stanistreet was there to
see. He had taken her to the "Criterion" one night, and at the close of
the first act Tyson came into the box opposite theirs. He was alone. The
lights went up in the house, and he looked round before he sat down;
evidently he had recognized his wife, and evidently she knew it.
Stanistreet, watching her with painful interest, saw her body slacken
and her face turn white under its paint and powder.

"Either she cares for the beggar still, or else--she's afraid for her
life of him."

A horrible thought flashed across him. What if all the time she had
simply been making use of him as--as a damned stalking-horse for Tyson?
It might account for the enigmatic smiles, the swift transitions, the
whole maddening mystery of her ways. If he had been nothing to her but
the man who knew more about Tyson than anybody else? She had always had a
way of making him talk about Tyson, while he seemed to himself to be most
engagingly egotistic.

And he had once thought that Mrs. Nevill Tyson adored her husband for his
(Stanistreet's) benefit. There was this summer, and that moment in the
library at Thorneytoft--Mrs. Nevill Tyson was beyond him. And he had been
three years trying to understand her. He was a man of the world, and he
ought to have understood.

Ah--perhaps that was the reason of his failure!

He looked at her again. She had shifted her position, turned her back on
the stage; her eyes were lowered, fixed on the programme in her lap, but
they were motionless; she was not reading. One ungloved arm hung by her
side, and under the white skin he could see the pulses leaping and
throbbing in the arteries, the delicate tissues of her bodice trembled
and shook. Was it possible that in that frivolous little body, under
that corsage of lace and satin and whalebone, there beat one of those
rare and tragic passions, all-consuming, all-absorbing, blind and deaf
to everything but itself? In that case--well, he felt something very
like awe before what he called her miraculous stupidity. But no, it was
impossible; to believe it was to believe in miracles, and he had long ago
lost his faith in the supernatural. Women did not love like that
nowadays.

Tyson left the box before the close of the last act. She kept her place
for ten minutes after the fall of the curtain, while the crowd streamed
out. She stood long after the house was empty, saying nothing, but
waiting--waiting. Once she looked piteously at Stanistreet. Her fingers
trembled so that she could not fasten her cloak, her gloves. He helped
her. A weird little ghost of a smile fluttered to her lips and vanished.

They hurried out at last along empty passages. Tyson was nowhere to be
seen. They drove quickly home.

At the corner of Francis Street the hansom drew up with a jerk and
waited. A crowd blocked the way. She leaned forward with a little cry.
What was it? An accident? No; a fight. The great swinging lamps over
the door of a public-house threw their yellow light on a ring of brutal
faces, men and women, for the most part drunk, trampling, hustling,
shouldering each other in their haste to break through to the center. A
girl reeled from the public-house and stood on the edge of the pavement
bawling a vile song. A man lurched up against the side of the hansom;
a coarse swollen face flaming with drink was pressed to the glass, close
to her own. As she shrank back in horror, turning her head away from the
evil thing, her face sought Stanistreet, the soft fringe of her hair
brushed against his cheek. She had never been so near to him, never, in
the abstraction of her terror, so far away. To-night everything combined
to make his own meaning clear to him, sharpened his fierce indignant
longing to take her away, out of the hell where these things were
possible, to protect her forever from the brutalities of life.

There was a stir; the crowd swayed forward and began to move. They
followed slowly in its wake, hemmed in by the rabble that streamed
towards Ridgmount Gardens, to lose itself in the black slums of
Bloomsbury. On the pavement the reeling girl was swept on with the crowd,
still singing her hideous song. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was leaning back now,
with her eyes closed, not heeding the ugly pageant. But the scene came
back to her in nightmares afterwards.

As Stanistreet's hansom turned after leaving her at Ridgmount Gardens, he
thought he saw some one remarkably like Tyson standing in the shadow of
the railings opposite her door. He must have seen them; and but for the
delay they would probably have overtaken and so missed him.

And Stanistreet kept on saying to himself: No. Women do not love like
that. And yet the bare idea of it turned Stanistreet, the cool, the
collected, into a trembling maniac. He could not face the possibility of
losing her, of being nothing to her. But for that he might have been
content to go on drifting indefinitely, sure of a sort of visionary
eternity, taking no count of time. He had been happy in his doubt. Once
it had tormented him; he had struggled against it; later, it had become
a source of endless interest, like a man's amusing dialogues with his own
soul; now, it was the one solitary refuge of his hope. He clung to it, he
could not let it go. He staked his all on the folly, the frailty of
Mrs. Nevill Tyson.

He had yet to prove it.

Of course she was a little fool; that went without saying. He had known
many women who were fools, and he had survived their folly. But it seemed
that he could not live without this particular little fool.

He called the next day at Ridgmount Gardens.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson's manner was a little disconcerting. He found her at
the piano, singing in her pathetic mezzo-soprano a song that used to he
a favorite of Tyson's. The selection was another freak; it was the first
time Louis had heard her sing that song since they left Thorneytoft.

This is what she sang; but Louis only came in for the last two verses.

           "Oh feet that would be roving,
              I will not bid you stay,
            Though my heart should break with loving,
              When love is far away.

(_Dim_.)    "Oh heart that would be sleeping,
              I will not wake you. No,
            You shall hear no sound of weeping,
              No footsteps come and go.

            "Then come not for my calling,
              Roam on the livelong day;
            Some time when night is falling,
              Love will steal home and stay.

            "Or sleep, and fe-ear no waking,
              Sleep on, the li-ights are low,
            Some time when dawn is breaking,
              Love will awa-ake--awa-ake,
(_Cresc_.)    Love will awa-ake and know."

That was the sort of song Tyson liked; and well, as Mrs. Nevill sang it,
Stanistreet liked it too. And Stanistreet was not in the least musical.

"What--_you_ here again?" said she, swinging round on her music-stool.
"That's a jolly crescendo, isn't it? But they're the silliest words,
don't you think? As if love ever came home to stay if he could help it.
He might put up a few things in a portmanteau, and run down from Saturday
to Monday, perhaps, and--the lady was very accommodating, wasn't she?"

Stanistreet frowned and champed the ends of his mustache. This was not at
all the mood he desired to find her in.

"Don't be cynical," said he; "it's not like you."

"Dear me--what shall I be then? What _is_ like me?" She threw herself
back in a chair, kicked out her little feet, and yawned. It reminded
Louis unpleasantly of the attitude of the woman in the _Marriage Г  la
Mode_. Then she chattered; and it struck him, as it had struck him more
than once before, that Tyson had found his wife's head empty and
furnished it according to his own taste. She was always quoting Tyson;
and as there was not the least indication of inverted commas, it was hard
to tell which was quotation and which was the original text. This
creature of fitful, unbalanced mind and reckless speech was certainly the
Mrs. Nevill Tyson he had sometimes seen at Thorneytoft; but it was not
the Mrs. Nevill Tyson of last night, nor even of the other day, that
afternoon when her eyes said, as unmistakably as eyes could say anything,
that she would not accept defeat.

Another moment and the expression of her face had changed again; he saw
something there that he had never seen before, something unguarded and
appealing. He was near the end of doubt.

He felt that if he stayed with her another moment he would lose his head,
and he did not want to lose it--yet! He struggled desperately between his
desire to stay and his will to go--if there was any difference between
desire and will.

His struggles were cut short by the entrance of Tyson.

He walked into the room at half-past five, greeted Stanistreet cheerfully
(his eyes twinkling), ordered fresh tea, and began to talk to his wife as
if nothing had happened. If Louis had not known him so well, he would
have said he was immensely improved since the remarkable occasion on
which they had last met. He had quarreled with his best friend; he had
betrayed his wife and then left her; and he could come back with a
twinkle in his eye.

From where Stanistreet sat Mrs. Nevill Tyson's face was a _profil perdu_;
but he could hear her breath fluttering in her throat like a bird.

"Didn't I see you two at the 'Criterion' last night?" said Tyson. "What
did you think of 'Rosemary,' Molly?"

"I--I thought it was very good."

"From a purely literary point of view, eh? As you sat with your back to
the stage your judgment was not biased by such vulgar accessories as
scenery and acting. No doubt that is the way to enjoy a play. What are
your engagements for to-night?"

"Mine? I have none, Nevill."

"Ah--well, then, you might tell them to get my room ready for me. Don't
go, Stanistreet."

He had come home to stay.




CHAPTER XV

CONFLAGRATION


To see his wife casually in a crowd, and to fall desperately in love with
her for the second time, was a unique experience even in Tyson's life.
But it had its danger. He had never been jealous before; now a feeling
very like jealousy had been roused by seeing her with Stanistreet. He had
followed her to the "Criterion"; he had hurried out before the end of the
piece, and hung about Ridgmount Gardens till he had seen her homecoming.
Stanistreet's immediate departure was a relief to a certain anxiety that
he was base enough to feel. And still there remained a vague suspicion
and discomfort. He had to begin all over again with her. In their first
courtship she was a child; in their second she was a woman. Hitherto, the
creature of a day, she had seemed to spring into life afresh every
morning, without a memory of yesterday or a thought of to-morrow; she had
had no past, not even an innocent one. And now he had no notion what
experiences she might not have accumulated during this year in which he
had left her. That was her past; and they had the future before them.

They had been alone together for three days, three days and three nights
of happiness; and on the evening of the fourth day Tyson had found her
reading--yes, actually reading!

He sat down opposite her to watch the curious sight.

Perhaps she had said to herself: "Some day I shall be old, and very
likely I shall be ugly. If I am stupid too, he will be bored, and perhaps
he will leave me. So now--I am going to be his intellectual companion."

He was amused, just as Stanistreet had been. "I say, I can't have that,
you know. What have you got there?"

She held up her book without speaking. "Othello," of all things in the
world!

"Shakespeare? I thought so. When a woman's in a damned bad temper she
always reads Shakespeare, or Locke on the Human Understanding. Come out
of that."

Though Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her little teeth very hard, the corners of
her mouth and eyes curled with mischief. It was delicious to feel that
she could torment Nevill, to know that she had so much power. And while
she pretended to read she played with the pearl necklace she wore. It was
one shade with the white of her beautiful throat.

"Who gave you those pearls?"

She made no answer, but her hand dropped a little consciously. He had
given them to her that afternoon, remarking, with rather questionable
taste, that they were "a wedding-present for the second Mrs. Nevill
Tyson."

He leant over her chair and assailed her with questions to which no
answer came, to which no answer was possible, punctuating his periods
with kisses.

"Are you a conundrum? Or a fiend? Or a metaphysical system? And if so,
why do you wear a pink frock! Are you a young woman who prefers a dead
poet to a living husband? Are you a young woman at all? Or only a dear
little, sweet little, pink little strawberry iceberg?"

He lay down on the sofa as if overcome by unutterable fatigue. "Just as
you like," he murmured faintly. "You'll be sorry for this some day.
Shakespeare is immortal. I, most unfortunately, am not."

He got up and threw the window open. He ramped about the room,
soliloquizing as he went. Never, even in the last days of their
engagement, had she seen him so restless. (But she was not going to speak
yet; not she!) He stopped before the chimney-piece; it was covered with
ridiculous objects, the things that please a child: there were Swiss
cow-bells and stags carved in wood, Chinese idols that wagged their
heads, little images of performing cats, teacups, a whole shelf full of
toys. Not one of them but had some minute fragment of his wife's
personality adhering to it. He remembered the insane impulse that came
upon him last year to smash them, sweep the lot of them on to the floor.
To-night he could have kissed them, cried over them. "T-t-t-tt! What
affecting absurdity!" That was the way he went on. And now he sat down
by her writing-table, and was taking things up and examining them while
he talked. He never, never forgot the expression of a certain brass
porcupine that was somehow a penwiper; it seemed to belong to a world
gone mad, where everything was something else, where porcupines _were_
penwipers, and his wife--

For suddenly his tongue had stopped. He had caught sight of an enormous
bunch of hothouse flowers in a vase on the floor by the writing-table.
Stanistreet's card was in the midst of the bunch, and a note from
Stanistreet lay open on the writing-table.

There was an ominous pause while Tyson read it. It was curt enough; only
an offer of flowers and a ticket for the "Lyceum." Stanistreet's mind
must have been seriously off its balance, otherwise he would never have
done this clumsy thing.

Tyson strode to his wife's chair and tossed the letter into her lap.

"How long has Stanistreet been paying you these little attentions?"

She looked up smiling. I am not sure that she did not think this new tone
of Tyson's was part of the game they were playing together. She had never
taken him seriously.

"Ever since he found out that I liked them, I suppose."

"Did it not occur to you that the things you like are rather expensive
luxuries, some of them?"

"No. Perhaps that's why I hardly ever get them."

"My dear girl, I know the precise amount of Stanistreet's income. Money
can't be any object to him. But perhaps you've a soul above boxes at the
'Criterion,' and champagne suppers afterwards, and the rest of it?"

"I have, unfortunately. But there wasn't any champagne." Her indifferent
voice gave the lie to her beating pulses. Between playing and fighting
there is only a difference of degree.

"Will you kindly tell me why you selected Stanistreet of all people for
this business?"

"I didn't select him--he was always there."

"And if it hadn't been Stanistreet it would have been somebody else? I
see. I hope you appreciate the peculiar advantages of his society?"

"I do. Louis is a gentleman, though he is your friend. He knows how to
talk to women."

"If he doesn't it is not for want of practice. I could swallow all this,
Molly, if you were a little girl just out of the schoolroom; but--I
don't think you've much to learn."

Mrs. Nevill Tyson's eyes flashed. The play had turned to deadly earnest.
"Not much, thanks to you," said she. Her voice sank. "Louis was good to
me."

"Was he? '_Good_' to you--How extremely touching! Pray, were you good to
him?"

"No--no." She shook her head remorsefully. "I wish I had been."

Tyson knitted his brows and looked at her. He had not quite made up his
mind.

"Do you know, I don't altogether believe in your refreshing _näiveté_.
Stanistreet is not 'good' to pretty women for nothing. I know, and you
know, that a woman who has been seen with him as you apparently have
been, is not supposed to have a character to lose."

She rose to her feet and faced him. "How could you? Oh, how could you?"

He shrank from her, without the least attempt to conceal his repulsion.
"If you look in the glass you'll see."

She turned mechanically and saw the reflection of her face, all flushed
as it was and distorted, the eyes fierce with passion. It was like the
sudden leaping forth of her soul; and Mrs. Nevill Tyson's soul, after
three days' intercourse with her husband's, was not a thing to trust
implicitly. Without sinning it seemed unconsciously to reflect his sin.
I can not tell you how that was; marriage is a great mystery.

She understood him, though imperfectly; she understood many things
now. Oh, he was right--she looked the part; no wonder that he hated
her. She sat down and covered her face with her hands, as if to shut
out that momentary vision of herself. Herself and not herself. What she
saw was something that had never been. But it was something that might
be--herself, as Tyson alone had power to make her. All this came to her
as an unexplained, confused terror, a trouble of the nerves; there was no
reasoning, no idea; it was all too new.

But if she did not understand her own misery, she understood vaguely what
he had said to her. She got up and went to her writing-table where a
letter lay folded, ready for its envelope. She gave it to him without
a word.

"Do you mean me to read this?" he asked.

"Yes; if you like." She answered without looking at him; apparently she
was absorbed in addressing her envelope.

He opened the letter gingerly, and read in his wife's schoolgirl
handwriting:--

"Dear Louis,--It's awfully good of you but I'm afraid I can't go with you
to the 'Lyceum' to-morrow night so I return the ticket with many thanks,
in case you want to give it to somebody else. Nevill has come home--why
of course you saw him--and I am so happy and I want all my time for him.

"I thought you'd like to know this. I'm sure he will be delighted to see
you whenever you like to call.--Yours sincerely,

"Molly Tyson.

"_P.S._--Thanks awfully for the lovely flowers. You can smell them all
over the flat!"

"Come here, you fool," he said gently.

But Mrs. Nevill Tyson was stamping her envelope with great deliberation
and care. She handed it to him at arm's length and darted away. He heard
her turning the key in her bedroom door with a determined click.

He read her letter over again twice. The ridiculous little phrases
convinced him of the groundlessness of his suspicion. Punctuation
would have argued premeditation, and premeditation guilt. "Nevill has
come home--why of course you saw him." She had actually forgotten that
Stanistreet had been there on the evening of his arrival.

He laughed so loud that Mrs. Nevill Tyson heard him in her bedroom.

An hour later he heard her softly unlocking her door. He smiled. She
might be as innocent as she pleased, but she had made him make a cursed
fool of himself, and he meant that she should suffer for that.

He threw Stanistreet's flowers out of the window, put Molly's note up in
its envelope and sent it to the post. Then he sat down to think.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson's room was opposite the one she had just left. She
stood for a moment before her looking-glass, studying her own reflection.
She took off her pearl necklace and spanned her white throat with her
tiny hands. And as she looked she was glad. When all was said and done
she looked beautiful--beautiful after her small fashion. She turned this
way and that to make perfectly sure of the fact. She had realized long
ago how much her hold on Nevill's affections depended on it. His love had
waxed and waned with her beauty. Well--She opened her door before getting
into bed, and for the next hour she lay listening and wondering. She saw
the line of light at the top of the drawing-room door disappear as the
big lamp went out. It was followed by a fainter streak. Nevill must have
lit the little lamp on the table by the window. (Oh, dear! He was going
to sit up, then.) She heard him go into the dining-room beyond and
stumble against things; then came the spurt of a match, followed by the
clinking of glasses. (He was only going to have a smoke and a drink.)
She waited a little while longer, then she called to him. There was no
answer; he must be dozing on the couch in the dining-room. A light wind
lifted the carpet at the door, and she wondered drowsily whether Nevill
had left the drawing-room window open.

He had done all that she supposed, and more. First of all, he drank a
little more than was good for him; this happened occasionally now. Then
he sat down and wrote what he thought was a very terse and biting letter
to Stanistreet, in which he said: "You needn't call. You will not find
either of us at home at Ridgmount Gardens from May to August, nor at
Thorneytoft from August to May. And if you should happen to meet my
wife anywhere in public, you will oblige me greatly by cutting her."

This letter he left on the table outside for postage in the morning. Then
he went back to the dining-room and drank a great deal more than was good
for him. Of course he left the drawing-room window open and the lamp
burning, and by midnight he was sleeping heavily in the adjoining room.
And the wind got up in the night: it played with the muslin curtains,
flinging them out like streamers into the room; played with the flimsy
parasol lamp-shade until it tilted, and the little lamp was thrown on to
the floor.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson woke with the light crash. She sat up for a moment,
then got out of bed, crossed the passage, and opened the drawing-room
door. A warm wind puffed in her face; the air was full of black flakes
flying through a red rain; a stream of fire ran along the floor, crests
of flames leapt and quivered over the steady blue under-current; and over
there, in the corner, an absurd little arm-chair had caught fire all by
itself; the flames had peeled off its satin covering like a skin, and
were slowly consuming the horse-hair stuffing; the pitiable object sent
out great puffs and clouds of smoke that writhed in agonized spirals. The
tiny room had become a battlefield of dissolute forces. But as yet none
of the solid furniture was touched; it was a superficial conflagration.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson saw nothing but the stream of fire that ran between her
and the room where Nevill lay. She picked up her skirt and waded through
it barefoot. A spark flung from the burning draperies settled on the wide
flapping frills of her night-gown. Nevill was fast asleep with the rug
over him and his mouth open. She shook him with one hand, and with the
other she tried to beat down her flaming capes. Was he never going to
wake?

She was afraid to move; but by dropping forward on her knees she could
just reach some soda-water on the table; she dashed it over his face. The
fire had hurt the soles of her feet; now it had caught her breast, her
throat, her hair; it rose flaming round her head, and she cried aloud in
her terror. Still clutching Nevill's sleeve, she staggered and fell
across him, and he woke.

He woke dazed; but he had sense enough to roll her in the rug and crush
the flames out.




CHAPTER XVI

THE NEW LIFE


"There is now every hope," so wrote that cheerful lady, Mrs. Wilcox, "of
dear Molly's complete recovery."

This, translated from the language of optimism, meant that dear Molly's
beauty was dead, but that Molly would live.

To live, indeed, was not what she had wanted. Mrs. Nevill Tyson had made
up her mind to die; and in the certain hope of death she had borne the
dressing of her burns without a murmur. Lying there, swathed in her
bandages, life came back slowly and unwillingly to her aching nerves and
thirsting veins; and the sense of life woke with a sting, as if her brain
were bound tight, tight, and the pulse of thought beat thickly under the
intolerable ligatures. Then, when they told her she would live, she
screamed and made as though she would tear the bandages from her head
and throat.

"Take them off," she cried, "I won't have them. You said I was going to
die, and I want to die--I want to die--I tell you. Don't let Nevill come
near me. He'll want to come and look at me when I'm dead. Don't let
him come!"

But Nevill was there. The first thing he did, when he heard the doctor's
verdict, was to go straight into his wife's room and cry. He bent over
her bed, sobbing hysterically--"Molly--Molly--my little wife!"

That made her suddenly quiet.

She turned towards him, and her eyes looked bigger and darker than ever
in the section of her face that was not covered with bandages. She held
out her hand, the right hand that had clung with such a grip to his
coat-sleeve and was thus left unhurt. He stroked it and kissed it many
times over, he said what a pretty hand it was; and then, when he
remembered the things he had said and thought of her, he cried again.

"This excitement is very bad for her. Shall I tell him to go away?"
whispered Mrs. Wilcox to the nurse. The nurse shook her head.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson had heard; she gave a queer little fluttering laugh
that was meant to be derisive and ended like a sob. "If you went away,
both of you," said she, "I might feel better."

They went away and left them.

From that moment Mrs. Nevill Tyson was no longer bent upon dying. She had
conceived an immense hope--that old, old hope of the New Life. They would
begin all over again and from the very beginning. Life is an endless
beginning. Had not Nevill's tears assured her that he loved her still, in
spite of what had been done to her? It takes so much to make a man cry.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson may have understood men; it is not so clear that she
knew all about sentimentalists. It seemed as though her beauty being
dead, all that was blind and selfish in her passion for Nevill had died
with it. She was glad to be delivered from the torment of the senses, to
feel that the immortal human soul of her love was free. And as she was
very young and had the heart of a little child, she firmly believed that
her husband's emotions had undergone the same purifying regenerating
process.

As for Tyson, he had not a doubt on the subject. One morning he was
sitting in her room, watching her with a feverish, intermittent devotion.
He noticed her right arm as it hung along the counterpane, and the droop
of the beautiful right hand--the one beautiful thing about her now. He
remembered how he used to tease her about that little white spot on her
wrist, and how she used to laugh and shake down her ruffles or her
bangles to hide it. Even now she had the old trick; she had drawn the
sleeve of her night-gown over it, as she felt his gaze resting on it.
Strange--though she was still sensitive about that tiny blemish, she was
apparently indifferent to the change in her face. He wondered if she
realized how irreparably her beauty was destroyed, and as he wondered he
looked away, lest his eyes should wake that consciousness in her. He had
no idea how long they had been alone together. Time was not measured by
words, for neither had spoken much. He had taken Henley's "Verses" at
haphazard from the bookshelf and was turning over the pages, dipping here
and there, in the fastidious fashion of a man in no mind for any ideas
but his own. Presently he broke out in a voice that throbbed thickly with
emotion--

"Out of the night that covers me,
   Black as the pit from pole to pole,
 I thank whatever gods may be
   For my unconquerable soul--"

He had found the music that matched his mood. He chanted--

"It matters not how strait the gate,
   How charged with punishments the scroll,
 I am the master of my fate;
   I am the captain of my soul."

Some clumsy movement of his foot shook the bed and jarred her. She drew
in her breath sharply.

"God forgive me!" he cried, "did I hurt you, darling?"

"I don't mind. It's worth it," said she.

At her look his sins rose up to his remembrance. He flung himself on his
knees beside the bed, shaken with his passion of remorse. He muttered a
wild, inarticulate confession.

"Don't, Nevill, don't," she whispered; "it made no difference. It's all
over and done with now."

He looked at her body and thought of the beauty of her soul. He broke
into vows and promises.

"Yes; it's all over. I swear I'll never look at another woman as long as
I live."

The pressure of her weak arms round his neck thrilled him with an
exquisite tenderness, a voluptuous pity. Surely, surely in his heart of
hearts he had never loved any woman as he loved her. She comforted him;
she whispered things too sacred for perfect utterance. It struck him from
time to time that she had no clear notion of the nature of the wrongs she
forgave, just as by some miracle her mind had dwelt apart from everything
that was base in her own marriage. Her ideas of evil were vague and
bodiless. She may have conceived Nevill to have been the victim of some
malign intellectual influence, the thrall, perhaps, of some Miss
Batchelor _sans merci_. There may have been mysteries, gulfs before which
she shuddered, dim regions which she could only just divine. He did not
know that with women like his wife there is all infinity between what
they realize and what they fear. Yet within its range of vision her love
was terribly clearsighted. And now, one by one, Tyson's sins fell from
him in the purifying fire of his wife's fancy.