BOOK III

*

_Monday_, 4 _p.m._

At last!

It's like coming home. I'm in my dear old room; with the front window looking over the beck and the willows to the sea, and the side window opening on the orchard. The trees have grown since last year; and, if I leaned out far enough, there are three rosy apples that I could pluck straight from the branch as it sways in the soft wind.

The Dupoiriers are delighted I've come. Poor things, considering the gorgeous summer, they haven't been doing over well. Yet the hotel is sweeter than ever. Those stuffy velvet curtains, that I always loathed, have been taken out of the salon. It was a bit of a shock to see the summer-house stripped of creepers and painted white: but, if it's less picturesque, it is also more possible. Last year I didn't dare to sit in it because of the earwigs.

There's a new Marie. The old Marie, with the red hair, who wouldn't more than half-fill my water-jugs, left only last week. The new Marie is a black-haired, black-eyed one, and far nicer. There's a letter for me from Alice. And, of course, there's a letter for Susan from the regrettable Ruddington. But I'm not going to bother with either of them till I've had a peep at the path that winds along the beck to the sea.

_In the summer-house_.

I do wish Alice wouldn't!

She's found out somehow that Ruddington was at the Towers all through the last week of her visit. She's quite vicious about my running away. According to her first three pages, I "must get married some day," and Lord Ruddington has been, so to speak, restored to the county by Divine Providence for the express purpose of taking pity on my old-maidhood. To scamper off to Sainte Veronique is, therefore, to fly in Providence's face. Yet, according to Alice's fourth page, my flight to France looks "far more pointed" than if I'd stolidly stuck at home.

If a mere logical triumph were worth a single drop of ink, I might twit Alice with the inconsistency. If it's true that the calculating coyness of my maiden flight has already put it into His Highness's head that I am one of the candidates, I might fairly claim Alice's praise instead of her blame.

I shouldn't care so much if Alice weren't so insistently practical. She positively wants me to race back next week; and she says she can even manage Hugh, so that he'll bring her with him, and do his bird-slaughtering at Traxelby instead of at Maxfield. No doubt she is confident that, by October the 2d, the bag will be twenty pheasants, a dozen partridges, and one Lord.

I wonder what Alice would say if I wrote straight off and told her that Lord Ruddington, to my certain knowledge, has already disposed of his charms elsewhere? I wish I could tell her. It would be such hollow, tiresome work arguing with her on every ground save the solid fact.

_Monday night_.

The Lamb in Wolf's Clothing gave me a bad twenty-four hours on the boat and in Dieppe; but he has certainly done a power of good to Susan. She hasn't got over her surprise at my not giving her a lecture and a mighty scolding; and she's brimming over with silent gratitude.

Ruddington's letter is irritating, but, in a sense, rather nice. I didn't ask Susan to show it to me. I thought it would keep very well till to-morrow. But Susan has laid it inside my blotting-case. Rather graceful of her--unless she's afraid that a personal delivery of it would remind me of Mr. John Lamb, and wake up a dormant volcano! Here is the letter:--

RUDDINGTON TOWERS,

Saturday, September 8, 1906.

MY DEAR SUSAN,--I may begin this way, may I not?

Your letter this morning has brought me unspeakable relief and happiness. When Thursday's and Friday's posts were blank, I hardly restrained myself from waylaying you at Traxelby.

As it's utterly beyond me to thank you enough for your letter, I'll try a little grumbling instead. Is it not rather cruel to say that I must not write more than once a week? Once a week for a month means only four letters in all. Sha'n't we be almost as much strangers when you come back as when you went away?

When you come back! The words make my blood, run faster. They're like the refrain of a song. When you come back! They're the music I shall march by, and live my life by, till you come.

I enter into all you say about giving you a quiet month to think and to decide. I understand, and I admire it. And yet it's almost more than I can stand. To know where you are, to have the power to join you in a few hours, and yet to be forced to serve a month's imprisonment in England, is well-nigh too much for flesh and blood. As I laid down your letter this morning, I realized that by riding hard across Ruddington Heath I could have caught you for a moment at the station. But I set your sovereign command before my eyes ... and stayed at home! Ought you not to be very nice to me for being so good and obedient? For example, don't I deserve a long letter on Tuesday?

Till you come back, and for ever, RUDDINGTON.

P.S.--Do not be angry with me for what I am going to say. Although I put it in a postscript, it is uppermost in my thoughts.

Pray don't think I'm about to try and coax you out of your month's reflection. Long and hard though I shall find it, I say. Have the month by all means. But is it necessary that you should pass the month in your present conditions?

It tortures me to know that while I will live this month in comfort and leisure, you will often find it difficult even to snatch the time for one weekly letter. Now that I know that no one else has won you, take my word for it, dearest, that no one else ever shall! Susan is going to be _my_ Susan, even if I've to take her by storm.

What follows? This. From the moment of reading your letter, I promoted myself to be your protector to our lives' end. How then can I tolerate you remaining for another hour in a servile position for which you were never born--into which some hateful freak of Fate has thrust you, and out of which it is the greatest honour of my life to rescue you? It maddens me that, perhaps at this very moment, you are being ordered about, and made to fetch and carry for somebody who isn't fit to lace your shoes.

Reading this, you can easily be angry. But bear with me. There are so many ways in which a thing like this could be arranged without unseemliness. And, surely, nothing can be more unfitting than that you should be distracted from so solemn a decision by a fussy pressure of petty tasks. I entreat you to give me the great happiness of setting you free.

R.

His gentle Lordship does not condescend to state whether, in the event of Susan being "set free," he will forthwith send me, carriage paid, a new maid as fanciable and wholesome as Susan, with feet that move about, like Susan's, as quietly as two mice. But, of course, as I'm merely "somebody not fit to lace Susan's shoes," I don't count.

To-morrow there'll be the worry of sending off an answer. What will he say when he sees Susan's own handwriting? And how shall we explain the first letter being in mine? I suppose Susan had better make a clean breast of it. I expect his infatuation is proof even against Susan's blots and pot-hooks.

Now for bed.

_Mardi; midi moins quart_.

I have drunk coffee, with a big bright soup-spoon, out of a little white bowl with pink rosebuds inside and out. Also, I have eaten four _croissants_ and a shameful quantity of Normandy butter. This was at eight o'clock. Since then I have followed the beck all the way to the sea; have bathed; have climbed the cliff; and have been to the post-office for stamps. Through the window I can see Georgette placing a blinding cut-glass decanter of fresh-drawn, foamy cider, full in the sun, on my table in the orchard. As Susan would say, "a feeling came over me" where the beck runs past the poplars. I couldn't help stamping my heel on the ground and saying, "It is true that I am back in Normandy."

After lunch, there'll be my letter to Alice. I sha'n't say anything about Ruddington, except that she mustn't go on being a tease. Then there'll be Susan's letter to the Lord of Burleigh. It would be inhuman to make him wait for it any longer.

Georgette has just brought out a melon. Its minutes are numbered. I haven't felt so hungry for ages.

I wonder what Mr. Lamb is doing, and what yarn he has spun at Amelia Road? Poor Gibson, too! If I were Susan, I think I'd send him just a Sainte Veronique post-card.

_Deo gratias!_ "_C'est servi!_"

_Tuesday night_.

I am like a bird in a net.

After lunch, Susan came to me and begged pardon for asking if I "hadn't forgotten the post."

"No," I answered, "it doesn't go out for five hours. By the way, Susan, what are you going to say to Lord Ruddington?"

Her face fell.

"Please, Miss," she said, "I was thinking ... perhaps you would write the letter for me."

"No, Susan," I replied promptly, "I can't do that. If talking it over will help you, I'm willing. I don't mind even scribbling something out in pencil. But I can't write it. Surely it's bad enough that he's had one letter in my handwriting. I wouldn't have had it happen for the world. Besides, you'll have to write the letters yourself before long, so why not face it at once? We shall need to think out some way of explaining to him why the other handwriting was different."

While I was speaking, Susan was becoming more and more agitated; and when I ceased, she didn't answer.

"Come, Susan," I said kindly.

She began to weep.

"Oh, Miss!" she sobbed, "on Friday I told you a lie. I told you that I didn't copy it out in my own writing because I didn't think----"

She stopped.

"Well?" I said, after I had waited long enough.

"I thought, Miss," sobbed Susan, "I thought ... I was afraid, if he saw my writing, he might give me up. And what you'd wrote looked so beautiful and ladylike, Miss, that----"

She couldn't go on.

"Susan," I said, "you've acted very wrongly. You've done wrong to me, and you've deceived Lord Ruddington. Worse still, you've done wrong to yourself. If he really cared for you, he wouldn't have been turned away by bad writing. But he won't admire deceit. You've taken the first step on the wrong path, and you don't know what will be the end."

I am getting to be a practised preacher. Since last Thursday, I've laid down more of the moral law than in all the rest of my life. Susan heard me in meekness.

"I know it was wicked," she said; "but oh, Miss, do please, _please_ write the letter to-day! It won't be many times more."

"If I do it one time more, I expect I shall have to do it fifty."

Susan looked mysterious.

"No, Miss," she said with assurance, "not fifty."

"Why not?" I asked. And, after some pressing, Susan confessed that she has snatched five hours from sleep since Friday for the express purpose of conforming her penmanship to the pattern of mine. She showed me some specimens, and I was astonished at the advance she had made.

"Well, Susan," I said at last, "I don't like it at all, and I'm very angry with you. But if there's any prospect of your going on improving like this in your writing, perhaps it will be as well for me to write your next two or three letters. Then I sha'n't need to be brought into the affair, so far as Lord Ruddington is concerned, at all."

Susan's gratitude was touching.

"I'll never forget how good you've been to me, Miss," she said, choking down a sob.

"Find Georgette," I said. "While she's clearing the table, bring down my writing-case. We'll do it under the trees."

Susan danced off with a skittishness that surprised me. When she came back, I asked her what she had decided to say.

"I was thinking, Miss," she said, "we might say how nice it would have been if he'd galloped over the Heath to the station. And don't you think, Miss, he would like to hear how we thought he was Mr. Lamb?"

"Never a word to him about Mr. Lamb as long as you live, Susan," I said peremptorily. "As for the Heath, it would have been very wrong of him. But how are you going to answer his postscript--this long bit at the end, all about your leaving me at once?"

"Leaving _you_, Miss?" asked Susan, mystified.

"Yes," I said, looking at her. "Don't you see? Lord Ruddington wants you to leave me at once."

Her face flushed with such genuine trouble that I forgave Susan everything, and took her back to my heart.

"Oh, no, Miss!" she cried. "I didn't understand he meant that. I wouldn't ever do that."

What Susan had taken the postscript to mean I have no notion. Nor do I know yet whether, in the near future, I shall be expected to give Susan and her spouse a suite of rooms at Traxelby, or whether she will offer me a housekeeper's place at the Towers. It is plain that she does not entertain the idea of our being parted.

I said:

"Lord Ruddington doesn't like to think that you are ... well, in any sense a servant. To put it plainly, he wants to find you money, so that you can begin to lead a lady's life at once. It does him credit. But, Susan, of course you can't take money from him. Have you saved anything?"

Susan says she has saved thirty pounds. And nothing could be sounder than the quickness and firmness with which she decided that cash transactions with Lord Ruddington just now are unthinkable. Nor can anything be more indisputable than her unweakened devotion to myself.

"You can go upstairs and practise handwriting," I told her. "Come down in about half an hour, and I shall have some sort of a letter ready."

But two half-hours passed in vain attempts to produce an epistle proper to Susan's temperament and intellect. I've realized this afternoon that I can never write a play. I tried hard to think and feel as Susan must think and feel; but I could only think and feel on my own account. At the end of an hour and a half, the best I had been able to achieve was this:--

SAINTE VERONIQUE, _Tuesday_.

Yes. You may call me "Dear Susan." But you must not say "My," until it is true.

You say it was good of you not to ride over the Heath to the station. If you had done it, I should have been grieved.

We had a smooth crossing from Newhaven, and we stayed till Monday morning in Dieppe. I like Sainte Veronique, and do not want to spend my month anywhere else.

I am not angry with you for saying what you do about setting me free. How could I be anything but grateful for an offer that is so kindly meant and so delicately made?

To ease you of your kind fears on my account, let me tell you that I have always been happy with Miss Langley; and that, during this month, I shall have little work and plenty of leisure.

I look forward to receiving another letter from you on Monday.

SUSAN BRIGGS.

"It's beautiful, Miss!" said Susan dejectedly, after she had perused my effort. And she sat looking up into the sky, the picture of disappointment and indecision. I went to the rescue.

"Say what's in your mind, Susan. There's a 'but,' isn't there? It's beautiful, but ... what?"

"I was thinking," confessed Susan blushfully, "that it isn't..."

"Isn't what?"

"It isn't ... very loving."

"Loving?" I said. "What do you mean? Why, here you are, spending a month deciding whether you can try to care for Lord Ruddington or not. It isn't time yet to be 'loving.'"

"No," persisted Susan. "But I mean, Miss, won't he be disappointed?"

"You can't help that. You might as well say that he's disappointed because you don't pack your box and go straight off to Ruddington Towers."

Susan was unconvinced.

"What did you say yourself, Susan, last week? Didn't you say that it wouldn't be good for him to throw yourself at his head?"

When Susan first used it, the expression had irritated me; but it came in handily. Susan, however, thought otherwise. A spirit of revolt entered her soul, and I perceived the beginnings of her new pout.

"Do as you like, Susan, of course," I said. "It's your affair, not mine. But don't go and make another muddle as you did with Mr. John Lamb."

It went home. Indeed, I'm not sure that Mr. John Lamb wasn't, so to speak, a wolf with a silver lining. The merest whisper of his soft and innocent name is enough to scare Susan into the extreme of docility.

"Oh, no, Miss!" she said hurriedly. "The letter's beautiful. But don't you think...?"

"What?"

"Don't you think, Miss, it would be nice to ask for his photograph and a lock of his hair?"

While I was fighting down an impulse to laugh outright, it struck me that the photograph was rather a happy thought. With his photograph to study, I should at least be spared panicky announcements and "dreadful feelings" whenever Susan saw a strange Englishman at Sainte Veronique. Besides, I had no little curiosity to see what this mad Lord Ruddington might be like.

"A lock of hair is ridiculous," I said. "You must have been reading some trashy novelette. But a photograph's different. I'm glad you've thought of it. After all, Susan, you mightn't care to marry even Lord Ruddington if you found he was dreadfully ugly. Give me back the letter, and I'll add a postscript."

I wrote:--

P.S.--I feel that I haven't written you much of a letter; but there is so little to lay hold of. As I said before, you have seen me, but I have never seen you.

Will you not send me your photograph? When it comes, perhaps I shall remember that I have seen you, after all.

Where was it that you saw me?

Taking a little more liberty than was her wont, Susan peeped shyly over my shoulder while I wrote. As I put down the pen, she heaved a deep sigh of unaffected satisfaction.

"It's lovely, Miss!" she said fervently. "That's just what I must have meant--that part about wondering where he saw me--only I couldn't explain it. And it's put so short and ladylike."

"Don't say 'ladylike,' Susan," I said. "Give me an envelope."

I wrote out Lord Ruddington's name and address in the style of handwriting I had used throughout the letter. It was my own writing; but a little bigger, inkier, and slower than usual.

"You see, Susan," I explained, "I'm meeting you halfway. By the time he's had a letter or two from me written like this, you ought to be able to do something pretty near it yourself. Now go upstairs and bring down those French stamps. They're in my green bag."

While Susan was upstairs I took the letter out of the envelope and glanced through it once more. When I got as far as "I have always been happy with Miss Langley," the oddity struck me irresistibly. It was quite too comically reminiscent of the letters which girls used to write, under the governess's eye and at the governess's dictation, protesting their ideal happiness at school.

There was just time. I picked up the pen and wrote sideways along the margin of the letter:--

I suppose you think my mistress calls me "Briggs."

When Susan arrived with the stamps, the letter was back in its envelope, the flap was gummed down, and I was blinking peacefully at the sunlight on the sea.

_Wednesday, noon_.

I suppose it's true that every country gets the Government it deserves. But the maxim, like nearly all the maxims I've ever heard, is a heartless one.

Without doubt, France just now has got the Government which France deserves, as a whole. But the whole is made up of parts; and, unless my travels have misled me, there must be thousands of parts of France like Sainte Veronique. I have seen a dozen myself--rural communities, working hard and living decently, with the slated spire of their hoary parish church looking down upon them, as it looked down ages ago on their direct ancestors who first drained the valleys and set vines upon the hillsides. Here live and toil the men, and, more remarkable still, here live and toil and suffer the women, whose hard earnings are the war-chest of France when the professional politicians of Paris wantonly thrust the nation into some vainglorious adventure. Here was made and saved the treasure with which the invader was bought out when his armies were everywhere masters of French soil. And here are bred the supplies of sound human stuff--the healthy bodies, the healthy souls--to redress the awful balance of the towns, and to save France from becoming a ruin amid stinging weeds and insolent poppies.

Even an atheist statesman, if he's as truly a statesman as he's truly an atheist, ought to know that, in striking at the village churches, he is striking at the heart of French rural life; and that, in wounding French rural life in a vital spot, he will be severing arteries where Bismarck and Von Moltke only lanced small veins.

This morning has made me so sad. The sweet little white convent is shut up, the garden is full of nettles, two of the chapel windows are broken, the nuns are in England, and the lawyers have grown fat on the pickings. At the church, the statue of St. Veronica, over the west door, has a broken arm--snapped off on the day of the inventory. Meanwhile the weeks are drifting by; and, for all the old cure knows, he will be saying Mass in a barn before the winter is half over.

I mean to say, now and again, what France's million officials, from the President of their so free Republic down to the Saint Veronique postman, daren't say publicly and aloud in this land of liberty. I mean to say: "God save France!"

_Thursday afternoon_.

I wish Master Ruddie's photograph would come.

This morning, about eleven, a young Englishman suddenly walked in with a knapsack. The funny thing was that he didn't come by the road. He marched here straight from the beach, as if he'd just been thrown up by Jonah's whale.

He was a nice boy, and quite all right. Not another Mr. John Lamb. It seems he's tramping a hundred miles along the coast by the cliff-paths and the sands. He was dying to talk to me at lunch. Indeed, he looked even hungrier and thirstier for human companionship than for his omelette and roast chicken and cider, which is saying a very great deal. Now that it's too late, I'm sorry I didn't let him talk.

All the time he was here, Susan was nearly as silly as she was on the boat. She got it into her head that, as Ruddington wrote here on Saturday (thinking we were coming straight through), he must have been upset when Tuesday morning came without a letter; and that therefore the pretty boy with the knapsack was certainly he.

I was obliged to be very sharp with her. Heaven send the photograph soon! Because I will admit to this diary, when Susan has "a feeling" I can't help catching the complaint.

_Before dinner_.

It's just come. The photograph and a letter as well.

He says the photograph was only taken yesterday morning. It's a local thing, not retouched: so I suppose we can depend on it as a faithful likeness. If so, I must say I like him tremendously.

Susan is disappointed that he has no moustache. He looks like a young and fresh version of some handsome and benevolent Judge or Cardinal. He isn't the least bit flabby or silly-looking, as I expected. He has a scholar's head, but he's evidently a man of energy as well as of thought. I should say he has a tremendous will of his own. He doesn't look the sort to have fallen over ears in love with a china shepherdess like Susan at first sight. But there's the fact. And, although the stupid girl can't see it, and "never thought he would be like that, Miss," I don't know many women that wouldn't feel it a compliment to have him in love with them, either at the first sight, or the second, or the fiftieth. He looks handsome without being dandified, and brainy without being dry.

His letter this time is less old-fashioned and more easy. He says:--

MA CHERE SUZANNE,--You have commanded me not to say "My dear Susan," and behold! I obey.

I'm sorry to say it: but my dear Susan--I mean ma chere Suzanne--has a hard heart. Her letter to tell me that she's landed safe in Normandy without being shipwrecked or run over by a motor-car, only reached me this (Wednesday) morning: and, if I hadn't ridden into Derlingham and fished it up out of the post-office, I shouldn't have got it till to-morrow. If Suzanne were kind, she would have sent one line on Sunday.

It is an enormous relief to know that you are not hard-worked or unhappy. When I saw Miss Langley with you (once outside Traxelby Church, and twice in the street), I thought she seemed rather nice--though, to tell the truth, I didn't waste time looking at Miss Langley, when I could spend it looking at Suzanne.

Now about this horrible photograph. I've always hated photography and always shall. But your commands must be obeyed. So I went into the "studio" of the Derlingham "artist." The "artist" was a pasty-faced youth in a velvet coat with Byronic curls that must take hours every night. He wanted to do his worst, and to turn out something elaborate that wouldn't be ready for a week: but I gave him a maximum of three hours, and he has handed me the enclosed.

I expect a long answer to this, telling me all your doings, by return of post. And I shall be the most injured man in all England if Suzanne's own photograph is not enclosed with her long letter. More than ever, I am your RUDDINGTON.

"I like this letter, Susan," I said, putting it down again on the table.

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, without enthusiasm. And, after a pause, she added, "But don't you think, Miss, it begins rather funny?"

"No," I answered. "I think the beginning is rather neat. You've forgotten. In our last letter we told him he might call you Dear Susan, but he mustn't call you My. So, instead of calling you 'My,' he says he's going to call you 'Ma.'"

"Is that it?" asked Susan, pouting. "Well, I don't think I like it. That's what my uncle Bob used to call my aunt Martha."

"Your uncle Bob?" I echoed, stupefied.

"Yes, Miss. He called my aunt 'Ma,' and she called him 'Pa.' I don't like it, Miss. It sounds common."

When I had recovered enough gravity, I tried, for the twentieth time, to give Susan a rudimentary lesson in French. She endured my efforts with deference; but, underneath, I could see that her rustic British prejudice against France and all things French is unshaken. I honestly believe that, in Susan's opinion, to have set foot in France at all is a slight lapse from propriety, and a loss of the finest bloom from the soft cheek of one's maiden virtue. In France, the silly creature won't even touch beef, just because of some stupid tale of Gibson's about a roast horse. She firmly believes that out-and-out Frenchmen eat bullfrogs toasted whole on a fork; and that the French language is a ludicrous disability imposed on the natives by a strictly Protestant Deity as a just punishment for being papists and foreigners. Susan doesn't intend to lower herself by learning French any more than by learning to stammer, or to swear.

"What about your photograph, Susan?" I inquired, changing the subject. "You see he wants one. Did you happen to bring one with you?"

"No, Miss. It's two years since I had it took."

"Taken. Not took. Then what are you going to do?"

"I don't know, Miss."

"You ought to oblige him," I said. "Don't be so limp. Look at the trouble he took to get you his own portrait the very same day. I'm almost sure there's a photographer at Grandpont. Madame will know. It's only three miles. We'll go in the morning."

"Oh no, Miss!" gasped Susan, fluttering suddenly into liveliness. "Not in France, Miss!"

"Why not in France?"

"I shouldn't like to be photographed in France, Miss," said Susan decidedly. For a moment I almost felt as if I had proposed mixed bathing to the rector's virgin aunt. To be photographed in France sounded a degree or two worse than going to church _decolletee_. But a moment later I felt impatient and annoyed.

"Very well, Susan," I said shortly. "You may be sure I don't want to drag myself to Grandpont. Do whatever you please."

As usual, she became immediately and amply and sincerely penitent.

"It was very kind of you, Miss," she said humbly. "You're always too good to me. But I feel I couldn't go and be photographed in France."

"Then don't go and be photographed in France," I said, still ruffled. "So far as I'm concerned, it's settled and done with. Now I want to read the newspaper."

I could see with half an eye that there were uncountable things which Susan was yearning to talk over; but I was nearly at the end of my good-nature. With the little that remained, I tried to let Susan down gently. I picked up Lord Ruddington's photograph again and said:

"At any rate, you can't find much fault with his looks."

"No, Miss," responded Susan tepidly, "but I did think he would have a moustache."

_Friday, sunrise_.

An apple-branch has tapped at my window, and a lark is singing eagerly in the near sky.

This shall be a good day--as rosy as the apple's cheeks, as blithe as the lark's song. I hereby register a vow against Ruddington and all his words and works. We needn't send him his answer till to-morrow. So, to-day, Susan sha'n't mention him and I won't even think of him.

Somebody's left a clean, new, cheap copy of _Les Chouans_ here. How I shall love reading it again. Except while I'm bathing and eating and sleeping, I mean to sit and read it on the cliffs all day.

_After breakfast_.

After all, Susan is awfully sweet. One can't stand aloof from her long.

While she was downstairs before breakfast allowing Georgette to practise on her in broken English, I went into her room to find a pair of scissors. As usual, it was as neat and nice as if it hadn't been slept in. But the thing that struck me was a leather photograph-frame on the mantelpiece.

I recognized the frame. It was a double one, which I had given Susan because I hated the colour. In the left-hand compartment Susan had placed the newly arrived photograph of Lord Ruddington. And facing him, on the right hand, was----Me!

It was that thing I got done last Easter. Until this morning, I'd forgotten that Susan had pleaded for a copy and that I had let her have one for her album. Suddenly to catch sight of myself beaming affectionately across the hinges of the frame at an equally affectionate-looking Lord Ruddington, was certainly a shock. But that Susan should have brought me all the way from England and have stuck me on her mantelpiece was another proof, though none was needed, of her genuine devotion.

I took the frame down and held it open in my hands. It was too comical. Ruddington and I are placed in ovals, like the August Young Personages in a Royal Wedding Supplement to an illustrated paper; and we are looking at one another with the most absurd happy-couple air imaginable. "Though I say it as shouldn't," we make an amazingly pretty pair. If Alice could see it, she would begin to cry.

I think I sha'n't tell Susan that I've seen it.

_Noon_.

I haven't read much of the _Chouans_. After my bathe, I kept Susan with me on the cliff. The grass was green, the sky was blue, and the sea was both. It was lovely to loll on the flowers and to listen to the sea--its deep speech at the cliff's foot, its soft murmurs in the sunlit distance.

Susan thinks Ruddington ought to tell her more about himself, and his conditions of life, both at the Towers and in town. I think she's right. Now that she's getting used to her good fortune, her talk has suddenly improved. She's dropping that raw and childish way of hers, and some of the things she said were quite sensible. If she goes on improving like this, she ought to be tolerably presentable at the month's end. No doubt it will take years to fill the gaping breaches in her knowledge; and her mind can never, from its very nature, expand enough to make her an all-round companion for such a man as Ruddington seems to be. But I take it that a grain or two of common-sense will be found mixed with his infatuation; and, if so, he will be prepared for a good deal of disenchantment. As for Susan, she'll always be pretty, and restful, and docile, and sweet: which means that if he is losing some things he is gaining others.

Alas, poor Gibson! I'm afraid his dreams are standing a poor chance of coming true. It's selfish of me not to have sent him a prudent line. I'll do it to-day. I'll tell him simply that all's well with Susan; and perhaps he will guess that all's up with himself.

_Eight o'clock_.

I walked alone this afternoon to Berigny. The hamlet was deserted--or, at least, it looked so. The thatched black-and-white barns stood out sturdily in the bright, strong light, and Berigny wore all its old prosperous air. But there wasn't a single body to be seen. I suppose every one was in the fields, or gone to market.

The church was open. I sat in it a few minutes: it was so cool and quiet. If I had felt suddenly tempted to steal an image, or to rob the box of Peter's Pence, there was none to say me nay.

The Berigny churchyard looked sweeter than ever. I like it better than any other I have seen in France, because it is full of natural shrubs and flowers. There are hardly any of those frightful wire crosses and tin immortelles and iron wreaths, as big as cart-wheels, such as you see in dozens everywhere else. And the Berigny churchyard isn't _triste_. As you sit on the warm stone platform of the Calvary, you look down over the orchards to the facing uplands--pastures of green velvet, wildly embroidered with, a million yellow flowers. Even the graves are not melancholy. It doesn't seem any more dreadful that the men and women of Berigny should be fast asleep, like children in the bosom of their mother earth, than that last year's beech-leaves and pine-needles should be lying quietly under the ceaseless murmurs of this year's cool and shady green. Cheerful sounds arise from the valley as you sit and look down. There is blue smoke curling from one or two of the chimneys. Between the surges of light wind you can just hear the voice of the beck as it sings on its way down to Sainte Veronique. No, Berigny churchyard is not melancholy: for in the midst of death you are in life.

There is a strange thing about some of the gravestones which I didn't notice when I was here before. Or, rather, I oughtn't to call them stones. They are woods. Over the humbler tombs stand rude memorials, each consisting of two short, slightly ornamented posts with a short broad plank fastened between. The plank is painted white; and upon it, in black letters, are displayed the name and age and birth-and-death dates of the man or woman asleep below.

At the bottom of each inscription there is an abbreviated formula which puzzled me sorely. It runs: "Un D. P. s. v. p." Not until I had almost given up trying to guess what it might mean, was the riddle solved. Behind the chancel I found a larger and newer grave on which the legend was spelt out at large in full: "Un De Profundis, s'il vous plait."

It filled my eyes so full with sudden tears that the solid world seemed to be wavering and dissolving as I beheld it. And, at the same time, the dim mysterious world beyond seemed suddenly clear and near. It was no longer the wind in the pines that I heard: it was a multitudinous whispering of spirit-voices pleading close to my ear: "If you please!"

I am wondering to-night whether I ever really and truly believed until to-day in the immortality of the soul. I am wondering whether I have ever done more than assent to the doctrine mechanically as a part of my childhood's creed, and as a postulate on which rest many familiar things in our literature and civilization.

Yes and No. In a sense I have believed, in a sense I have not. Until to-day, I have only thought of the disembodied soul in one or other of three different ways. I have thought of the soul as a cold abstraction, a philosopher's name for an antithesis to the body. Again, after I've listened to ghost-tales, I've thought of it ignobly--as a horror, a scary, frightful spook, a foul shape of night swooping horribly across the short sunlit path of our little life to remind us of the immeasurable cold and unending dark beyond. Last of all, after some stately obsequies, I've thought of the soul as living some supernal, Gothic life in a churchly heaven--a heaven where the sky is not a dome, but a pointed roof resounding for ever and ever and ever with Gregorian chants. That is to say, at the best I have imagined the soul clothed in a mediaeval vestment, and living exaltedly, in an incalculable remoteness from to-day's crowded world of living and breathing women and men.

"A De Profundis ... if you please!" I suppose many people would find the "if you please" either ludicrous or irreverent, or both. At one time I might not have found anything in it myself, beyond a charming rustic _naivete_. But this afternoon the truth rushed over me in a flood. The souls of the faithful departed are not thirteenth-century souls: they are not the shivering, pitiable ghosts such as engaged the fancy of savage men ten thousand years ago, or the still weaker brains of the Spiritualists of yesterday: they are not mere fictions of the philosopher, invented for convenience of argument. They live and rejoice and sorrow in an intensity of present being. To-night, I believe in the Communion of Saints. They exist as truly as the little black-haired child exists who stopped me outside Berigny and said "s'il vous plait" when she asked me the time: as truly as Georgette when she says "if you please" and lays the cloth: as truly as Susan when she says "Please, do _please_, Miss," over a letter to Ruddington.

This afternoon, I couldn't say a "De Profundis" for the departed faithful of Berigny because I'm too much of a heathen to have been taught it. But, before Sunday, I mean to buy a _paroissien_ containing all these things, in French and Latin.

When I say my "De Profundis," can it do them any good? I don't know. Millions of people say it can't. But more millions of people say it can. And if I make a mistake, I would rather make it in giving than in withholding: just as it is better to say "Yes" to the beggar who may waste your sixpence on beer, than to say "No" to the beggar who may lie down and die for want of bread.

_Bedtime_.

What an irony!

This is the day when there was to be no Ruddington--the day that was to be as rosy as apples and as blithe as a lark.

As for Ruddington, I have only just finished re-reading his letter, which Susan has put by way of a hint in my writing-case.

As for rosiness and blitheness, I've spent my afternoon and evening like Hervey--I wonder if anybody ever read any more of his book than the title?--in Meditations Among the Tombs. My day has been ghost-wan, tomb-silent.

No. It has been as full of colour and of sound as could be. But the colours have been the grand and solemn hues of autumn, and the sounds have been majestical as organs and trumpets. To-day I have not been gay. But I have been happy. And I can't name any day at Sainte Veronique that I repent of less than this.

_Saturday morning_.

This is the answer I have written for Susan to send by the early post:--

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--I am so sorry that you were anxious about me. But you must not forget the bargain. And the bargain does not allow of long replies "by return." Indeed, in writing this morning, I am breaking my own rule. When this is posted, I shall have received and answered two letters in one week.

Do not think me grudging or cold-blooded in standing fast to our arrangement. If letters are too frequent they will be short and scrappy, and thus they will fail of their object. For example, nothing could be more devoted and kind than your two notes this week; but they tell me so little about yourself, and hardly anything at all about your daily life, your thoughts, your work, your interests. At present I know no more about you than all Traxelby knew before you came to the Towers.

It is true there is the photograph, which I like very much--though you don't in the least resemble the picture my mind had formed! You were good to take all that trouble in Derlingham so as to get it done so quickly.

Unfortunately, I have no photograph of myself here, and there is no artist, not even a pasty-faced one, in Sainte Veronique. But why should you want my portrait if you have seen me three times?

I sha'n't expect an answer from you "by return;" but I _shall_ expect your next week's letter to tell me more about yourself and your life.

Yours sincerely, SUSAN BRIGGS.

Susan thinks my letter is beautiful, as usual. Or, if she doesn't think so, she says she does. But to know that she needn't be photographed in France has lifted such a weight off her spirits that she is prepared to be delighted with everything. After the first shock and the second explanation, she went up into heaven at finding that it was "proper" to say "Dear Lord Ruddington." Perhaps she expected me to begin the letter by calling him "Pa!"

It's all very amusing. But I must keep a watch on myself lest I take it too prankishly. After the future Lady Ruddington had graciously signified her approval of my reply to her noble owner, she went upstairs for her hat, and, while she was away, a madcap impulse got the better of me, just as it did on Tuesday. I picked up the pen and wrote along the margin:--

I was amused about those Byronic curls. But what do _you_ know about them taking hours to do at night?

Now that it's too late, and Susan is on her way to the post-office, I do wish I hadn't said it. For half a dozen reasons, it was a mad thing to do.

His portrait is still facing mine in the leather frame. I took a peep at it just now when I came upstairs for this diary. And we've still got the same sort of a "Good-morning, Dear," honeymoon expression. I positively blushed, and put it down again as if it had been red hot.

I must see that Susan plods away at her handwriting--or, rather, at mine! It's plain now that Ruddington is in love with Susan, and that he means to marry her. Also, it's plain that Susan means to marry Lord Ruddington, whether she succeeds in falling in love with him or not. Up to the present no great harm is done, but I must wriggle out of the affair somehow before his letters become intimate and affectionate.

Poor, poor Gibson! I've written him a line, and shall post it myself.

_Sunday, noon_.

For the sake of his peace of mind, let us hope that Ruddington is Low Church. If he isn't, Susan will soon be on his nerves. There's precious little kneeling down and standing up at the Sainte Veronique parish Mass; but this morning I had to prod or pluck at Susan half a dozen times. When we came out she made wistful comparisons with Traxelby, and declared that she did so miss "a nice service."

Perhaps Ruddington is neither Low nor High. He says that one of the times when he saw Susan was in church. But Traxelby isn't his parish: so he must have been hunting Susan, not saving his soul.

I've given up wrestling with the _Chouans_. I'd forgotten the early part was so dry. Besides, it's nicer to potter about, and think and dream, not to mention that novel-reading is wicked on a Sunday.

_Monday morning_.

Susan has been difficult again. I'm sorry for her.

Last night she suddenly developed the liveliest interest in dress. In the past she hasn't been a girl to care excessively about it. That's why she has always looked so nice. But, last night, she said:

"I've been thinking, Miss, what ought I to wear the first time I go to see him?"

"You mean, Susan," I answered, "what ought you to wear the first time he comes to see _you_."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan absently. "I was thinking it would be nice if I had one of those cherry-coloured zephyrs, with elbow sleeves and a white sash."

I smiled.

"Do you think you can depend on yourself not to blush, Susan," I asked, "when he looks at you and speaks to you?"

"Oh no, Miss, I can't," answered Susan in a panic. "I shall be sitting, all the time, wanting the ground to open and swallow me."

"Then I don't think you should go in for anything cherry-coloured," I suggested. And I tried to go on with _Les Chouans_.

"Perhaps blue alpaca would be better, Miss," broke out Susan again, after long reflection. "Blue alpaca, made plain, with a little train. I could wear that lace collar you gave me, Miss, and have my hair done more on the top of my head."

"You'd look very nice, I'm sure, Susan," I replied. "But, if I were you, I shouldn't do anything of the kind. I suppose it will be at the Grange that you'll see him first. Some arrangement will have to be made. If so, it ought to please him best to see you as he saw you at Traxelby church."

I went on again with _Les Chouans_. Or, to be strictly truthful, I fixed my eyes again on the page.

"I beg your pardon, Miss," Susan began humbly, after five minutes of quiet; "but shall we be married in Traxelby church?"

"Most decidedly not," I answered, so emphatically that Susan positively jumped. "I haven't the ghost of a notion where in the world you'll be married. But it mustn't be Traxelby. Lord Ruddington will propose some suitable arrangement, and I shall see that it is satisfactory. Besides, all this can be talked over later on. It will be time enough to choose where you'll be married to Lord Ruddington when you've made up your mind whether you're going to marry him at all."

The bride began to pout.

I decided swiftly that it was high time to bring matters to a head. Traxelby church, indeed!

As likely as not, Susan would expect me to be a bridesmaid, with Uncle Bob giving her away, and Aunt Martha calling him "Pa." So I shut up the _Chouans_ with a snap and put the question straight.

"Tell me, Susan. Have you made up your mind? If you've settled it that you mean to marry Lord Ruddington, we shall know where we are."

The pout vanished, and she hung her head. At last she answered:

"Yes, Miss. I mean, I'm not sure yet, Miss. But I'm sure that I shall be sure before long."

"Sure that you'll marry him?"

"Yes, Miss. I mean ... I think I shall."

I could get no more out of her, and in the end I turned surlier and snappier than I care to remember. Susan went to bed looking miserable.

This morning my conscience woke up as early as I did. Earlier: for it was wide awake while I was still half asleep, and I groped out into consciousness with a sense of recent meanness and unkindness to Susan. The more I woke, the clearlier I saw how natural it was of Susan, who knows no French and can speak with nobody here save me, to want to talk frocks.

When she came in at seven o'clock to open the curtains, I said in my friendliest tone:

"Well, Susan, I suppose you've decided to be married in white, with orange-blossoms and a veil?"

To my consternation she remained at the window, and did not turn round. Then she plunged for the door into her own room, and as she seized the handle, I heard a sob.

I jumped up and followed her to the threshold.

"Come, come, Susan!" I said. "You mustn't have such a thin skin. I never meant to hurt your feelings."

"You haven't, Miss," sobbed Susan, standing near me, but not showing her face. "It isn't you, Miss. But I can't bear it!"

"You can't bear what?"

"All of it, Miss. None of it. I woke up and thought about it in the night. It's dreadful!"

I couldn't guess what Susan couldn't bear, or what it was that was dreadful, and it didn't seem wise to press her. So I said nothing.

"You'll take cold, Miss," she cried, when she cast her first glance at me. And she bundled me back into bed.

I told her that she needn't have her breakfast with Georgette, and that she ought to drink chocolate instead of coffee.

"You'd better have a quiet day," I added. "This matter is getting on your brain. Give it a rest. That was one reason why I wanted you to wait a whole month. There's no need to brood over it day and night. The month has still three weeks to run."

She dried her eyes and was ever so grateful. But I am puzzled. Last night she seemed (as she has seemed all along) to take it as a matter of course that she will marry Ruddington. Her attitude has been that of a pretty, honest, modest, prosaic girl with an eye on the main chance. To find her suddenly all sensibility is a surprise.

Probably it isn't sensibility. It's nerves. Too much coffee: not enough sleep. Too much of her own thoughts: not enough human fellowship at a time when she sorely needs it.

Yet I can't overlook that she was disappointed with his photograph. It may well be that, in her better moments, my sweet Susan shrinks from marrying when she cannot love. Or is it that she is cowed by the difficulties of so huge a change in her rank and station? She shall have an easy day.

_Tuesday_, 10.15 _a.m._

The Lord Ruddington would be speaking no more than the truth if he always signed himself Susan's Most Obedient Servant. He has been as prompt with his pen-and-ink _Selbstbildniss_ as he was with the pasty-faced artist's photograph. He says:

MA SUZANNE,--It is Monday morning. When I have finished this, I shall have written you once this week; once last week (the Wednesday), and once the week before (on the Saturday). Yet I am scolded for breaking the rules. You must send me an exceptionally kind letter to soothe my wounded feelings.

It was unpardonably careless of me not to forward full particulars and references when I first applied for the post of Protector to Suzanne. But I have to-day filled up a form and am enclosing it with this. References are kindly permitted to the Derlingham photographer and to Mrs. Juggins, the housekeeper at Ruddington Towers.

I have taken conscientious pains to fill up the form correctly. For instance, I squandered a whole penny this morning weighing myself on an automatic machine at Derlingham station. To be precise, I have squandered tuppence; because the first machine which I bribed refused to weigh me, and insisted on presenting me with a bar of chocolate cream instead.

The news that you can't send me your portrait is desolating. It is another reason why you must be extra kind.

All your letters are precious. But I like the little bits you write up the sides best. Why can't I have a letter made up of little side-bits only?

RUDDINGTON.

The "enclosed form" is a formidable-looking sheet of blue foolscap divided into columns for questions and answers. It reads:

S. B. No. 999.

1. Names (Christian Henry Reginald Westerton and Surname), with Assheleigh, Ninth Baron Title or Titles, if any. Ruddington.

2. Address or Addresses. Ruddington Towers, Sussex; Assheleigh House, St. Michael's Square, S.W.; Ballymore Castle, County Kerry.

3. Age. 23 171/365 years.

4. Has applicant He has heard so. had whooping-cough?

5. Or Measles? One. If so, how many?

6. Weight. 10 st. 8 lb. (Includes 2.1739 oz. of letters from Suzanne, in left-side breast-pocket at time of weighing.)

7. Can applicant read? No need to. Suzanne so seldom writes.

8. Can applicant write? Yes. Once a week.

9. What are applicant's Not Tory. Conservative. politics? More liberal than the Liberals, less radical than the Radicals.

10. What are applicant's Waiting for Suzanne's pursuits? letters. Until last month, spent leisure studying Spanish history and literature.

11. Personal appearance. Quite as bad as Derlingham photograph. Probably worse.

12. Hair. Brownish-black; or blackish-brown.

13. Eyes. Blue.

14. Does applicant ride? Every day.

15. Does applicant swim? Yes.

16. Does applicant fish? Yes.

17. Does applicant hunt? Not much.

18. Does applicant swear? Now and then. Is prepared to give it up.

19. Does applicant drink? Half a bottle of claret twice a day.

20. Does applicant smoke? Not before 1.50 p.m. If Suzanne objects, he confesses that he objects to her objecting.

21. Has applicant a Hates them. But will learn motor-car? to love them if Suzanne does.

22. Additional remarks. Is bad-tempered, impatient, obstinate, and self-opinionated. Has no first-hand knowledge of the time it takes to prepare Byronic (or other) curls o' nights. Has not been in love before. Hasn't a Past. And hasn't a Future either, unless it's to be spent with Suzanne.

I don't know yet what Susan thinks of these documents. She has left them on my table without remark.

At the first glance I didn't like them. They smacked too much of the funny man labouring to be smart. But, after a second reading, I like them. After all, the poor boy couldn't very well sit down with a serious face and write out his own testimonial in cold ink. His wit might be sprightlier: but I begin to discern the gravity underlying it. His way of bringing it in that he has no Past, no entanglements, no old flames, is skilful and considerate. Perhaps this is the very point Susan has been worrying about. Who knows? Perhaps she has been fearing that she isn't the first simple beauty that his lordship has taken by storm. Perhaps she thinks he is an old-style lord, with a pretty taste in milk-maids, and therefore not much better than a new-style lord with a nasty appetite for ladies of the ballet.

Whatever am I to say if Susan asks me what he means by the little bits written up the sides?

_Tuesday_, 3 _p.m._

My bathe made me tired. I sha'n't go out again to-day.

Susan is wooden-headed past belief. I was amused for a few moments at the odd comments she made on Ruddington's letter; but her dulness grows monotonous. She began:

"Don't you think, Miss, that ... that he writes rather strange?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean, Miss," whispered Susan mysteriously, "do you think he's ... quite right in his head?"

"Well, Susan," I answered, "when one looks at the way he runs after a girl whom he's never spoken to, I admit it does make one wonder if he isn't a bit mad."

Susan pouted.

"I mean his letter, Miss," she said. "And this big blue paper."

"As for his letters, Susan," I replied, "I don't see much wrong with them. Aren't they bright, and frank, and kind?"

"Why does he say, Miss, that he's named Henry?"

"Simply because Henry is his name."

"But lords don't have any names, Miss, do they? I mean they only have surnames."

I asked for light.

"It was Mrs. Hobbs, the cook, that told me, Miss," Susan explained. "Mrs. Hobbs said that a lord could only have a surname--as it might be Ruddington--and the King could only have a Christian name--as it might be Edward. That's the difference, Miss, between a king and a lord--one can only have a Christian name, and the other can only have a surname. So how can he be named Henry?"

When I had finished laughing, I said:

"Susan, you remember Mrs. Hobbs's dreadful mousseline sauce? Till to-day, I would never have believed that there was any subject in the heavens above or in the earth beneath, about which Mrs. Hobbs knew less than she did about cooking. I was wrong."

"If he's proper Lord Ruddington, Miss, I don't see how he can be named Henry," persisted Susan doggedly. "I wonder, Miss, ought we to write to Mrs. Juggins?"

"Mrs. Juggins?"

"Yes, Miss. He says she's the housekeeper at the Towers."

Positively the stupid creature believed that Lord Ruddington had seriously referred her to an actually existing dame of the name of Juggins. Really, I haven't the patience to set down half the ridiculous things she said. She is certain that her letters don't weigh "all those ounces." She is aghast at the bad temper and obstinacy, which must truly be traits in Ruddington's character, "because he admits it, Miss, himself." She is surprised that he should be brooding so bitterly over his wasted tuppence; "though they do say, Miss, that the richer people are, the meaner they are in little things, and that's why they've got rich." She is not romantically _exaltee_ at the news that he has never loved another. But she is grateful that he has got safely over the measles; because "Uncle Bob had them after he was grown up, and I did think, Miss, it looked so silly." And so on, and so on, and so on.

At last I begged her to stop chattering and sent her away. I can't understand her. Susan has always been unsophisticated, but it's something fresh for her to be vulgarly stupid and thick-headed.

The outlook is disconcerting. My letter-writing on her behalf gives Ruddington a false notion of her knowledge and her mental power. So long as she retains her charming simplicity no great harm will be done; for, after he is disillusionized about her brains, he can easily fall in love afresh with her _naivete_. But this flat-footed, Hodge-like, charmless stupidity is quite another story.

She's too stupid even to ask about the little side-bits.

_Waiting for tea_.

It may be that the fears which kept Susan awake last night have frozen her wits. She has the air of dreading close quarters with this affair; of wanting to thrust it off an arm's-length while she gets time to think. I mustn't be too hard on her. The girl is passing through an ordeal; and I am a poor substitute for a mother or even for a bosom friend.

_Wednesday morning_.

I have taken a resolve.

There's been too much Ruddington. The inroads he makes on my Normandy rest-cure are absurd. I get my sun-bath and sea-bath every day; and that's all. It's time to put down my foot.

Fortunately, Susan agrees with me. She does not tell me why she has so suddenly fallen out of love with the idea of being raised to the peerage. It may be that she quails and shrinks from a destiny that is altogether out of scale with her nature. More probably it is some trifle, such as Ruddington's moustachelessness. But, although she gives no reasons, she agrees with me that it will be best to take the thing less busily for the next fortnight. I've pointed out to her that she knows as much about him now as she needs to know. It isn't as though she has to decide, here at Sainte Veronique, whether she will marry Lord Ruddington. She has only to settle whether she will let him see her next month face to face--whether she will let him press in person a suit which she will still be free to refuse.

We have decided that I shall write him a letter to-day such as will keep him quiet, and stop him bothering us. Then I shall be able to take a deep draught of my Normandy, as I take deep draughts of the cider. I have been here well over a week, and I hardly seem to have had one day free of him.

_Later_.

Here is my letter to her Henry, and it's going to be posted whether Susan likes it or not:

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--Your letter and the big blue form amused me very much. It is interesting to have such an assortment of fresh facts about you--especially the obstinacy and the bad temper.

It is good news that you hate motor-cars. Nor should we become estranged over tobacco. But these are trifles, aren't they?

I hope you will not think that I am taking myself too seriously, or that I am unthankful for the trouble you take in writing such kind and open and lively letters. But (now that I have your photograph and know so much more about you) I am conscious of a desire for a week or so of detachment from details. I feel that I would like to go about my ordinary life until some light breaks on me suddenly and of its own accord. The more I deliberately seek light, the more it mocks and eludes me. I suppose the reason is that no amount of steadily "making up" one's mind can suffice instead of a free involuntary motion of the heart.

As you wrote to me on Monday, you would not in any case be writing again till Monday next. I like to have your letters; but, if you postpone your reply to this until rather late next week, I shall have the better chance of deciding whether we ought to meet or not.

Yours sincerely, SUSAN BRIGGS.

_After lunch_.

The letter's gone.

Susan says she likes it.

I liked it too, until it was dropped into the post-box. But, at this moment, I am vainly asking myself what had become of my brains while I was writing it. It's the un-Susanishest letter that even _my_ undramatic pen has compassed. Think of Susan being "conscious of a desire for detachment from details!" I can as easily imagine her ordering a grilled ichthyosaurus for breakfast.

Still, it's gone. And now I shall have a week's peace.

It seems the Belgian people who have had Dupoirier's Villa de la Mer for the season left yesterday. Dupoirier is cleaning up the blue-and-white bathing-hut on the beach. He's going to give me the key, and, if I like, I can stay down by the sea all day, so long as the weather's fine.

_The Bathing-hut, Thursday afternoon_.

This is perfect.

The bright-faced sea is crooning to itself like a happy child. The day is warm. Inland, it must be torrid.

I have had two dips, one snooze, and about three-quarters of a lunch. It would have been a lunch and a half if Georgette hadn't tripped over a stone on the way down and dropped the wing of a chicken into the beck. But the prawns, and the cold veal, with sauce remoulade, and the great big pear, were quite enough if I hadn't grown so disgustingly greedy.

Off and on, I've read several square yards of French newspapers since ten o'clock. There seems to be a curse resting on all newspapers that are sold for a ha'penny, never mind what country they belong to. I feel as Susan felt when she missed "a nice service" after the parish Mass at Sainte Veronique church.

The best part of everything is to lie full back in the deck-chair and to look up at the larks in the sky. It's nice, too, to gaze over the blue-green water and to know there's a hundred miles of it between us and that worry of a Ruddington. I'm afraid he'll write a dozen pages on Monday. But, until the poor little fellow begins kicking and screaming for his Susan to be given to him at once, I can sit here while the wind and the sun mend my nerves and smooth the past fortnight's wrinkles out of my offended brow.

_Friday night_.

Henry Reginald has written. The sight of his envelope made me so angry that I nearly tore it open without waiting for Susan. After reading his outpouring I can't altogether blame him; but I am being badly treated by Fate. Things are worse muddled than ever.

He says:

MY DEAR SUSAN,--Seeing my handwriting again so soon, you will think that I am flouting your wishes. Not so. After I have finished this, I promise not to write you another line till you expressly give me leave.

From my own selfish point of view, I have known all along that I was foolish in pleading my cause by post instead of with the living voice. But to write seemed fairer to yourself; though I confess I could not have been easily content with letters had I known you were going to France.

In asking for a week of detachment, you are right. Indeed, I feel you have been most exquisitely right at every turn of my rude assault upon your peace. Therefore I agree, much as I shall miss your letters.

You think your letters have disappointed me; and I can discern that it is a pain to you to write them till they can flow from you more freely. But let me tell you why I prize them far more than I expected.

The day I first saw you with Miss Langley was a Saturday. You simply swept me off my feet. I had no more choice as to whether I should love you all my life or not than a cork has a choice between floating and sinking. It was the Derlingham banker who told me who you were. All that evening I sat alone in the dark, thinking. Or, rather, I didn't think. I just sat and looked, like a man in a trance, at the new world which had unrolled itself suddenly, solidly, splendidly right across the whole field of my vision.

I had always believed that love at first sight was out of my line. Indeed, I had believed that, nowadays, it was out of everybody's line; and I had suspected that, outside the romances, there had never been any such thing in the world. I had even begun to indulge a certain pride in my fastidiousness and self-control as regards women.

Don't be hurt, most dear lady, at the next step in my confession. If I must seem to disparage you for half a moment on paper, it is only that I may show why I shall revere and honour and cherish you for ever.

When I came out of that Saturday night dream or trance, I sank swiftly down, down, down into a pit of humiliation. I had always believed myself free from pride of rank or pride of wealth; but it was with an immense chagrin that I remembered how the banker had answered my off-hand question with the words "Miss Langley's maid." A blinding flash lit up all the opposition, and scorn, and ridicule I should have to undergo.

Not that it entered my mind, even at the zero of my humiliation, that I could ever give you up. The fact that you were my Destiny rose clear of my tumultuous emotions, as radiant and immutable as a virgin peak above the mean rage of a thunderstorm. But I fretted and fumed. You were the rose that I must needs gather; but why had Fate set you behind so huge and sharp and black a thorn? I asked bitterly why Fate could not have contrived that Miss Langley should have been Susan, and that you should have been Miss Langley, so that I could have come to the Grange a-wooing without a thousand maddening lets and hindrances.

Later on, and in a lesser degree, I also felt humiliated because I, who had been so proud of my cool head, suddenly found myself bowled over by mere beauty and grace, like a solitary corn-stalk before an autumn gale.

The next morning I slipped circumspectly into Traxelby church, just before the sermon. If you hold religion sacred and dear (as I feel sure you do), it may shock you to know that I looked at you through the pillars of the Langley monument for a quarter of an hour. But my thoughts were not sacrilegious. Although I thanked God for your beauty (and how beautiful you were that morning!), I worshipped God most because He had created your soul, your very self. As I watched you, I knew that you alone in all the world could charm away my spirit's restlessness and hunger--the hunger and the restlessness which I had hidden even from my own self. I recalled my loveless life; my boyhood spent among tutors and schoolmasters; my youth and early manhood at two schools and at three universities in three different countries; my last year--the year before I came back to the Towers--spent on cosmopolitan steamships and in unhomely hotels. I thought of the only women I have ever known well--my hard and shallow cousins, who are handsome and elegant only with the sort of handsomeness and elegance that ten thousand other hard and shallow women share with them. Then I looked at you again, and wanted to come home to you as a bird flies home to his nest.

As I walked back from church, I knew that my ignoble chagrin had melted and vanished at the second vision of you. Instead of exclaiming against Fate for placing you, as the word goes, "below me," I rejoiced that there was a sacrifice to be made--a way of proving to you that I was moved by Love alone. I laughed at myself for having wished you had been Miss Langley!

Perhaps I am supersensitive, ultradelicate. But I felt, on that Sunday morning, that if you had been Miss Langley, I might have shrunk from the wooing. The obviousness, the hard-headed, practical common sense of such a match would have put me off it. When every consideration of worldly suitability pointed to a joining of her name and lands and interests with mine, how could I have gone to Miss Langley on a simple errand of Love? I know of one gossip who had already linked her with me. How I should have cursed this rank of mine, which I never wanted, and this wealth of mine, which I never earned, if they had robbed me of the power to convince a woman of my love, and to woo her for herself alone!

I wrote to you on the Tuesday; and you kept me waiting four days. But I knew you would reply; even as I know that, when this month is over, Heaven will not suffer you to wrench your life away from mine. But, while I waited, I kept on schooling myself against every possible turn of events. And one thing for which I prepared my mind (forgive me again, dear lady!) was this. I expected your letter would be ... how shall I say it? Well, I expected a diamond--but a rough one! To be blunt, I knew that Oxford and Heidelberg and Salamanca had made me too punctilious; and I nerved myself for a letter from a sweet Susan, an adorable Susan, a wise Susan ... but a Susan who couldn't spell!

But what has happened? Of course, mere spelling and grammar are less than the dust in the balance; and if you sinned against them unto seventy times seven it would be nothing. But not only are Susan's letters better expressed than my own; they outstrip the utmost I ever dreamed of in the exquisite reverence with which they approach the sacred mystery of Love. Where I was merely superfine and sentimental, you are exalted, mystical. I honour your month of absence and your coming week of silence as I honour the retreats and meditations of a saint. Wealth and ease and rank cannot tempt you. They cannot even hurry you into doing what is right till you are persuaded that it is the right with your whole soul. The Susan I saw that Saturday morning swept me off my feet, robbed me of my free will. But the Susan who has written me four letters is so noble, so deep, so rich of spirit, that even if the spell of her beauty were broken, I should still devote my whole life to winning her, though the obstacles were a thousand times as great.

Why have I written all this? I will tell you. Because you are entering, so to speak, on a week's retreat; and upon your week's retreat hangs my fate. If I did not write this, the most recent letter of mine in your hands would be that schoolboyish blue paper with its long-drawn string of poor jokes. I did not mean it flippantly; but it is hard for a man to write about himself.

In a word, I write to ask that it shall be this present letter and not the other that you will call to mind when you are so good as to think of me.

No. I don't imagine you "take yourself too seriously." I have guessed that, like my own, your mind is more often gay than grave. But there is a time for everything; and I perceive that badinage is not the accompaniment I ought to be playing while you are making the momentous choice which I have so strangely laid upon you.

And now I steal out of your presence on tip-toe, and softly close the door. If you call, I shall be waiting. And if you do not call ... I shall be waiting still.

R.

Susan has been in to know what I think of the letter. I have told her I am busy, and have sent her away.

It's no use blinking the fact that I'm involved, up to the ears, in a very, very serious affair.

_Midnight_.

I can't sleep.

This is altogether too frightful.

Fortunately Susan was perfectly stolid. If she'd been awkward, goodness knows what I might have said or done. I simply told her that we must have a thorough talk, once for all, in the morning; and she went to bed without a murmur.

Susan a mystic! Susan approaching with exquisite reverence the sacred mystery of Love! Susan in retreat, like a saintly nun!

If I could only laugh and laugh and laugh till I woke up the whole hotel, it wouldn't so much matter. But I can't even smile. Ruddington is too terribly in earnest. And it's my fault.

Some parts of his letter I hate. I would never have believed that he could make so outrageously free with my name. So long as Susan is my maid, I call it abominable taste to drag me in like that. Indeed, I hardly see how I can do otherwise than wash my hands of the entire business forthwith.

But if I do ... what then? If Susan is left to concoct a reply, and to use a teaspoonful of ink to every page, it will be such a shattering bombshell in the golden midst of his dreams. And the man, on the whole, is too likeable for me to wound him deeply if I can help it.

Perhaps what I ought to do is to write by the same post as Susan, and with her full knowledge, a frank confession of my part in the affair. He will be astonished and disappointed and a bit hurt in his dignity, but he can't fairly resent my having helped Susan. After all, it's his fault, not mine, that he's perused my few short and insignificant letters through such rose-coloured glasses that they have seemed like the utterances of a divinity. It's his infatuation, far more than my bungling, which has magnified and idealized Susan into a goddess. Whether he can turn the telescope round, so to speak, and look at Susan through the other end till he sees her in all the tininess of her actual spiritual and mental stature; and whether, when he has seen her as she is, he can still go on worshipping her--all this is more his affair than mine. I'll write the letter now.

_A quarter past one_.

It's no good.

If I had written before his letter came to-night, I could have managed it. But now that he's brought me in by name, and has even discussed how he would have felt if he had been moved to make love to me...

No. I can't write. And if I could, I wouldn't. And I'm cold, and tired, and insulted, and distracted, and wretched. I'll back to bed.

_Saturday_, 2 _p.m._

On second (or twenty-second) thoughts, I did not choose to have a detailed conference with Susan. I have not so much as told her how vastly it offends me to be discussed with her as Ruddington has done. If I betray annoyance, how can I expect a simple mind like Susan's to interpret my vexation otherwise than as the acidity of an unsuccessful rival for Lord Ruddington's hand? Lord Ruddington has cheapened me enough, and I will not make myself any cheaper.

Although she was stolid over it last night, the letter has warmed Susan into a remarkable state of expansion this morning, and she was sadly crestfallen when I showed no sign of going through the document chapter and verse. I took care that she should find me deep in my own correspondence, so that my inattention was less pointed.

I simply told her that it would be a good thing if she were able to take over the Ruddington correspondence herself immediately, as Lord Ruddington had already been seriously misled. Failing this, I gave her the following note, and told her to post it or not as she pleased:--

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--I am grateful for your letter. And I am grateful to you for consenting to what you call my "retreat." When the retreat is over I shall not forget that I have a long letter of yours to answer. Meanwhile I will only beg, both for your sake and my own, that you will not form too high an opinion of--Yours very sincerely,

SUSAN BRIGGS.

Susan did not read the note in my presence. I have no idea what she will do.

_Sunday: before church_.

Half my month is gone. This makes the fifteenth morning since I landed in France, yet I don't remember waking up once with a completely easy mind. From Mr. John Lamb onwards, I have dwelt in the midst of alarms.

To-day shall prove whether I have any will-power or not. Sunday is a day of rest, and I am determined to have twenty-four hours' rest from Ruddington.

Susan is very commendably docile. She sees I have had enough of it, and she hasn't even told me whether she posted my note or not. Fortunately she is making much more of a pal of Georgette. Georgette progresses with her English marvellously. She adores Susan because Susan never tries to utter a single syllable of French.

I mean to hear Mass this morning at Berigny. Georgette is taking Susan to bewail once more the lack of "a nice service" at Sainte Veronique.

_Sunday afternoon_.

I like the Berigny papists better than the papists at Sainte Veronique. Barely sixty people assisted at the Mass; but the faith of these few twentieth-century men and women was as solid as the fifteenth-century piers and vaults that rose above our heads.

Being English, I ought to exclaim against the Berigny mass-house, and to call its pictures and images and altars gaudy. But I understood this morning that the place was first and foremost a refuge for the simple and the poor. Of course, the austerity of our own church at Traxelby suits my personal ideas of reverence better. But I'm afraid that, in England, there may be some selfishness in our always conforming the insides of our churches to the taste of the Hall or to the taste of the rector's ladies. No doubt it helps the fortunate few to feel religious when they exchange the cosy richness wherein they have snuggled all the week for the big, bare sternness of cold, undissembled stone, and the uncompromising whiteness of twenty surplices. An hour and a half of it once a week corrects luxury and tones up fibres that are becoming enervated through all-day-long indulgence. One even finds a subtle pleasure in the slight discomfort and restraint; just as the man who has dined well and wined well for eleven months enjoys the fashionable hardships of a month's "cure" at a German spa. But I wondered this morning if our church interiors are equally helpful to the poor. If a contrast between the home and the church stimulates devotion, where do the poor come in? The only contrast they get is the contrast between a small bleakness and a big one; the contrast between grey and white; between ashes and snow.

Berigny church is a spacious, warm, brightly coloured drawing-room for all Berigny. Not even the drawing-room at Alice's, with its absurd excess of water-colours and prints and screens and embroideries and statuettes and curios, holds such a store of things to look at as the drawing-room at Berigny. Over and above all the regulation sights of a typical French church, Berigny has Our Lady of Berigny, in queenly silver-tissue and with a golden crown on her sorrowful brow. From the bosses of the vaults in the aisles hang five or six fully rigged little ships--votive offerings of mariners snatched from shipwreck. High up on the south wall there are coloured wooden images, carved in the sixteenth century, such as St. Nicolas with a tubful of red-cheeked, chubby, naked babies, and St. Antony with his pig. Berigny has both the Antonys. Not far from him of the pig, stands a modern statue of St. Antony of Padua, with a face like an angel's, and with the Holy Child seated on St. Antony's open book and nestling against St. Antony's breast.

It would have driven him stark mad if our Traxelby choir-master, with his petty efficiency and trivial thoroughness, could have heard the Berigny organ pounding and blaring, and the Berigny faithful bawling "Credo" through their noses. An untuneful but hearty lad on my left sang the whole creed through in Latin without a book. I wonder, would our Traxelby youths be a shade less loutish, a shade nearer to these courteous villagers of Berigny, if they too were taught to dip a cup in the main stream of human culture, and to quaff ever so small a draught? I imagine it must be the beginning of a revolution, even in the humblest mind, when it makes room for fifty words of a language other than its own.

_Sunday night_.

Yes, I have some traces of will-power. I have wanted to ask Susan whether she posted my note; but I haven't asked her. And I have wanted to think about Ruddington's letter--not so much its galling references to myself, as the disclosure it makes of an uncommon personality in the midst of an uncommon situation. I have wanted to think about it all day--even in church. But I haven't yielded. Or, at most, I have yielded only a very little.

_Monday morning_.

Susan posted the letter.

I asked her after breakfast, in a casual sort of way, what she had done with it; and she answered, almost as casually, that she and Georgette posted it on Saturday afternoon. I could see that, for some reason, Susan didn't want to be cross-questioned.

"Susan," I said, when she came into the room again, "how many people know anything about this affair of Lord Ruddington?"

Susan started.

"Whom have you told?" I asked again. "Did you talk about it at Traxelby?"

"Oh, no, Miss!" said Susan, almost reproachfully. Then, after an awkward pause, she added: "Unless..."

"Unless...?"

"Well, Miss, I _did_ say to Gibson that ... that there was _somebody_. But I didn't mention names, Miss, and he could never guess."

"Have you said anything to Georgette?"

Susan hung her head and studied the toe of her shoe a long time before she confessed:

"Georgette asked me, Miss."

"Asked you what?"

"Georgette said: 'Have you got an Ammee?' And when I told her I didn't know what an Ammee was, she said..."

Susan blushed and stopped.

"Go on," I said. "An _ami_. What did Georgette say an _ami_ was?"

"It is French for Mister," faltered Susan. "Georgette says it is a Mister with whom one is in love."

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing, Miss."

"You were very sensible, Susan," I said. "You oughtn't to talk about it to any one."

I picked up a book; but Susan still loitered.

"Well?" I asked at length. "What is it?"

"Please, Miss," began Susan uncomfortably, "I didn't tell Georgette anything."

"So you said before."

"Yes, Miss. But Georgette ... wanted to look at the envelope. I mean the letter to his lordship, Miss."

"But you didn't let her do it?"

"Oh, no, Miss."

"Then what is there to worry about?"

Susan scraped the floor with the point of her shoe, and shifted about. By and by she blurted:

"Georgette wanted to know if the letter was to my Ammee or ... or to yours, Miss."

I shut the book. Susan hurried on.

"So, of course, I said he was mine, Miss."

Ruddington is right. Susan is a wonder, a gem, and five times out of six a born lady. After I had praised her discreetly and had deplored the impertinent pryings of Georgette, I took up the book again and told Susan she might go away.

She went, but within five minutes she was back.

"I thought I'd best tell you, Miss," she said when I looked up.

"Yes?"

"I didn't show Georgette the address, Miss. But ... she noticed the envelope wasn't gummed down."

"Yes, yes. Get on."

"I oughtn't to have done it, Miss. But Georgette went into the garden and plucked a flower, and lifted up the flap of the envelope, and laughed, and tucked the flower inside."

"It's a great pity, Susan," I said, "that you didn't take it out again. If you'd make up your mind to marry Lord Ruddington it wouldn't matter. But can't you see how foolish it will look? It simply contradicts the letter asking for a week's grace."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, going redder than ever. But she showed no sign of departing.

"Is that all, Susan?" I asked, with a sudden fear that there was worse to follow.

"No, Miss," she answered faintly. "After we'd posted the letter, Georgette laughed again and said that the flower had a meaning."

"A meaning?"

"Yes, Miss. The Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette said the flower meant 'Vang.'"

"Vang?"

"Yes, Miss. That's the French Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette says that, in English, it means 'Come'!"

Before I could speak, she burst out crying.

"Please, Miss," she wept, "I didn't see any harm on Saturday. But last night, when I went to bed, and thought about it ... oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm _so_ miserable!" And she cried harder than ever.

In the end I sent her away consoled to the extent of my assurance that I didn't blame her in the least, and that the sole offender was Georgette. Also, I promised her that I wouldn't get Georgette into trouble.

At first I felt determined to give Georgette some very plain speaking in private. Yet how can I? How was Georgette to know that Susan hadn't been writing a common country love-letter to some common country sweetheart? What divination could teach Georgette that we had been writing a superfine letter to a milord? Georgette simply indulged her rural playfulness. And if the envelope was open for Georgette to put the flower in, it was also open for Susan to take it out.

That's the devil (I can't help saying it!) of this endless affair. Everybody keeps on giving me shocks and jumps, and yet nobody is ever to blame.

Not that much harm is done this time. I suppose Ruddington will go silly over the flower. He'll kiss it, and wear it next his heart by day, and lay it under his pillow by night, and worship it as a symbol of fresh mysticalities and exquisitenesses in his divine Susan. But he won't ring for the kitchen-maids and request the kind loan of a Language of Flowers. He won't so much as think of it that way. Even if he does, he will know that it is the letter and not the flower that he must obey.

I wonder what flower it is that means "Viens?"

_Monday night_.

I have been reading Ruddington's last letter over again. And although I began it with prejudice (being still nettled by Georgette's prank), it has affected me strangely.

Seen whole, I know the situation is farcical. It is a farce that may end in a tragedy. But as Ruddington sees it, with the wrong notion of Susan that I have helped to give him, it is a most high and sweet romance, all rose and gold.

Life can be most hideously cruel. Better no beautiful dreams at all when there must be such an awakening. And that poor lad Gibson is to be soured for ever in order that Ruddington may go through life with a millstone of disenchantment round his neck. Something is here for tears.

_Tuesday, three o'clock_.

Ruddington remains quiet, like a good boy; so the flower has done no harm. Susan has been quite brightened up by suddenly remembering that the flower was only a French one.

This morning there was a wedding at Sainte Veronique. I have seen country weddings in France before, but this is the first one that hasn't offended me. The bride was a pink-and-white, almost English looking girl, and the bridegroom was a tanned, honest, handsome young fisherman. When Susan and I saw them, it was after the wedding. They were standing side by side, hand in hand at a door, while the guests were bustling for places at an open-air breakfast-table. You could not say that they were not taking in the scene. Indeed, they laughed more than once at the horse-play of the youths. Yet it was plain that while their eyes recognized friends, and while their minds were lightly engaged with the outer world, their spirits had built a little hidden shrine of peace. Never before have I seen on human faces such a serene yet delicate fulness of perfect happiness. Below the rattle of plates and the shouts and the laughter, my ear caught a rich undersong of love.

In the past I have learned almost to loathe lovers. When Hugh came to see Alice, I used to wonder how she could endure him. I suppose he enjoyed his courtship, just as a budding barrister enjoys his obligatory course of dinners; but he used to turn up more like a man who had come to tune the piano than like a man in love. And I don't think I detest any one in this world more than poor Maude Slaney's Bob. Heaven only knows how many millions of times he has mispronounced the word "fiancee" these last two years; and the way they go on in public is simply horrid. I'd almost rather have the boorishly amorous couples who slouch on Sunday nights along Church Lane, gaping up at the Grange.

But, this month, I've begun to see lovers in a less garish light. The fisherman reminded me of Gibson. I shall be the better all my life long for having stood in the glow of Gibson's splendid manliness when he thought Susan was in danger. Ruddington, poor man, is quite an endurable lover, too. As for Susan, although she's so simple, I haven't definitely made her out. But, allowing amply for her shyness and for her deference to my guidance, it's rather fine to see how she hangs back from Ruddington's money and rank until she feels sure she can care for him. If the bulk of human love is anything like these samples, I don't wonder that the world goes right round in a night and a day.

_Tuesday, bedtime_.

Another earthquake.

This afternoon, Madame Dupoirier went to Grandpont station in the hotel omnibus. She has just come back.

Madame says that when the 'bus drew up at the station "a compatriot" of mine stepped alongside and attentively perused the words "Hotel du Dauphin, Sainte Veronique-sur-mer," painted on the 'bus sides. Apparently he mistook Madame for a guest who was going away; and he asked her (very politely, Madame says) if she knew whether "Mees Langley and Mees Breeggs" were still at the hotel. Madame said "Yes;" and she is quite pleasantly fluttered at the thought of an extra guest fairly on his way hither.

I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I didn't even ask her what the man was like, and whether he spoke to her in French or in English. But I've no doubt it is Ruddington.

I call it abominable. If Susan were travelling in France with her parents, or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be different. But this is outrageous.

I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Georgette's flower. A man who can read such super-exquisite meanings into the half-dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan, isn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown, educated man has such sickly rubbish as the Language of Flowers at his finger ends, a lady's-maid is as much as he deserves.

What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon Sainte Veronique till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighbourhood, like a knight keeping vigil outside a woodland oratory where his milk-white ladye kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes--a scarlet-runner to mean "I have come post-haste," a convolvulus to mean "I am still hanging on," a thorny bramble to mean "I suffer."

Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.

When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day.

Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no way to turn.

I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Cheval d'Or.

_Wednesday, very early_.

I forgot to wind up my watch.

I have decided not to run away.

Three things have become clear as I have turned them over in the night.

First, I'm as good a man as Ruddington. If I stood up to Mr. John Lamb, I can stand up to his successors. He shall either treat me with respect or be taught a lesson. I'm not going to run away from any one. Certainly not from a youth sick with calf-love who babbles the Language of Flowers.

Second, I might as well face the fact that the gods never intended me to have a peaceful September this year. How true it is that the unexpected happens! When I came to Sainte Veronique twelve months ago, I expected to have a lively time. But everybody failed me, and it was the quietest, peacefullest month of my life. This year I came expecting four weeks of vegetable existence; and instead, I am kept running and leaping and turning like a trick-horse in a circus. Wherefore, I do hereby decide not to kick against Destiny a minute longer. Instead of staving off all this comedy, and instead of hating it because it distracts me, I hereby decide that it is well worth looking at, and that it would be foolishness to brush aside such a human drama as I am never likely to see performed again. Norman villages, and carafes of cider, and plunges in the sea, and lobster salads under apple-trees, can be bought for nine or ten francs a day, year after year, as often as I want them. But a handsome, virtuous, learned, stark-mad young lord in love with a pretty, honest, lovable, stupid lady's-maid isn't a sight to be seen at close quarters every week. It shall be the principal pleasure as well as the principal business of my remaining fortnight to see this play played right out.

Third--how do I know that Master Ruddington isn't lying peacefully at this very moment in his little white cot at Ruddington Towers, dreaming of his Susan as good as gold? How do I know that the Grandpont person isn't somebody else? It struck me in the night that it is probably Mr. John Lamb. At the Customs, he looked at the Sainte Veronique labels on my boxes as well as at the Cheval d'Or labels on our bags. I know he tumbled down the steps of the Astor still believing that he had conquered Susan's maiden heart, and that if he could only have seen her all would have been well. Perhaps he has got together a fresh supply of francs and is proposing to wait on us with some preposterous apologies and explanations. It may be that he wants me to promise that next time I am in Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush, I won't give him away to Phipps Brothers--and, above all, that I won't give him away to Ma. This morning I shall ask Madame Dupoirier to describe him. If it be indeed Mr. John Lamb, he will find me ready with the mint sauce.

_Ten a.m._

It's a good thing that I have decisively renounced all hope of peace and quietness. The postman has brought Susan no flowers from Grandpont, but he has brought me just the sort of letter from Alice that I don't want.

Ruddington, Ruddington, Ruddington--that's Alice's letter from beginning to end.

Alice has "found out all about him." He's richer than Alice thought. And prettier. And nicer. And I am the wickedest, foolishest, proudest young woman in the world for clinging on at Sainte Veronique.

It seems that Ruddington and I "were made for each other." He has just my tastes! Alice even adds, with splendid candour, that he "isn't the least little bit like Hugh."

I had hardly smoothed my poor fur after Alice's ruffling when Susan chose to begin stroking me backwards again. She said:

"I'm thinking, Miss, about this letter that came on Friday night."

"Yes?" I said.

"Please, Miss, you never told me what you thought of it."

"What did you think yourself, Susan?"

Susan fidgeted about. At last she answered:

"I can't feel that it's right, Miss."

"What isn't right?"

"Him speaking that way, Miss, to a girl ... like me. It doesn't seem right."

"I don't understand, Susan."

She fidgeted again. Then she said:

"I'm afraid you'd be vexed, Miss. It isn't my place to say it."

"To say what?"

"Well, Miss," Susan explained in instalments, "it doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem natural for him to be courting ... _me_. It's what my Aunt Martha used to say, Miss. She used to say, 'More unhappiness comes to them as marries above 'em than to them as marries below 'em.'"

"You mean, Susan," I suggested, "that you're uneasy at the thought of such a great change in your position? So you ought to be. That's why I've always wanted you to look well before you leap. There's a great deal in what your Aunt says."

"Yes, Miss," answered Susan abstractedly. And for a few moments she tried to hold her peace. But it was no use. A sudden torrent of warm words gushed forth and swept all restraint away.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude!" she cried, "I can't help saying it! I can't! It isn't me, Miss, Lord Ruddington ought to be coming after. It's you, Miss Gertrude, it's you!"

I was struck dumb.

"Yes, it's you, Miss, it ought to be," Susan went on. "When I think of what he says in his letter, Miss--how he couldn't go making love to Miss Langley--I could die for shame. I ought to have cut off my hand before I showed you such a thing, Miss."

"Susan," I said, "you mustn't talk to me like this. You did quite right to show me his letter. It isn't your fault that Lord Ruddington wrote things in his letter which it would have been better taste to leave out."

"No, Miss, I know," broke in Susan. "But oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so miserable! I do so wish he hadn't never seen me. If I don't get married to him, I shall be miserable because I've thrown away all that money, and living in a grand house, and being Your Ladyship. And if I do get married to him, I shall be miserable because ... because it isn't natural, Miss! Oh, Miss Gertrude, how lovely it would have been if he'd liked you instead of me! Then you would have got married and gone to live at the Towers, and we would have come with you, Miss, and we'd have been so happy!"

I noticed Susan's "we." But it was not a time for re-catechizing her about Gibson. I cut her short peremptorily.

"Susan," I said, "be so good as to stop. You are taking a great liberty. If Lord Ruddington has so far forgotten himself as to drag my name into his affairs, that's no excuse for you doing the same. I dislike it most strongly."

"Yes, Miss," said obedient Susan. "But," she added wistfully, speaking more to herself than to me, "it would have been lovely!"

"Am I to take it, Susan," I demanded abruptly, "that you've finally decided not to accept Lord Ruddington?"

She blushed; paled; blushed again. But she did not answer.

"Because," I added, "if you are still thinking it over, you'd better not talk of it, even to me. Lord Ruddington won't expect you to write before Saturday. I've given you all the help and advice I can, but I don't want to influence you either one way or the other. Work it out in your own mind."

Susan promised to try.

As she was going out, something else occurred to me, and I called her back.

"Susan," I said kindly, "I don't wish to refer to it again, but what you have said about myself and Lord Ruddington reminds me of one little point."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan.

"His portrait. One day I went into your room for the scissors. I saw you had put Lord Ruddington's portrait in the same frame as mine."

"Yes, Miss. They went together beautiful."

"I shall be much obliged, Susan, if they don't go together any longer."

Susan shed a tear. But she is going to obey.

Now I've had enough ruffling for one morning. Before I interrogate Madame about the creature at Grandpont, I mean to run down to the bathing-hut and enjoy an hour's basking in the sun.

_Before lunch_.

I have seen the man from Grandpont. Has the event proved worse than my fears, or better? I can't say. All I know is that the event was different.

Susan didn't go down with me to the bathing-hut. I unlocked it myself, and carried out the deck-chair on to a sunny patch of clean white pebbles. But I had hardly drunk in two draughts of the salt air when I sat up with a start.

A man was watching me.

He had been sprawling on the stones at the foot of the cliff about a quarter of a mile away. At such a distance it was impossible to make out his features, but, as he stood up, I saw it was not Mr. John Lamb. I saw the figure of a man well drilled, a man accustomed to an outdoor life. The man wore a dark blue lounge suit and a straw boater of unmistakably English lines.

For a moment I thought with disgust that he was one of those provincial English tourists (we have had two or three of them off and on at Sainte Veronique) who find some sort of pleasure in lurking about the beaches furtively watching "the ladies" while they bathe. I wished I hadn't left Susan behind. But, as soon as he saw me sit up, the man began to walk towards me in a perfectly open manner.

I couldn't feel sure that it wasn't Ruddington. It flashed across my brain that he was scheming an interview with me as a flank movement upon Susan. Besides, I remembered that a rather fine-tempered man like Ruddington must perceive the unpleasantness of the position in which Susan's acceptance of him would place Susan's mistress, and, in his unconventional ingenuousness, he was just the sort of man to come forward betimes with boyishly candid explanations, and adjustments, and appeals. As he sped towards me over the blinding chalk-stones, there was something in his stride that recalled the eager, masterful love-making of his present Majesty of Spain.

I got up, relocked the hut door, left the chair outstretched on the shingle, and swung off for home as swiftly as was possible without seeming to run away. I did not choose to grant an audience to Lord Ruddington whenever and wherever it might suit him to claim it.

But his legs were longer than mine and in better training. I had an instinct to run, an instinct to look back, but I mastered them both.

Very soon I could hear the stones crunching or slipping or rolling under his boots. Surely, I told myself angrily, any man who wasn't a bounder or a madman could see that I resented the pursuit. But he came ever quicklier on. And, as I gained the path up the beck, he positively broke into a run.

I turned round.

It was Gibson.

"Gibson!" I cried; "Gibson! Is it you?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he answered firmly, pulling off his hat and standing, six feet away, bare-headed in the sun.

"What has brought you here?" I demanded as sternly as I could. But I was too greatly relieved to make a convincing display of indignation.

"I haven't been near the hotel, Ma'am," said Gibson, meeting my eyes.

"Of course you haven't. The idea! But, if you had, you'd have startled me less than by running after me on the beach like this."

"It's about Susan, Ma'am," said Gibson. Gibson is not a man of words, and I could see that he was determined not to be scolded or flurried out of the speech he had been rehearsing.

"Susan's all right," I said; "I told you so in my letter."

"I thank you, Ma'am," said Gibson, less aggressively. "I sha'n't never forget how kind you wrote."

"What's the matter, then? You don't seem to realize, Gibson, that I'm very much annoyed. Didn't I tell you not to come to Sainte Veronique unless I sent for you?"

"You did, Ma'am, you did," answered Gibson, losing his self-control and speaking more and more excitedly; "and I give you my word, Ma'am, I won't come nearer Sinn Verrynick than this bit of ground I'm standing on. Oh, yes, Ma'am! You've wrote right enough, and I thank you. But it's Susan. She hasn't wrote not one line, Ma'am--not so much as a card with a photygraph of the pier on it!"

"You've forgotten the bargain, Gibson. I'm ever so sorry for you; but what did you say at Traxelby? You said you could bear Susan marrying some one else so long as everything was honourable and above-board. You were not to come here unless I found that"--I nearly let slip Lord Ruddington's name--"that Susan's admirer was not going to play the game."

"So I did, Ma'am," broke out Gibson hotly. "That's what I said. That's what I promised. And I've cursed myself every day, every minute of every day, since I said it. It was a lie, Ma'am. Whether Susan's took away from me honest or took away from me dishonest, I can't stand it, and I won't. Susan's mine! I was a dirty hound, Ma'am, ever to say as I would give her up, even if it's the Emperor of France that comes begging for her with a sack of gold and dymonds. Susan's mine! She's the only girl in the world I ever cared about. Yes, Ma'am," he cried proudly, raising his voice and taking a step forward, "and Susan's never cared a straw about any man in the world 'cept me, and she never shall."

"Susan is a free woman, Gibson," I said. "Ever since we left Traxelby she hasn't mentioned your name. I know nothing about it. But how do you know that Susan ever cared for you? Perhaps she only led you on, as girls do. And, supposing she did care for you, how do you know she hasn't changed her mind?"

"That's just the trouble, Ma'am," said Gibson bitterly. "I don't deny they may have changed her mind. If they've dangled a lot o' money before her eyes, and fine clothes and joolry, and motor-cars and going to Egypt, and all that, I don't deny they may have managed to change her mind. They may have been too strong for a poor girl. Oh, yes, Ma'am, they may have changed Susan's mind! But ... but they can't never change her heart, Ma'am. Her heart'll go on beating true all the same, all the time; and when she's got tired of the fine things..."

He clenched his fist and finished off the sentence with a gesture between rage and despair. I was forced to turn away from the white heat of his rough eloquence and superb sincerity.

"What is it you want, Gibson?" I asked, as soon as I was able.

"I want to know first, Ma'am, has Susan got herself engaged?"

"No, she has not."

"Is she going to be, Ma'am?"

"I don't know. It isn't my affair. I think she hasn't made up her mind one way or the other."

I met Gibson's eyes. But, this time, it was he who looked away. Apologetically, clumsily, he asked:

"If I may make so bold, Ma'am ... is the party at Sinn Verrynick?"

"The party?"

"I mean, Ma'am, the rich party that's took a fancy to Susan?"

"No, he is not. I have never so much as seen him. Neither has Susan. But what did I promise? Didn't I give you my word that, if he came here, I would let you know? That's why I'm so vexed, Gibson, at your coming like this."

He accepted the rebuke without a word.

"What are you going to do now?" I asked.

"I suppose, Ma'am," he said slowly and painfully, "I'd better go back to Granpong."

I asked him a few questions. It turns out that he came over on Saturday, _via_ Southampton and "Lee Harver." He held a letter from a chauffeur he had met in Derlingham to a Havre motor-accessories firm. The Havre people, hearing he wanted to be near Sainte Veronique, gave him a letter to a small cycle and motor jobber in Grandpont who speaks a little English. He boards and lodges Gibson, and teaches him the driving and mending of cars, in return for English conversation, Gibson's labour, and thirty francs a week.

"Of course, if you object to me staying on at Granpong, Ma'am..." said Gibson.

"If I'd known beforehand I should have objected very much, Gibson," I said. "But you've been so lucky in your arrangements, I hardly like to disturb them. Give me your Grandpont address."

Gibson gave me a printed card. He is staying "A la Descente des Automobilistes." The "Descente" announces, on a card adorned with crossed billiard-cues over a foaming bock, that it speaks Englisch, and that it is equal to billiards, coffee, repairs, and beefsteacks _a toute heure_.

"Are you comfortable, Gibson?" I asked.

"Very," he answered. "I never could abide cider, and the beer is shocking, Ma'am. But I'm quite comfortable."

"I'm glad, Gibson," I said. "I won't lose the address. Good-morning."

I record it to my shame that I was heartless enough to begin moving away. Indeed, I had advanced twenty or thirty paces up the beck before Gibson decided on a second pursuit.

"About Susan, Ma'am!" he said, with red cheeks. "Shall you tell Susan, Ma'am, that I'm in these parts?"

"That reminds me, Gibson," I retorted, "you've forgotten so much of the bargain we made at Traxelby that I can't be certain of anything. You promised not to tell Susan that I had ever let you discuss her with me."

"I sha'n't forget, Ma'am. But ... can't I see Susan for a minute?"

"How? Where?"

"I might hang about, Ma'am."

"And frighten her out of her life. No thank you, Gibson! If there's to be any meeting, you'd better write about it from Grandpont."

"It'd take time, Ma'am."

"Surely you can wait a day or two, Gibson?"

He lost his self-command once more.

"No!" he cried, "I can't wait. And if I could wait, I won't. I must see Susan before another sun goes down."

"Don't shout, Gibson," I said; "people will hear you. Even if it isn't against your interest to force yourself on Susan, how do you know she will see you? Perhaps she won't."

He started. Then he turned aside in such sharp trouble, that my hard heart melted.

"The most I can do," I said, "is this. I will tell Susan how you met me on the beach, and that I was very angry. I will say nothing about our talk that night in the garden at Traxelby, and you must not mention it either. All I'm supposed to know is, that you're very keen about Susan, and that you think she encouraged you, and that you're worrying because she doesn't write. In short, if you and Susan meet, you must keep to your own affairs, and not bring me in at all. Above all, never say that I wrote to you. I will tell Susan that you will be on the beach at half-past two. She must please herself whether she meets you or not. But remember, to-day is exceptional. No secret meetings. You can get something to eat in the village at the Cafe de la Marine. I must go."

I found Susan sitting under an apple-tree with Georgette. Georgette was jabbering over a fearful and wonderful plum-coloured blouse which the two were slashing and altering. It may have been my fancy, but Georgette looked a bit sheepish as she went away. "Mees Breegs" advanced to meet me.

"Susan," I said, "some one whom you know is in the neighbourhood."

Susan's colour fled.

"Is he, Miss?" she asked fearfully.

"At Grandpont," I went on. "Madame Dupoirier told me about it last night. She was at Grandpont station in the 'bus yesterday. He read the name of the hotel, and asked Madame if you were here."

As usual, Susan's colour rushed back, with reinforcements. She began to tremble.

"It's that flower, Miss!" she gasped, "Georgette's flower! Oh, Miss Gertrude, I can't face him yet! I can't, I can't!"

"You don't need to, Susan," I said. "It isn't Lord Ruddington."

Susan moaned a little moan of thankfulness. But her face clouded again as I added:

"It is somebody else."

She searched my eyes. Then she asked, in an agonized whisper:

"Not ... It isn't ... Not Gibson, Miss?"

"Yes," I answered, "Gibson."

Susan turned half round and gazed over the sea. Her pretty country-girl's figure shook with hardly pent feeling. For the first time I saw Susan bitter and angry.

"I'm ashamed of him, Miss," she burst out. "I could never have believed it of him."

Not knowing what to say, I refrained from saying it. Susan's wrath waxed stronger. She turned upon me with something dangerously like

## active resentment.

"You ... you knew last night, Miss?" she said, almost fiercely.

"Certainly not, Susan," I replied. "Madame told me that an Englishman had asked her questions at Grandpont. But she didn't know who he was, and I never asked her to describe him."

"Then how do you know it is Gibson?" asked Susan, a very little less pugnaciously.

"Because I've just seen him."

Susan collapsed.

"Where, Miss? where, Miss? ... Oh!" gasped Susan.

"Come, come," I said, "I was quite as much annoyed as you are. I told Gibson very plainly what I thought about it. But, Susan, I must admit that there is some little excuse for him. Of course he hasn't repeated to me a single word that he ever said to you, or that you ever said to him. But it is plain that he's very fond of you. And he thinks you encouraged him. He says you haven't sent him even so little as a postcard for a fortnight."

Susan's Amazonian ire had died down to a village beauty's pout.

"I can never forgive him, Miss," she said. "I wouldn't have believed it of Gibson. Not to mention the disrespect to you, Miss Gertrude."

"Never mind the disrespect to me," I answered, "I can look after that myself. No doubt it's very silly and weak of him; but the point is, that Gibson is so badly in love that he's madly jealous."

"Please, Miss, you didn't tell him about ... Lord Ruddington?" asked Mees Breegs in a fright.

"Susan," I said, "I'm surprised. What are you thinking of? Unless you've told him yourself, he can't have the faintest notion that there's a Lord Ruddington in the case. But I can see he suspects there is somebody. That's why he couldn't sit quiet in England while his rival cuts him out in France."

"I shall never forgive him, Miss," snapped Susan more conclusively than ever.

"Don't say that, Susan," I said; "or, if you say it, take care you don't mean it."

"But I do, Miss."

"Then it's nothing to be proud of. Don't hate a man for merely loving you."

"He ought to have stopped at home, Miss."

"He ought. But he hasn't. You see, Susan, I don't know how it is, but you seem to have a way of making people do mad things. Gibson cares for you quite as much as Lord Ruddington does. But he hasn't done anything madder than Lord Ruddington's first letter, has he?"

"No, Miss," said Susan, mollified and visibly flattered. And, after a minute's pleasant meditation on the unsuspected range and power of her charms, she added prettily: "But Lord Ruddington does stop at home when I tell him to, Miss."

"That's true," I granted; "but Lord Ruddington has all the advantages. Poor Gibson is so frightfully handicapped. I suppose he thinks that all's fair in love and war. I'm annoyed with him for coming here, but I admire his spirit. Gibson isn't a muff, Susan."

"Oh, no, Miss," she answered promptly and heartily.

"In fact, this morning I felt quite vexed with Lord Ruddington for stepping between you. But I mustn't say more about that. I will come to the point. I have brought a message."

Susan's agitation began afresh.

"I've told Gibson he mustn't come here. He is lodging at Grandpont. At this minute he's getting something to eat in the village. But he will be on the beach at half-past two."

"To-day, Miss?" she asked faintly.

"Yes, to-day. You can please yourself whether you see him or not. But understand, Susan, I've told him it must be only this once. No meetings on the sly."

"Of course not, Miss," Susan answered, with a touch of indignation, which I ignored.

"If you do go to-day," I added, "you won't mention Lord Ruddington's name. But, Susan, if there has been anything between you and Gibson, I'm bound to say that you have no right to trifle with him. It isn't fair to him, or to yourself, or to Lord Ruddington; or even to me. Perhaps it's still too soon for you to decide whether you will accept Lord Ruddington; but it's high time for you to decide whether you will drop Gibson. If you find you can't drop Gibson, the other matter will settle itself. Be a good girl, and remember that the only way to be happy is to do right. Only, for heaven's sake, don't prolong the agony. I'm not going to grumble, Susan, but you must have seen that, although I came to Sainte Veronique for peace and rest, I've had to spend nearly three weeks worrying my head over people that want to marry you. It's getting to be a bit tiresome."

"You've been awfully good to me, Miss," said Susan with all her usual meekness. "I'll try."

I must stop. Here's Georgette with a litre of cider, and a crisp roll three feet long, and a dish of _raie au beurre noir_.

_A quarter past two_.

Susan has just started down to the beach.

_Three o'clock_.

Susan didn't say anything before she went. While she was brushing my hair--it had got all anyhow in the hammock after lunch--she hardly uttered a word.

I have been thinking strange thoughts and wondering at some wonders.

What on earth can it be that has turned a china shepherdess like Susan into a Helen of Troy? Why is she a storm-centre, a battlefield of heroes? I have seen enough of the world to know that both Gibson and Lord Ruddington are exceptional men. What is it in Susan that drives them mad? Susan's is not a case of the Eternal Masculine basely desiring lamb-like innocence and childish beauty. In her case the groom is as good as the lord in native chivalry and honour.

Madame's magnificent old Empire cheval-glass reflected us full-length while Susan was busy with my hair. In the autumnal light, and with the background of bright hangings and bold furniture, we looked less like a mere reflection in a mirror than like one of those vivid modern French pictures. At first the feeling was uncanny; but, by degrees, this full-coloured life-sized, gilt-framed portrait mastered me until I was able to look at it as dispassionately as if it had been on a wall of the Luxembourg. It was then I began to wonder at wonders and think thoughts.

One must not praise oneself up, even in one's diary. But one may, one must, be sincere. And it is the simple truth, that the more I compared the full-length portrait of Susan with the full-length portrait of myself, the deeper and more inscrutable became the mysteries of life. I looked at the two portrayed forms and the two portrayed faces as critically and with as much detachment as if I had never seen the originals in the real world.

Ruddington has seen Susan thrice. But he has seen me thrice also. He says that I was with Susan every one of the three times. Perhaps Susan's brushing jogged my wits; but, face to face with that double portrait, I couldn't help being reminded of what I scolded Susan for saying this morning. As a matter of purely speculative interest, as a curious human problem, I couldn't help saying to myself: "He saw us both. Why didn't he fall in love with me?"

To be immodestly candid, the only answer I could arrive at was: "I don't know!"

Of course, what he says in his letter to Susan about shrinking from making love to Miss Langley is absurd. It is merely a fanciful thought after the event, a pretty conceit, a gossamer compliment partly to Susan and mainly to himself. He fell wildly, instantly, irresistibly in love with Susan because there is Something in Susan which gave him no choice. He looked at me and was cold, because the Something has been left out.

Never before to-day have I looked at myself in a glass hungrily. But to-day I peered with all the strength of my eyes into the confused depths of the secret. It was no good. I cannot read the riddle.

I will write this page without reserve. It is no more my merit, my own work, that I am beautiful than it would be my fault, my disgrace, if I had been born ugly. I will call a spade a spade, and beauty beautiful. So here goes.

If Susan is pretty, I am beautiful, and I am more beautiful than Susan is pretty. If Susan is as graceful as a nymph, I am as noble as a goddess. If Susan's blue eyes are as blue as the sky, my brown eyes are deeper than the sea. If Susan is curds and cream, I am fire and snow. If Susan can turn plain men into heroes, I ought to raise heroes into gods.

Yes. Although I have a hundred deformities of mind, a thousand uglinesses of conduct and character, which I could help and for which I am to blame, it is the plain truth that God chose to make me beautiful. Has not every one told me so, as long as I can remember? But Heaven knows that, although I have always felt glad, it has never made me puffed up or vain. And I'm thankful it hasn't. If it had, this would have been a bitter day for my pride. For, after all, Ruddington saw us both; and he fell in love with Susan.

I can think of only one answer to the enigma, and I hope it isn't the right one. I suspect that men of abundant manliness, like Lord Ruddington and Gibson, instinctively seek for their opposites in the shape of some passive, clinging femininity like Susan's. They demand that the woman shall be pretty as well as clinging and passive and feminine; because they know that they are brave, and that the brave deserve the fair, I suspect that these strong characters find sweet repose in a simple woman's characterlessness. Their eager spirits recuperate in her placidity.

Conversely, a flabbier man rejoices in a strenuous, all-alive woman. Take poor Alice. She is taller than I am; stronger, quicker, harder, more self-willed. And I suppose that is why Hugh, in his humdrum way, adores her, and is wretched when she's away, like a faithful hound.

If this be the sound theory, I shall never marry. How could I endure a man weaker and pettier than myself? And yet the only kind of man I could ever want ... won't ever want me!

I wish I hadn't begun to think these thoughts. Still more do I wish I hadn't made them become clearer by writing them down. It makes the world seem so mean and lean. There ought to be grander men than Ruddington--men who would spurn honeyed sloth with dolls like Susan--men who would exult at the challenge of a proud, high-spirited woman as climbers exult at the white blaze of the Jungfrau, as hunters exult at the roaring of a desert lion, as soldiers exult at the sight of a strong city set on a hill. But, alas for this shrunken, sluggish, poverty-stricken time, when I, poor I, who am so far short of being a heroine, must begin to regard myself as a Brynhild doomed to virgin sleep because the Siegfrieds are all too timid and too puny to leap through the small fires of my will and my pride.

_Four o'clock_.

These worries have been too much for my nerves. I feel all overstrung, as if a little thing would make me break down and cry.

For example, just now I went into Susan's room to make sure that she had taken me out of her frame. I find that, instead of taking me out, she's left me in, and taken out Ruddington. There I am, staring across the hinges at an empty oval.

Last time I saw the frame it had both of us in it, and Susan's room was warm and brilliant with floods of morning sunshine. But, just now, her room was chill and dim. The paper background of the empty oval showed up ghostly white.

I walked to the mantelpiece, and gazed at my own photograph. Instead of looking like one half of a happy honeymoon couple, I looked like a girl-widow staring at a shroud. Outside, in the sunless garden, a gust of wind smote a leafy apple-branch against the window, like a slap of a hand; and at the same moment a great dreariness, an utter loneliness, fell like a blight, like a frost, like a black shadow, on my soul.

I have come back to my own room, where it is more cheerful. But I see that I have written too much to-day in this book. Since sunrise this morning I must have written two or three hours. No wonder I am morbid and dumpy!

I swear an oath. Whatever happens, and whatever Susan may report, not another word will I write to-day.

_Thursday morning, in the summer-house_.

I hate to think of yesterday. Hitherto I have hugged a fond belief that my nerves were of steel. Yet the trivial shock of Gibson's chase, coming on top of my early rising, bowled me over for the rest of the day.

It is humiliating to read all the stuff I wrote in this book--the feverish retrospects, prospects, introspects. After I had skimmed through it this morning, I nearly vowed to lock it up and not write another word until I am back in England. But, if I don't jot them in a diary, I mix up dates so frightfully.

For example, I was trying the other night to remember the three days when Ruddington saw me with Susan. While Alice was with me, I let this book slide; and the result is I can't recall being with Susan once except at the post-office; and Susan declares that Ruddington's photograph isn't the least like the young man who stared at her in a dark green suit.

I don't even remember where Susan was while he was feasting his eyes on her through the pillars of the monument. Perhaps she sat behind Alice and me. Or did she sit with the servants? It's tantalizing to think that perhaps I've seen him, and perhaps stared back at him, and that it's all slipped out of my mind.

So I sha'n't stop entering things in this journal. But I mean to enter them more curtly.

Luckily there isn't much to write about Susan and Gibson, even if I were disposed to write it. Susan didn't come back till half-past four. Until after dinner she avoided the subject; and it was only when I was mounting to a very early bed that I asked any questions.

"Well, Susan," I said, "and what have you done with poor Gibson?"

"I've sent him home, Miss."

"To England?"

"Oh no, Miss. To Grandpont."

"He had to go to Grandpont whether you sent him there or not," I said. "But didn't you give him an answer?"

Susan had replied to my questions rapidly and defiantly; but, without any warning, she sat down plump on the top stair with the candlestick in her lap, and sobbed the plentifullest and heartiest sobs of all her many sobbings since Ruddington wrote his first letter. Overwrought as I was, I wonder that the unexpectedness and oddity of it did not drive me into hysterical laughter. I controlled myself only by speaking to Susan roughly.

"Get up, you silly creature!" I said. "Georgette will hear you, and Madame! What's the matter?"

"Oh, Miss Gertrude," she sobbed, "I know I oughtn't to have said the things to Gibson that I did say. I oughtn't, I know, I know!"

"Then what did you say them for?"

"It was all his fault, Miss, not mine. I oughtn't to have said the things I did. But why did he say such bitter, cruel, awful things to me?"

"I've no idea, Susan," I said, taking the candlestick from her lap and leaving her to follow.

She did not appear till she had dried her eyes and regained some composure. When she came into my room, her lips were set, and she did not speak.

"Susan," I explained, "I was sorry to cut you short. But we mustn't have scenes on the stairs. Besides, to-night I'm tired out. Gibson upset me this morning. But I'm sorry if you've quarrelled."

Susan broke down again.

"I hate him, Miss," she cried with a stamp of her pretty foot. "I sha'n't never forgive him for the things he's said to-day! I sha'n't never speak to him again! Not a word, Miss. Not if I live to be a thousand!"

At that I stopped her, and I don't know any more.

_Friday, three o'clock_.

Susan came to me in the summer-house this morning, and said firmly:

"Please, Miss, I've decided."

Certainly I am out of sorts. As she paused on the verge of her announcement, my heart stood still. No doubt the strain and excitement of these three weeks have sapped me and mined me, and Susan's and Gibson's affairs have been so constantly present to my mind that I suppose they have become affairs of my own. Anyhow, I felt myself chilling ridiculously and going pale as Susan spoke.

"What have you decided?" I asked at last.

"I have decided," replied Susan in her most important manner, "that I will keep company with his Lordship for a month. I mean, Miss, when we're back at Traxelby."

"You'll take him for a month on trial?" I said, jesting feebly.

"Yes, Miss. I don't think I ought to be married to him till I'm sure I can put up with him."

"Of course, Susan," I answered. "But that was settled all along. He isn't expecting you at present to say that you will marry him. He simply asks whether he may come in person and persuade you."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, colouring charmingly. And after thirty seconds she added, "Please, Miss Gertrude, I beg pardon, ... but when shall we go back to Traxelby?"

The prospect vexed me suddenly and enormously. I foresaw myself enmeshed for another month in ignominious arrangements for the comings and goings of the Lord of the Towers to the lady's-maid at the Grange. The presentiment of inevitable complications and humiliations on my very own territory was too much for my patience, and I answered Susan sharply.

"Really, Susan," I said, "do try to understand that I must think about myself a little as well as you! With all these worries, I feel as if I've hardly had three clear days at Sainte Veronique all these three weeks. You and Lord Ruddington might be the only people in the world!"

"I'm very sorry, Miss," said the bride-elect, completely penitent. "I only asked, Miss, so that we could..."

"Could what?"

"Put it in the letter, Miss."

"Susan," I enquired, "how have you got on with your writing? This letter will be very short. Don't you think you can manage it yourself? Bring down my writing-case and your own pen, and see what you can do!"

"I'll try, Miss," she said, most deeply disappointed. And she went away.

When she sat down again by my side I admit that Susan astonished me by the speed and the tolerable skill with which she executed a fully-addressed envelope. But my surprise had a short life. It seems that Susan's handwriting exercises have been practically confined to the scribing and rescribing, a hundred times, of the words "Lord Ruddington" and "Ruddington Towers." But, when she sat face to face with a blank sheet of note-paper, ideas, words, and penwomanship alike failed. Susan sighed, moaned, squinted, wriggled, ate the penholder, pouted, and finally adorned the middle of the paper with a big tear.

Doubtless it was my duty to transmit that sheet of paper, tear-drop and all, to the Lord Ruddington so that he might frame it in gold and ivory or treasure it in a casket of bejewelled silver. But I was quite heartless this morning. I snatched the sheet away unkindly, crushed it up profanely, and said:

"You're wasting paper, Susan, and what's worse, you're wasting time. Can you do it or not?"

"No, Miss," whimpered Susan. Her shoulders began to heave, and she shed two more big tears.

"Hand me my own pen, then," I said, less harshly, "and a clean sheet of paper. You may come back in ten minutes to see if what I've written will do."

"I know it will do, Miss," said Susan fervently. "All the letters you write, Miss, are beautiful. I don't always understand them at first; but when I think them over and over after they're posted----"

"Now, run along, Susan," I cut in. "I'll leave the letter inside this case in my room. Your own envelope will do. Post it if you think it is all right."

Here is the letter:

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--Your question is: Do I consent to one or more interviews between us on my return to England?

My answer is: Yes.

After we have met, one or the other or both of us may decide that it is better we should not meet again. I repeat that you have read too much into my letters, and that you have formed expectations concerning me which are bound to be disappointed.

I think our meetings, like this correspondence, ought not to be oftener than once a week, and that we ought to make up our minds once for all at the end of a month. When our return-day is fixed, I must tell all that is in my mind to Miss Langley, and must fall in with her wishes as to the place and time of meeting. Probably she will prefer London to Traxelby.

I hope to hear that you are well.--Yours very sincerely,

SUSAN BRIGGS.

I can't expect Susan to be over-pleased. To use her own old scared phrase, it gives his lordship a chance of backing out. But it makes the only arrangements that are fair and safe all round. Besides, if Susan thinks it is too prudent and cold, she can easily warm it up by getting Georgette to shove in an appropriate collection of sentimentiferous flowers.

_Saturday night_.

This day have coffee'd, read _Les Chouans_, bathed, lunched, read more _Chouans_, walked to the village, dined, read more _Chouans_, and am just going to bed.

_Sunday night_.

There was a letter for Susan this morning, with the Grandpont postmark. She regarded Gibson's waiting on the envelope with darkling brows, and thrust the packet unopened into her pocket.

So far as Gibson is concerned, I am not exactly delighted with the situation. He ought to go home. But I can't tell him so. When the new Lady Ruddington begins her reign at the Towers, Gibson will hardly enjoy life at the Grange. I shall feel his going very much. But I'm getting used to Ruddington's wrecking. He's wrecked my holidays, he's stealing Susan, and I suppose I must spend the autumn watching him smash up my whole household. In any case, I mustn't command or persuade Gibson to leave Grandpont so long as he thinks that a smattering of motor-mending will help him in his next place.

I can't guess what the poor lad has written to Susan or how she is going to take it. But love and hate, even the loves and hates of poor and simple people, come home to me so vividly here at Sainte Veronique, that I can't help feeling miserable over Gibson's trouble. With the undimmed sun shining down from a cloudless heaven on the endless waters and the immeasurable uplands, such elemental verities as love and life and death seem to be at home.

It was to Berigny that I went for Mass. The cure spoke to me afterwards, as I was sitting under the shadow of the Calvary. He is a simple soul; but he talked with spirit and intelligence about his Church and his country. I found him still smarting under the well-meant fussiness of two old maids from Bournemouth who were at the Hotel du Dauphin last month. It appears that they distributed Evangelical tracts in French, wherein the present troubles of the Church in France were explained as a divinely appointed punishment of Popery and as a divine call to the French people to embrace Scriptural truth. The cure spoke with fine scorn of that British sectarian animosity which hates the Pope ten times worse than the Devil. And he confirmed what I had learned from the more blatant Paris journals--that the so-called campaign against clericalism is at heart a campaign against Christianity, and not only against Christian dogma, but even against many ancient precepts of Christian morals. More. He confirmed what I have myself read in the speeches of deputies and even of Ministers--that the attack is not merely against Christianity, but against the whole idea of supernatural religion, and that it is avowedly an attempt to establish a lay state, a purely secular community trained from childhood to believe that all religion is superstition and that human science alone can teach men how to live and die.

After the cure went home to break his fast, I still lingered in the churchyard. A new plank-monument had been raised during the week over a new tomb; and its jet-black letters on a snow-white ground reminded me of the resolve I had made to offer a De Profundis for the faithful dead.

I found the place in my _paroissien_, and said the opening words aloud. The sound of my own voice in that sunny field of death frightened me, and I stopped. I began again, reading to myself. But it was of no use. I couldn't go on.

When it comes to downright earnest, you can't skip from one religion to another. Lost in a crowd one can coquet with another religion, tolerate it, even enjoy its unfamiliar ancient ritual. But, with my De Profundis it was different. I couldn't shed my Protestantism like an old cloak in the twinkling of an eye.

Not that I felt, as I sat down again on the platform of the Calvary, that praying for the dead was false doctrine and superstitious error. I dared not say it was true; but still less dared I say that it was false. I thought of the two old maids from Bournemouth, their half-knowledge, their meddling; and I felt it would be, at the very least, an unpardonable impertinence to offer doubting prayers for needs that I could only half understand.

I ought to have remembered the Ancient Mariner; how, with a heart as dry as dust, seven days, seven nights, he stood alone on a wide, wide sea with Death; how, at last, he watched the water-snakes, coiling and swimming, blue, glossy green, and velvet black, in the shadow of the ship; how a spring of love gushed from his heart and he blessed them unaware; and how, the self-same moment, he could pray.

With me it was the other way about. At Berigny this morning I began with faith and ended with unfaith. I went to pray and came away to doubt. Hardly had I clasped my book and resolved that it would be bad taste to pray, before a shadow fell upon all things. The light of the sun was broad and bright; but, within me, there grew a bleak wonder that any one should be able to believe in God.

I mean the Christian's God, of course. If He is truly identical with the eternal Cause of the universe and yet yearns for man's love and worship, how can his heart be content that his right arm should hang idle while puny unbelievers are closing his temples and muzzling his messengers?

I looked along the wooded ravine where the beck chatters down to Sainte Veronique, with Grandpont spire away to the right, and I thought of Susan and Ruddington and Gibson. If God's delight is in the virtuous happiness of men and women, why this hateful tangle? Perhaps it was a blasphemous thought; but the tangle was so cruel, so useless, so cunning, that it seemed to require an omnipotent Devil for its explanation.

The cruelty of it brought tears to my eyes. I thought, for the first time, of a coincidence that deepened the wrong. Susan, Ruddington, and I--we are all orphans. As for Gibson, if he has parents it is fifteen years since they made a sign. Each one of us robbed before we could speak, or think, or remember, of a mother's care and love; and, for compensation, Gibson cheated of love altogether, Susan beloved where she cannot love. Ruddington loving with no love to answer.

I thought of myself. If the Christian's God is one with the Upholder of all things, his was the lightning which struck the old Grange and slew my father and mother as they slept. Where are they to-day? Are they annihilated, body and soul--as dead as stones on the beach? Or do their spirits wander wearily _in profundis_ bowed under the burden of new sorrows, awful and unknown?

Yes. I thought of myself. Except grannie, who was fifty years my senior, who has ever loved me dearly, whom have I ever dearly loved? No one. Not even Alice, though we have been good chums.

I resolved on Thursday never again to think the thoughts I thought before the glass. But thoughts will not be denied. In the churchyard this morning, as I sprang up and paced among the graves, a hot, vast, rebellious anger nearly drove me mad. To-day I knew that I was made for love--for a love immense as the sea, ever-lasting as the hills, more splendid than the sun. Why has it been written that love must pass me by?

So I did not say a De Profundis. I know that God exists; but the depths seemed too deep for him to pity and the heights too high for him to hear. I clanged the churchyard gate behind me harshly; and it was in vain that the jet-black letters on the snow-white plank of the new grave whispered: "If you please."

_Monday_, 2.45 _p.m._

Susan is behaving strangely, and I don't like it.

There is a letter from Ruddington. When it arrived, Susan made no secret of it; but she has neither shown it to me nor mentioned it, although she has been with me all the morning.

In one sense I grant that it is Susan's letter, not mine, and that she is under no obligation to let me read a line. But, in another sense, it is as much mine as hers. The letters Ruddington writes are answers to my letters, not Susan's. The Susan he thinks about and writes to is no longer the palpable Susan with whom he fell in love at Traxelby. He has a new Susan, a composite Susan, a Susan who never was and never will be, a Susan idealized as much from my letters as from his recollections of her face. If Susan, at last, feels competent to compose and write her replies, well and good. But she should say so. To take back the whole affair into her own hands without a word is rather cool. Not that I care one jot about what Ruddington has written. But I do feel rather sick about Susan's uncouthness. After the pains I've taken, it is so monstrously ungrateful.

_Bed-time_.

Susan drifted down the garden path about three o'clock, and came to anchor beside my chair. She began turning up the gravel with her toe.

"He wrote this morning, Miss," she said suddenly.

"I know, Susan," I said, "I saw the envelope."

Susan went on furrowing the gravel.

"Would you like to read it, Miss?" she asked.

"Perhaps there's no necessity," I answered a little stiffly. "Perhaps you can manage the reply yourself."

"I wish you would read it, Miss," she said, after a very long pause.

"Where is it?"

"Upstairs, Miss."

"Then how can I read it?"

"Please, Miss," said Susan coyly. "I don't like to show it you. It's so loving."

"Indeed," I said. "Then be sure you don't worry me with it unless you find you can't answer it."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan.

She went back to the hotel with a clouded face.

The afternoon dragged. To tell the truth, I wanted to see his letter immensely. Yet how could I? To have read it out of mere curiosity would have been like peeping through a hedge at an unsuspecting pair of sweethearts, or like eavesdropping behind some Lover's Seat. Still, it was terribly tantalizing to have the door of the play-house slammed in my face just as the piece was getting exciting. I tried to read, work, walk about, write; but in vain. All I could do was to think, remember, anticipate, dream, till I felt like the loneliest of lonely outcasts. Ruddington's love-affair, which had been so silly and worrying and tiresome, suddenly became as warm and homely, and bright and cosy as a Christmas hearth; and I felt like a friendless orphan wandering outside in the gloom and the cold.

By six o'clock, I was so deep in the dumps that I positively made some sort of a weather-remark to the enormous, silent Frenchman who has been here a week. I hadn't guessed that he was a mountain of shyness. At my voice he jumped, flushed crimson, knocked over his wine, choked, and nearly frightened me out of my wits before he could utter an intelligible word. Georgette was sulky about the spilt claret; and, from merely feeling solitary, I went on to the knowledge that I was roundly hated. When I came up to my room, an hour ago, I found Susan had left Ruddington's letter under my blotting-pad. Envelope and contents were so flat and uncrumpled that I hardly think they have been cherished next to Susan's wildly-beating heart. Ruddington says:

SUZANNE, ALL MINE,--As ever, I love, honour and obey. Take a month, if you will, before you speak the word. But I have settled it with the stars in their courses what the word must be. For ever, everywhere, you are Suzanne, all mine.

In her neighbourly good-nature and excellent wisdom, Miss Langley may choose for our meeting-place, Traxelby or London, or the Equator or the North Pole, or Sainte Veronique or the New Moon, or the summit of Mont Blanc or Ruddington Towers, or a coral island, or the Bottomless Pit, or the top of the Monument, or any other square yard she pleases. So long as Suzanne is there in the midst, the arid, scorching heat of the Sahara will be Eve's garden refreshed and guarded by the four streams of Paradise.

Suzanne has promised that she will come an inch to meet me. She shall never turn back alone.

But let not Suzanne mistake this perfect confidence of mine for vanity. I believe that Suzanne will run to be all mine, not because she gives herself lightly (for where is there a prouder than Suzanne?) and not because I am handsome, or desirable or magnetic. I am not magnetic, I am not desirable, I am not handsome. No. I believe that Suzanne must be all mine because I am all hers; because it is unthinkable that she should come close to the blaze of such a love as mine without herself taking fire.

Unless the Devil is torturing the world, such love as mine for Thee implies, requires, compels an equal love of thine for Me.

What a Suzanne this is, who is all mine! When I recall her face as I saw it in Traxelby church, what a wonderful, beautiful Suzanne! But, when I read her letters, I cry again, with threefold gratitude: what a beautiful, wonderful Suzanne! Her pride is as fine as the curl of a rose leaf; but her sweetness, like the rose's perfume, hovers over it all.

Not that Suzanne thinks that she has ever revealed herself in her letters. She believes that she has veiled herself in veils of prudence and reserve. But my eyes have found her out--have found her, more beautiful for her dissembling, like a great bright star hiding in the Milky Way.

Suzanne, it is no use hiding any longer. The hour has come for shining out without a cloud between. Do not wait for our meeting. Write to me, just once, without distrust of yourself or of me. I have obeyed, have I not, in all things? Reward me at last. Pour out your heart, even if it be a-brim with fears.

When she reads this, prudent Suzanne will be moved to answer that I am taking too long and sudden a leap, and that I am skipping over two or three seemly stages. She will say that she has written nothing which I have the right to answer with a love-letter like this.

But this is not an answer to Suzanne's letter. It is an answer to her flower.

RUDDINGTON

In a corner of the envelope I found something which his Lordship's wonderful beautiful Susan has overlooked. It was a petal of a creamy rose. Poor Ruddington! And to think that it is nobody's fault.

_Tuesday at sunrise_.

How can I write it?

Only because, if I write it not, my brain will turn, my heart will break.

I love Ruddington.

For days and weeks I have lied to myself, I have lied to this book. With my wits I have parried the truth; but in the heart of my heart, ever since the day I took his portrait in my hand, I have known.

As I have looked for his writing by every post, I have known. As I have read his letters, grave or gay, I have known. As I have sat replying, I have known. Every hour of every day, by the sea, in the garden, in this room, I have known.

When I saw his portrait facing mine, I knew. When I saw his place empty in the frame, I knew----oh, how hungrily! And when I sat on Sunday, bitter-hearted, under the Berigny Calvary, I knew.

Yet God knows how I have fought it, how I have held it down even out of my own sight. And God knows how, according to my light, I have striven to do my duty by Susan, and by Gibson, and by them all.

My poor wits are too weary. They can parry the truth's bright, cruel thrusts no more.

So, before I tear this book into tatters and burn it till not a letter of his name remains, once for all I will confess. I love Ruddington. I fell asleep last night with his rose-leaf, my stolen rose-leaf, under my pillow. I dreamed a dream of peace--a peace as sweet and strong as death. I dreamed I was at rest within his arms. And I awoke in the loneliness of the rainy daybreak, holding out my hands to him and murmuring his name.

_Tuesday_, 2 _p.m._

I shall burn this book. But not to-day.

The world seems hushed, remote, unreal. To-day, I seem to belong, not to Life, but all to Love and Death.

As soon as the sun had conquered the mist, we went down, Susan and I, to bathe. The tide was high, with warm boisterous waves. Perhaps I went out too far, or breasted the rude buffeting too long.

Without warning, my strength forsook me. I half swooned in the water. The undertow drew my feet away from their hold on the ribbed sand, and, at the same moment, a towering, craggy wave broke with a shattering crash full over me.

Involuntarily, by the animal impulse of a creature clinging to life, I raised a foolish cry which filled my mouth with water; I threw up foolish hands, and straightway began to sink. But, instantly, calm and self-control returned. The great waters were chanting in my ears. I even opened my eyes and looked up through the green crystal at the noon-day sun--a round, moon-like sun, mild and cool and kind.

I believed it was the end. Death was all round me and under me and over me, like the sea. But I was not afraid. Till Death was near, I had not dreamed that he could be so sweet. To sink down, down, down in his arms was not a frightful descent into horror; it was a gentle settling into unutterable peace.

But it was not to be. For the present I belong to Life, who is so niggardly and cruel, not to Love who is so lavish, or to Death who is so kind. Susan had seen me collapse; and when a thunderous wave swung me towards her she plucked me from its grasp.

Susan does not know that Death has laid his lips on mine and that I have looked into his pitiful eyes. She thinks I merely lost my footing, and she knows nothing of the swoon. But she says I look ill and shaken; and I do believe she has forgotten her own affairs in mine.

_At sunset_.

Susan won't let me leave my room. She has guessed that this morning's affair was more serious than a mere swallowing of salt water, and she insists that I am an invalid for the rest of the day.

Georgette has made a crackling wood-fire. The logs rest on quaint old iron dogs and, in one sense, the blaze is cheerful. In another sense it is depressing. The sun has set early, and these logs are the funeral-pyre of summer.

Everybody is so kind. Georgette set a table between the hearth and the window, and Madame has sent up such a _poulet en casserole_ as I have never tasted before. Dupoirier chose out a Burgundy, dry and bold and strong.

Now that I feel so much better, I know that I was ill. Before dinner, I lay down on my bed and slept two unrestful hours. I dreamed that I was climbing toilfully up a stony path between ruinous walls and close-grown ancient thorns. I climbed in a light that was neither of the night nor of the day: in the wan and chilly light of a moon-like sun such as I had seen through the water. And, all the time I climbed, I knew that he was near. Thrice I saw him through the briers, and once he called my name: but he was always at the other side of the wall.

I dreamed much more. But though I couldn't help dreaming, I can help recalling it all, I can keep writing it.

Yet what can I do if I don't write? I can't get to close grips with a book. The end of _Les Chouans_ is too beautiful, too sorrowful, and I've no one to talk to, save Susan. Susan has been an angel all day: but I couldn't talk to her just now. I will go to bed.

_Midnight_.

The house is quiet as the grave.

I cannot sleep. Perhaps the fire was too restless and bright.

The room is so warm that I am sitting without even a dressing-gown, just as I slipped out of bed. I have a plan of wooing sleep.

I am going to write to Ruddington. Not a reply on behalf of Susan. Not a letter that will ever be posted. Not a letter that any eye save mine shall ever see. Once, just this once, because I am sleepless, and shaken, and worn, and unhappy, I will let myself go. For half an hour, he shall be mine. His rose-leaf, my stolen rose-leaf, shall lie by my hand. To-morrow ... the fire for what I write to-night. And for me--to-morrow and all the morrows after it--no looking back to this hour, no brooding, no idle regret, nothing save the quest of forgetfulness.

This is what I write--the first and last love-letter of my life:

SAINT VERONICA'S, _at dead of night_.

BELOVED,--You bid me write to you just once without distrust either of myself or of you. You bid me pour out all my heart.

I obey. Once--this once--I will speak to you as I have never spoken before, as I can never speak again.

You have seen me, in the flesh, three times, treading the solid ground, breathing the summer air. Yet you do not love me. I have seen you only in a portrait: and I love you as wildly, as eternally, as immeasurably as you believe you love poor Susan. I know it all through my soul: and, as you wrote in your first letter, there can never be any one in the world for me save you.

Your portrait was the beginning. How I can have been near your own very self those three times in England without turning to you as a flower turns to the sun, without answering you as deep answers deep, I do not know. Perhaps my heart did turn, my soul did answer. But, for my consciousness, the portrait was the beginning. And what your portrait began your letters have carried on.

You say that poor Susan's mind is even more beautiful and wonderful than poor Susan's face. Alas, how cruelly you are deceived, how rudely you must be awakened. But with Thee, beloved, it is thy mind that makes me love Thee most. Although I have wandered only a few steps along its margin, I know that a long lifetime would not suffice me to explore that goodly land with its sunny fields, its merry brooks, its great deeps, its peaks piercing the clouds of heaven.

Yes, Beloved, thy mind is beautiful and wonderful. And yet it has deceived you. At the sight of a pretty face, you bent like a reed under an immense infatuation which you think is love. It is the tragedy of your life and mine, Beloved, that we, whom God made one for another, must go our separate ways, you with your infatuation, I with my love.

Doubtless, before long, we shall meet. You will feel the delicacy of my position, you will be considerate, grateful, kind. And I must sit and smile and put you at your ease, while all the time my heart will be crying: This is the man who should have loved me!

To-morrow all will be changed. This hour of self-revelation will belong to the past, never to have a successor. But to-night I have let myself go. If you were here at this moment, your infatuation should melt and vanish before my love, like hoarfrost before a raging fire. You should go down on your knees, you should prostrate yourself at my feet, imploring pardon for your ignoble truancy and for your treason against love. But I would make haste to forgive you, Beloved, and to raise you up, and to throw myself against your heart into your arms.

I send you back your rose-leaf. It has lain by me as I have written, and I will keep nothing to remind me of this hour. So I send it back--not as it came, for it is heavy with a kiss.

The sand has run out in the glass. My hour is ended. When I have laid down my pen, I shall weep. And, when I have wept, perchance I shall sleep and love you dreaming as you will never love me waking. Farewell.

I laid down my pen five minutes ago. I take it up again to say that I have not wept and that I cannot sleep.

What a letter I have written--what a slow-footed, cold-blooded, low-pulsed, nerveless, schoolgirlish scribble! Will the fire be able to burn it, I wonder, or will it put the fire out like an armful of damp green boughs?

No, I can't sleep. My very contempt for what I have written has awakened me in every fibre.

I am not ill now. I have never been so well before in my life. A moment ago I looked at myself in the glass. The picture enchained me. I stood with the torch-like brass candlestick held high. My uplifted arm was bare as far as the deep lace at my elbow. My eyes shone, my hair fell all about me, almost to my knees. In contrast, my feet were like two lilies, my neck was like a swan's. And, as I gazed, another veil was withdrawn from the mystery of life. By the light of the candle I saw my own cheeks glow red, as it was revealed to me what it will mean to live without love. What Fate denies me is not only communion with a kindred spirit. I, too, am flesh and blood.

Let Susan and Ruddington thank their stars that I was brought up gently, christianly, instead of wickedly, selfishly, in the passion-fraught air of a worldly home. Let them thank their stars that the devil in me has been laid, that the tigress in me has been tamed. If Ruddington were here to-night, if Susan came running hither through that door, how small a thing could sting me past control and rouse me to overwhelm them under my proud anger and pitiless love! I could dash his china shepherdess into a thousand pieces. I could compel him to forsake all and follow me to the end of the world.

A memory rises up suddenly and makes me laugh bitterly. Susan at Traxelby. How I smiled at her melodramatics when she knelt down in an agony of fear and made me swear that I would not take him away from her! But I have sworn, and I may not repent.

Enough, far more than enough, of this. It is mad, it is sickly, it is contemptible. No more of it, to-night or ever. I will get back into bed, and lie snug, and read till morning.

_Wednesday, noon: in bed_.

I feel bruised all over, strengthless, stunned. Susan woke me at ten o'clock. _Les Chouans_ had fallen to the floor and the candle at my bedside had burned down to its socket.

Susan says that she came in at seven with no less noise than usual. But I was sleeping so soundly that she didn't like to wake me before ten.

While she was propping me up with pillows and pouring out the coffee, I looked round the room and my heart stood still.

The letter to Ruddington was gone.

My cheeks turned whiter than the sheets. Susan caught me in her arms.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude, no, no!" she wailed, "I couldn't bear it."

She thought I was going to die. I opened my eyes and tried to speak. But Susan wailed on.

"It's my fault, Miss, all mine. You're so good to me, Miss, I ought to have known. I ought to have said, 'Don't bother about his lordship, Miss, till you're well and strong.' But I didn't think. I'm too selfish, Miss. Oh, Miss Gertrude, to think you were sitting up writing and writing all that, and me snug and warm in bed!"

"Susan," I said feebly, asking the question in terror, "What have you done with it?"

"It's gone, Miss," answered Susan, with the prompt heartiness of one who breaks good news and administers consolation. "So you don't need to worry your head about it any more."

"Gone?" I echoed, in a voice as thin as a ghost's.

"Yes, Miss. Madame was going to Grandpont in the omnibus. She asked me if we had any letters for the early post. And oh, Miss Gertrude, it was perfectly lovely! I can't never thank you enough. I couldn't understand it all through; but it was so lovely, it made me cry."

I lay still with closed eyes. When Susan held the coffee to my lips, I drank. When she drew away the extra pillows and settled the bedclothes cosily round me, I did not resist. Indeed, I did not say another word. Susan thinks I am asleep.

I ought to be up and doing. But doing what? I ought to be hot, angry, ashamed, full of resolves and plans. But I am lying here, despite the shocks and bruises, subdued, at rest, strangely imperturbable. Can it be that I am happy because, while I have played fair with Susan, I have been suffered once, just once, to speak in his ear and to send him a rose-leaf with a kiss?

I have thought it all out. Did Susan sign the letter? Even if it has gone without her name, it doesn't matter. He cannot guess that it is mine.

At first I shuddered at recollecting the bits about "poor Susan." But, again, it doesn't matter. He will take it that Susan has written "poor Susan" instead of "I," just as he himself writes "prudent Suzanne" instead of you.

He will read it to-morrow morning. It will puzzle him. But the task of interpreting it will delight his fanciful, super-subtle mind. I can predict his reading of the riddle. He will take it that Susan, in her wonderful, beautiful soul, is comparing her angelic love with his very human infatuation. He will picture her more exquisite and spiritual and poetical than ever. But it is my kiss that he will cull from the curling lip of that pale rose.

* BOOK IV *

*LA VILLA DE LA MER*

*