1

when aliette looks back on the three days that followed her lover's first avowal, she can only see herself moving in a strange, rapt exhilaration from room to room of hector's great house in lancaster gate.

hector, she realized thankfully, would be away till monday evening: the other inmates of the house--mollie, caroline staley, lennard the butler, and his female satellites--seemed as though they had been screen-folk, flat phantoms, alive only to the eye.

vaguely, among those phantoms, she can remember jimmy wilberforce, very correct in his evening-clothes, sitting between her and mollie in the big cream-paneled dining-room.

dinner over--aliette remembers--she invented some pretext to leave the pair unchaperoned, and withdrew to the balcony.

it was good to be alone, alone with one's dreams--dreams that made even bayswater road beautiful. the road seemed a pathway of radiance. high silver edged it either side; between, the hasting car lights streamed their fans of luminous crystal. here and there among the trees beyond, her eyes caught the orange flicker of matches, the red of kindled cigarettes.

"under those trees," she thought, "ronnie whispered, 'aliette, don't hate me for loving you.'"

as though she could ever hate him!

a little breeze, blowing cool across london, ruffled her hair. patting a scarcely displaced curl, she thought: "he kissed these fingers of mine. another time he will kiss me on the lips. my lips shall answer his kisses."

and all those three days and nights, thought went no further. for the moment it sufficed to know one's self adored and adoring, to dream the impossible, to vision oneself untrammeled as mollie, a virgin in bridal white standing meek-eyed before one's chosen.

2

but hyde park, of a crowded sunday morning, is no place for dreams: rather is it an epitome of actual london. here, all along with brown men, yellow men, black men, swathed arabs, poles, czecho-slovakians, turks, spaniards, 5 per cent. americans, and even (such is the bland insouciance of london) a bolshevik or so, foregather representatives of all the thousand castes between peer and proletarian which people democropolis.

not that these castes commingle! each, as though disciplined, has its assembly-place. aliette and mollie, for instance, taking the diagonal path from victoria gate, would no more have let themselves intrude upon the communistic sanctum near marble arch, than the fulminating prophets of social equality and unlimited class-warfare would have dared invade the stretch of turf and gravel by the achilles statue which custom reserves for "church-parade."

"we really ought to have gone to church first," said mollie.

"ought we?" answered an absent-minded sister.

aliette's thoughts were very far from church. that morning, alone in the bow-windowed library among the heavy pictures and the heavier books, she had tried to be her old self again, to reason out the whole issue involved by ronnie's declaration. but her reasoning had been all confused, baffled, and confounded of the emotions.

one fact only, as she now saw, had emerged star-clear from her hour of introspection: the fact that she loved ronnie. and she had no right to love ronnie! she was a married woman. socially, and in the eyes of the law, she belonged to hector.

walking, she tried to delude herself. perhaps the love was all on her side; perhaps her dreams would endure, bringing no reality.

but even the momentary delusion did not endure. peremptorily her heart assured her of ronnie's devotion, of its permanence. irrevocably she knew that, sooner or later, the whole issue would have to be faced.

the two sisters walked on, silent in the sunshine, till they came to the assembly-place of their caste. there, still silent, they sat them down under the trees.

all about them, some seated, some strolling, were other well-groomed people. beyond the low-railed turf, a compact, orderly crowd sauntered four deep along the sidewalk. beyond them, occasional cars, occasional carriages drew up to disgorge fresh arrivals.

"morning!" said a man's voice. aliette, who had been entertaining a stranger's pekingese with the tip of her unfurled parasol, looked up; and saw james wilberforce.

james wilberforce asked if he might sit with them, and took the answer for granted. "fine day for cutting church," he grinned, as he arranged his hefty bulk, his striped trousers, his top-hat (which shone with a positive mating splendor), his "partridge" cane, and his buckskin gloves in the appropriate poses. "been here long?"

"no," mollie answered. "we've only just come."

"seen anything of cavendish?"

"not so far, jimmy."

"expect he and his mater'll be along pretty soon. i'm lunching with them at bruton street."

"are you?"

and suddenly aliette panicked. "i wish i could bolt," thought aliette. "i ought to bolt. he mustn't catch me here, in public, undecided. i wish i hadn't come. i might have known he'd be here. oh, why didn't i reason things out to a finish this morning?"

nor was aliette brunton the only one to panic! ronald cavendish, walking with his mother from down street to hyde park corner, felt equally unsure of himself. he, too, after three days of rapt exhilaration, after three nights during which the one predominant thought had been, "she yielded her hand, she loves me," had tried to face the issue deliberately.

but deliberation seemed utterly to have deserted him. consecutive thought was impossible. between him and thought shimmered the radiant face of aliette, the wide, unstartled, tender eyes of aliette, the yielding fingers of aliette as he raised them to his lips.

they turned out of piccadilly into the park.

"a weak sermon," said his mother.

"i'm afraid i didn't listen very carefully."

"so i perceived." julia, covertly examining her son, saw that he looked pale, agitated. his dress, stereotyped enough in conception, betrayed a certain carelessness: the tie had been hastily knotted, a button was missing from one of the gloves. she felt, rather than knew, that he resented her company.

mother intuition alone made julia conscious of that resentment. but psychology, the long training of an astute mind, led her instinctively to the root of it. "some woman or other," she decided. "nothing else could make him resent me." and she remembered, with an acute pang of jealousy, his affair with her sister's child, lucy edwards. had it not been for her, ronnie would have married lucy. she could not regret having prevented the match--marriages between first cousins, whatever the church might say about them, ought not to be encouraged. nevertheless, if ronnie had married lucy, he would at least have married a known quantity. whereas now, for all julia knew, he might have fallen in love with a divorcée.

for undoubtedly love must be the cause of his mental trouble. no other emotion had ever made him resentful of her company. moreover, why should he be troubled if the girl were eligible?

"i think we'll cross now," she said, trying not to feel hurt. "it may be cooler under the trees."

he gave her his arm across the road; and as they threaded their way, still arm in arm, through the saunterers, julia cavendish, bowing to various acquaintances, forgot her hurt in sheer maternal pride--a pride which had not diminished by the time that james wilberforce came over to detain them from strolling.

watching those three make their way through the sunlit crowd, hector brunton's wife felt the social sense desert her.

this creature, dressed so like its fellows that its fellows scarcely turned to regard it, was her man, her ronnie. he, and he alone among the crowd, could move her to emotion. she could feel the limbs under her silk frock trembling to his approach. and suddenly, desperately, she hated the crowd; seeing it a living barrier between them. if only ronnie could take her up, there and then, in his arms; if only he could carry her away, away from all these futile people. all the people about her grew blurred, unreal. she could see clearly only one face, the serious blue-eyed face of her man.

"how do you do?" said the voice of julia cavendish. and a moment afterwards, as she and ronnie shook hands, reality and social sense alike came back to the mind of aliette brunton.

she found herself sitting pleasantly in the park, surrounded by pleasant people. she knew a great many of these people: but best of all she knew the man beside her. "poor ronnie!" she thought. "he doesn't know what to say for himself. he feels awkward. it is rather an awkward moment. i'd better make conversation." and she began to make conversation in her calmest, most charming social manner, with ronnie's mother, inquiring about her health.

"oh, but i'm really quite well," protested julia. "a little overworked, perhaps. at least, so the doctors say. personally i haven't much faith in doctors. but i'm taking their advice, and knocking off for a month or so."

"does that mean that we aren't to expect a novel this autumn?"

"i'm afraid so." the authoress laughed to herself. it was so like "the public" to imagine that novels were written in a few months, between may and july, for publication in the autumn.

but abruptly, even while she was still laughing to herself, ronnie's mother grew aware of trouble. her mind sensed drama: a drama actually in progress; here; close beside her. this "charming woman," this mrs. brunton, radiated, despite her charm, an aura of tension, of the acutest mental tension. meanwhile ronnie had hardly opened his mouth since they sat down. for the next ten minutes julia cavendish also "made conversation."

"almost time we were getting a move on; it's past one o'clock," interrupted james wilberforce--and precipitated crisis.

for that this was crisis, a definite thought-crisis, each of the participants in it--julia, aliette, ronnie--recognized as they rose to their feet. behind their conventionally smiling faces seethed minds so violently perturbed that to each it seemed impossible for thought to remain unbetrayed.

"this is the woman," thought julia cavendish. "this is the woman whom ronnie loves. somehow i must save him from her. somehow i must save them both. otherwise it means ruin, absolute ruin. disgrace!"

but no thought of ruin troubled the lovers.

"i can't let him go like this," thought the woman. "i can't lose him. i must speak. i must say, 'ronnie, ronnie, i don't hate you for loving me.'"

and the man thought: "i wonder if she is hating me. i wonder why she's so reserved, so aloof. i must find out. i must have a word with her. just one word--alone."

and he had his word, the barest whisper as their hands clasped: "may i telephone you to-night?"

only the tiniest pressure of aliette's gloved fingers gave consent.

3

"it was the mater who insisted on my having a telephone," thought ronnie. "the mater who furnished this room for me."

he looked round the room--at the chippendale settee, the bookcases, the eighteenth-century engravings on the beige wall-paper. looking, his heart misgave him.

the mater! he owed her so much in life. and now--now he was contemplating, more than contemplating, making definite, absolutely definite, a decision of which she could never approve, which might even cost him her love.

the mater! ever since that moment of crisis in hyde park--through luncheon, through the rainy afternoon which followed luncheon, over the dinner she had insisted on his sharing--ronnie had been watching her face, speculating about her, wondering what she would say if she knew. now suddenly it seemed to him that she did know.

he tried to put the idea out of mind. but fragments of their conversation--fragments which memory could only imagine to have been hints--kept recurring to him. she had spoken--and this was rare with her--about his father; about a recent matrimonial shipwreck; about her article in the "contemplatory." and not once, after wilberforce left them, had she mentioned--aliette!

the chippendale clock on the mantelpiece gave a preliminary wheeze, and began chiming ten o'clock. at the sound, misgivings vanished. she--not his mother, but aliette, aliette, the very thought of whose name made the pulses hammer in his head--must no longer be kept waiting.

for a moment the shining black of the telephone fascinated ronnie's eyes; for a moment, as one meditating a great decision, he stood stock-still. then impulsively he lifted the receiver from its hook.

to his imaginative mind, the telephone became instrument of their fate. waiting for the call, he saw, as one mesmerized, all their past, all the possibilities of their future; forgetting, in that mesmeric instant, his mother, the law, brunton, everything in the world except the vivid of aliette's hair, her deep brown eyes, the poised exquisite slenderness of her.

and an instant later he heard her voice. it came to him, very clear, very deliberate, across the wires:

"is that you?"

"yes."

"you're very late."

"i'm sorry. i didn't get away from bruton street till nearly ten. are you alone?" ronnie hated himself for that question: it sounded almost furtive. but aliette's answer was the very spirit of frankness.

"yes. i'm quite alone. in the library. mollie's gone to bed. why do you ask?"

"because--there's something i want to say to you--aliette." he paused a second, mastered by emotion; then again he said: "aliette?"

"yes--ronnie."

"you're not angry with me--about thursday?"

"no." it seemed to him that he could almost see her lips move. "no. i'm not angry--with you: only with myself."

"you know----" he hesitated. "you know that i love you."

"yes, i know that." a little laugh. "it doesn't make things any easier for me, does it?"

"i want to see you again. soon. may i?"

for a long time, the wire gave no answer. at last, very faintly, as though she were thinking rather than speaking, aliette whispered: "this isn't playing the game."

"i know that. i've tried----" he could not bring himself to finish the sentence.

"oughtn't we to go on--trying?"

"no." now the man could actually vision her. it was as though she were in the room. passion--banishing hesitancy--had its way with him. "aliette! i can't go on living if i don't see you again. i've got to see you. soon. to-morrow. you will meet me, to-morrow, won't you! i can't bear the thought of another three days without you."

hesitancy returned, banishing passion. "i've offended her," he thought. "she's rung off." but after an interminable silence, aliette answered:

"where do you want me to meet you?" then, faint again, and very shy: "i've got--we've got--such a lot of things to say to one another. hadn't we--hadn't i--hadn't it better be in your rooms? i could come to you to-morrow afternoon. at about five o'clock. would that do?"

"aliette--dear----"

before ronnie could collect his wits for a further reply, he heard a whispered "good night," and the click of a replaced receiver.