PART FOUR

1

She was ready for the picnic. She wore a yellow linen frock and a hat of brown straw, shaped like a poke bonnet and trimmed with a beautiful yellow ribbon. It was Mamma who tied the ribbon in a great bow: the loops fell in the nape of her neck and the ends ran down between her shoulder blades.

‘Lovely young creature,’ said Mamma dispassionately observing her.

Judith had been home more than a week, and Mamma was being charming. She had taken her to London to buy frocks. They had stayed at Jules for a couple of nights, and Mamma had ordered pretty clothes generously from her own dressmaker. She had said at last in her curious, harsh yet beautiful voice, with a shrug of her shoulders, as Judith paraded before her in the fifteenth model:

‘As you see, everything suits that child.’

And the dressmaker had solemnly agreed.

They had been together to a play, and to the opera; and every morning and every night Judith sat on Mamma’s bed and they chatted together with friendly politeness, almost with ease.

She was a woman exquisitely dressed, manicured, powdered and scented. Her face did not age, though the colourless cheeks were now a little hollowed, and the eyes sharper. Her eyes were like blue diamonds, and she had an unkind reddened mouth with long pointed corners. The bones of her face were strong and sharp and delicate, and something in the triangular outline, in the set of the eyes, the expression of the lips, made you think of a cat.

She was elegant in mind as well as in person, capable, quick-witted. Her conversation was acute and well-informed over a wide field,--and men admired and delighted in her. She had always, thought Judith, seemed to move surrounded by men who paid her compliments. She had no women friends that you could remember. She remarked, now and then, how much she disliked women; and Judith had felt herself included in the condemnation. She had never been pleased to have a daughter: only a handsome son would have been any good to her. Her daughter had discerned that far back in a childhood made overwise by adoration of her.

There was scarcely anything about Mamma to remember: nothing but a vague awestruck worshipful identification of her with angels and the Virgin Mary.

There was one night when she had come in, dressed for a dinner party, all in white, with something floating, rosy and iridescent about her. The dress had geraniums on it, at breast, waist and hem, a bunch on one shoulder, and flowing geranium-coloured ribbons. There were diamonds in her fair cloud of hair. She bent over the cot, smiling secretly with eyes and lips as if she were very pleased; and Judith hid her face from that angelic presence; and neither of them spoke a word. A man’s voice called: ‘Mildred!’ from the door: not Papa.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Here’s the child.’

Somebody tall and moustached came and stood beside Mamma and looked down, making jokes and asking silly questions, and laughing because she would neither answer nor look at him.

‘Don’t be silly, Judith,’ said Mamma.

‘She hasn’t a look of you,’ said the man.

‘No, nothing of me at all.’ Her voice sounded bored.

‘Are you sorry?’

‘Fred isn’t.’

They both laughed a little.

They stood leaning on the cot-rail in silence side by side, and Judith’s hand stole out unnoticed and touched a geranium. She gave it a little pull and it slipped out of the bunch into her hand.

‘Come then,’ said Mamma; and then over her shoulder: ‘Go to sleep, Judith.’

She would have been annoyed if she had noticed the geranium. It was not real after all: it was made of pink velvet. Judith hid it under her pillow.

Mamma slipped her hand into the man’s arm and floated away.

That was the only vivid recollection of her left. The children next door came close on the heels of the geranium-frock in memory; and after that they, and not Mamma, absorbed her passion. Mamma was more and more away, or busy; and more and more obviously not interested in her daughter. All life that was not playing next door, or alone in the garden, was lessons and governesses. Mamma and Papa were relentless about education.

They had dual personalities in Judith’s mind. There were Mamma and Papa who loved each other, of course, and loved their only daughter; and sometimes took her to the seaside, and now and then to London for the pantomime. Once or twice she went abroad with them; but on the many occasions when they left her behind, they wrote her affectionate letters which she dutifully replied to in French, so that they might see how her French was progressing; and they brought her back beautiful presents. Often when they were at home they read aloud to her in the evenings.

The three were blent in a relationship of a romantic and consoling sort,--an ideal relationship; but then Fred and Mildred would take the place of Mamma and Papa, and shatter the illusion. For they, alas, seemed made of stronger and more enduring fibre: they were real: and they were not often together: and when they were, there was often coldness and now and then quarrelling. Life with Fred and Mildred was neither comforting nor secure. Fred was quite an elderly man, and terrifyingly silent and pre-occupied. He read and wrote books, and had a few elderly friends. Sometimes these would pause for a moment between their long spaces of ignoring her; and, searching her face, would tell her she was growing up like her father. And, each time, their voices, their faces, their words made an unknown past spring up in her for a moment, rich with undreamed-of vanished graces--and she would go away with an ache of sadness. People loved Fred; Mildred they admired and deferred to, but did not love. That was clear at an early age, when Judith went walking with one or other of them past the row of cottages at the top of the garden, and they stopped to speak to the cottage people over the fences. The cottage people had one sort of voice, look, reply for Fred; and quite another for Mildred.

Judith grew up with a faint obscure resentment against Mildred for the way she treated Fred, for her competence--her dry, unmerciful, cynical success in dealing with the world. Fred was not at home in the world: even less at home, thought Judith, than she herself; but Mildred was steeped in its wise unkindnesses. She did not seem to realize that Fred needed to be looked after.

Then he died; and they became Mamma and Papa again. Mamma had been gentle, tired-looking, and pale in her black clothes, and dependent for a little while on Judith. She had not spoken much of Papa; but she seemed engrossed in sad contemplations, and her replies to letters spoke of him with tenderness and pride.

But all that had not lasted long. After the first six months she had not appeared to want Judith much during vacations. She was always visiting, always travelling, always surrounded by flattering talkative men and bridge-playing scented women; and she came only once for a few hours to College during the whole three years. She had a flat in Paris, with a little room for Judith; but she expected Judith to lead her own life and to stay with her own friends, or with the one aunt, Papa’s sister, for a part, at least, of every vacation. Reading-parties, short visits to friends’ homes, long visits to the old literary maiden aunt in Yorkshire, had absorbed the time. There had been one rapturous summer month alone with Jennifer in a cottage in Cornwall; but there had never been a visit to Jennifer’s home. Her parents, she said, were too unpleasant to be inflicted upon anybody except herself; and then only for brief spaces and at rare intervals. Like Roddy, she appeared and vanished again, without a background, blazing mysteriously into and out of ordinary life.

The hoped-for letter from Mariella, asking her to stay, had never come. She had not seen Mariella since the summer of Papa’s death; and had had no sign from her save one little ill-expressed conventional letter of sympathy, sent, so the writer said, from them all “to tell you how dreadfully we simpathise.” (But Martin had written a note on his own account.)

The wandering vacations abroad and in England had become a habit; and now, all at once, there was home again. Mamma had come home, out of pure kindness and consideration for Judith; for she did not love it, did not want to live there, found it a heavy expense; had had, so she said, several magnificent opportunities of selling it.

‘But it seemed only fair you should have it, this summer at any rate,’ she said. ‘I know you feel romantic about it.’ She added, ‘I see no reason why we shouldn’t spend a very pleasant summer together. You are very companionable--quite well-read now and quite intelligent; and extremely presentable, I will say. I do not intend you to stay with me permanently. I should find it extremely tiresome to be always dragging you about with me; and I daresay you’d dislike it too. We are quite unsuited to being together for long; we should only irritate each other. I thought you might have made up your mind what you wanted to do by now--’ (Mamma’s remarks had generally a faint sting in their tails)--, ‘however, since you haven’t, I look forward to having you with me, till the winter at least. You can decide then what you will do, and I will help you if I can. Does this arrangement suit you?’

The arrangement promised to work admirably. It was a step of considerable importance, thought Judith, that Mamma should want her at all. And even though they never spoke intimately, they were never at a loss for topics: there were books, people, plays, and clothes to discuss. And Mamma seemed happy in the garden, reading or wandering about; she admitted that she loved going out with a basket and a pair of scissors to cut flowers for all the rooms.

Surely it was going to be possible at last to establish a satisfactory relationship; to feel deep affection as well as interest, admiration, and that curious pang and thrill of the senses which her scent, her clothes, the texture of her skin and hair gave you and had given you from babyhood.

Mamma finished tying the bow, remarked: ‘Well--enjoy yourself,’ in a half-amused, half-mocking voice; and dismissed her to her picnic.

2

They were all collected at the front door as she came down the drive: all except Roddy. They had ceased to hold terror for her now, or anguish: she had grown up. She could observe the tall group they made without a tremor. What a way they had of all standing together, as if to prevent a stranger from breaking in among them! But that did not matter now. Since she had met them again, there had been no approach to intimacy on either side, no significant interchanges; and she had not minded, had not lain awake feverish with doubt and longing. She was equal to them now. Her heart was in a stupor or dead; and it seemed as if they were never going to disturb her any more.

Mariella, Julian, Martin; but no Roddy....

Julian had come down for the day. He was more cadaverous than ever. His face was composed of furrows, projections, and hollows, with eyes blazing far back in his head. A lock of his thick brown hair had turned white. He wore elegant white flannel trousers and an apricot-coloured shirt of softest silk; and he made Martin, in blue cotton shirt and old grey flannels, look rustic and unkempt.

‘Pile in,’ said Martin. ‘Mariella, I _can’t_ let you drive my new car. You do understand, don’t you, angel?’

‘I’m not at all a good driver,’ said Mariella, smiling vaguely round upon them all. ‘I smashed Martin’s car to pieces last year, didn’t I, Martin? I ran it into a wall. He was awfully nice about it.’

‘He’s an awfully nice man,’ said Julian, putting his hand on Martin’s shoulder.

Martin was the only one who ever received obvious marks of affection from the rest. They all treated him in the same way--with a sort of teasing tenderness.

‘Judith, will you come in front with me? And Mariella and Julian, you go there.... Yes, that’s right. Will you be comfortable? Are you all quite happy?’ Martin was terribly anxious lest there should be a hitch. Everyone had got to enjoy the picnic.

‘Is the food in? _And_ the drink? Who’s got the opener? Oh, I have. Mariella, remember that this is Julian’s Day in the Country and don’t sit there and never open your mouth, but point out objects of interest as we go along, and any country sight or sound you happen to notice. Are we ready then? To Monk’s Water, isn’t it?’

The car swooped up the drive.

‘Is Martin safe?,’ cried Julian, clinging to Mariella. ‘I don’t believe he’s safe. If he goes fast I shall jump out. Oh, let’s stay at home and have a picnic in the garden. Don’t let’s go away from this nice house and see objects of interest. I didn’t mean it when I suggested it. I never wanted to. Oh, why can’t you ever see a joke any of you? Oh!...’

He subsided with a groan and shut his eyes as Martin swung round the corner and out on to the road. Mariella was giggling like a little girl, Martin was grinning, everybody was in the proper picnic mood. But where was Roddy?

‘Martin, what’s happened to Roddy?’

‘Oh, Roddy,’ said Martin. ‘Poor old Roddy’s got a headache.’

‘A headache?’ Something leapt painfully in her.

‘Yes. We left him lying down. The idiot would play tennis all yesterday in the broiling sun without a hat, and the consequence is a touch of the sun I suppose. He kept me awake most of the night shivering and warning me he was going to be sick. He looked awful at breakfast I must say,--bright yellow; so we gave him an aspirin and put him on the sofa and left him.’

‘Left him, Martin? But oughtn’t someone to have stayed with him?’

‘O Lord, no. He’ll sleep it off and be all right to-morrow. His temper was his worst trouble, so we thought we’d keep away.’

Martin laughed cheerfully, as if he were amused about Roddy’s headache. How cruel, how callous people were! They called themselves his friends and they left him ill and alone, and went off to enjoy themselves. He might get worse during the day: he might be sickening for a serious illness.

Roddy’s absence and his headache mattered terribly. She realized suddenly that it was chiefly because of seeing him that she had looked forward to the picnic; that she had hoped to watch him, to talk to him; that she had had a pang of dismay at his absence from the group by the door; that she had been secretly alert for his coming, in a fever for some mention of him until the very moment of starting; and that then a weight had descended; and that now the day was utterly ruined.

After all, was she going to be obliged to live, to feel, to want again?

Roddy was lying in the deserted house, on the red sitting-room sofa, with the blinds down. His forehead and closed eyes were contracted with his headache. He tossed his head and buried it in the cushions; and his hair got ruffled, and the cushions became more and more uncomfortable. He swore. You came in on tip-toe and knelt down beside him.

‘Roddy, I’ve come to see you,’ you whispered.

‘Oh, Judy, I’ve got such a headache and nobody cares.’

‘Darling, I care. I’m so terribly sorry. I’ve come to make it better.’

You stroked his forehead with cool fingers, smoothed his pillows, gave him a drink and told him to lie still.

‘That’s better. Thank you, Judy. Do stay with me.’

It was bliss looking after him. He had ceased to withdraw himself and be proud: he was utterly dependent. You bent and kissed his forehead....

Martin broke in upon her dream, saying: ‘Quite comfortable, Judith?’

And after he had adjusted the wind-screen, explained to her some of the devices on the dash-board, looked round to see that the others were all right, he addressed himself with satisfaction to his driving again, resuming his one-sided muttered conversations with his car and with passers-by.

‘Now, now, come along, old lady ... that’s right.... What’s the matter with you? Got a pain?... Well done, old girl....’ ‘Now, my dear sir, what are you up to?... Put out your hand, Madam, before you turn corners like that.... Look out, you little brutes, spinning tops in the road. Lucky for you I didn’t run you clear over.... Oh, so you think you can race me, do you? Well, try, that’s all.’

As a variant he read the signposts aloud.

Judith watched the deep-golden, dark-shadowed country slip by: its woods and fields wore a sullen empty look.

They reached their destination at tea-time, and walked down the steep slope to the edge of Monk’s Water.

Bracken and long grass came pouring from the top of the hill to the very bank of the stream; and the beech-trunks rose up from that soft, swirling blue-green cascade, up and up, as far as eye could see. They sprang up clear from their lovely symmetrical pattern of naked roots and climbed the air in one long pure lift and flow, or in a lightly twisting spiral. Ardently they soared, column after smooth grey-green column, lightly balancing on their roots, gathering their power, sweeping it upwards for the final high breaking of the boughs. The strong outflung whirl of the snaky boughs was lost at last in a fountain of foliage. The bright spray wove closely and shut out the sky; but the sun pierced it and lay beneath it in pools of dappled green light.

The smell of bracken was on the air, and the little Monk’s Water slipped past in front of them, brown and clear, singing over its shallows, hiding beneath its overhanging greenery.

‘This is where I once found a new kind of beetle,’ said Julian, looking round him with pleasure.

‘I shall bathe after tea,’ said Mariella. ‘Boys, we must all bathe. I rather wish I’d brought Peter now. Don’t you, Julian?’ She looked at him uncertainly.

‘Well, I told you to, didn’t I? You said he’d got to stay with his governess,’ he said, in an unkind voice.

‘Never mind, Mariella,’ said Martin quickly. ‘I think you were right not to bring him. He’d probably have found it very tiring, a long expedition like this.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ she said, agreeing with a sort of pathetic childish complacence.

Judith remembered once again, with a pang of amazement, that Mariella was a mother.

‘What about tea?’ said Martin. ‘God, I do hope nothing’s been forgotten.’

He opened the picnic basket and searched eagerly among its contents until he found a napkinful of raw tomatoes and lettuce.

Judith smiled at him suddenly. Whoever changed, Martin remained unchanged. He had always been, was now, and would be till he died, kindly, greedy and comforting. He would always eat raw vegetables and smell very faintly of healthy sweat, and ask nothing much of life save that the people he was fond of should be cheerful.

He caught the smile and answered it swiftly, radiantly.

They ate sandwiches, fruit and cake; and the flies, gnats, mosquitoes and midges came in murmurous clouds around them; and Julian started to lose his temper.

‘Smoke, all of you, smoke! Don’t stop for a moment!’ he shouted. ‘My God, we shall all be devoured. _Now_ you know what the Insect Age will be like. Now you see to what end you’ve been helping to produce the next generation, Mariella: to battle with insects and to be defeated.’

They lit cigarettes and frenziedly puffed smoke into the air until the main body of the cloud died away.

‘Now please may we go home?’ he said plaintively. And all at once Judith was reminded of Charlie as a small boy, difficult, petulant, imperious, and yet all the time half laughing at himself in a way that disarmed rebuke: as who should say: ‘I know I’m being a beast and I _will_ be a beast, as long as I like; but you mustn’t mind and you mustn’t take me seriously.’

Julian went on:

‘Let’s all go home and have a nice quiet game of something in the billiard room. Oh, I do hate outdoors so. I do hate the country.’

Martin looked distressed.

‘You’re very ungrateful,’ said Mariella. ‘It was Martin’s treat for you.’ She took Martin’s hand and patted it.

‘Because you said you remembered coming here once when you were a boy and finding a new insect, and how you’d always wanted to come back,’ explained Martin.

‘Oh, my accursed sentimentality! I wanted to bring back the days when I was a carefree beetle-hunter. _Weren’t_ there any flies then? Or didn’t one notice them?’

‘I remember one of the beetle-walks when I went with you,’ said Judith. ‘We came back with our legs and arms swollen up like balloons.’

‘Do you remember that?’ He sat up and smiled at her. ‘Did we go on beetle-walks together?’

‘Yes.’ She blushed. ‘Sometimes. I was very proud when you took me.’

He laughed delightedly.

‘I believe I remember. You _were_ a peculiar child. What else did we do when we were young? Can you remember?’

‘I remember a lot.’

‘Oh, do tell us.’

She shook her head.

‘What were we like? Who was the nicest? Martin of course: you needn’t answer that. But who was the most attractive? Which did you like best?’

‘If you can’t remember I shan’t remind you.’

‘Oh, I believe it was me!’ cried Julian; ‘I’m almost sure it was. Haven’t I always been your favourite?’

She laughed teasingly in his face.

‘Well, I’m sure I deserved to be,’ he said. ‘You were _my_ favourite anyway. Absolutely my favourite woman. You always have been.... Have we changed very much?’

‘No. Very little.’

‘Which of us has changed most?’

Judith paused a moment and then answered: ‘Mariella.’

And directly she had said it she realized afresh how true it was: too true to have been so lightly spoken. Mariella had changed indeed.

Her smile, and Julian’s, faded abruptly.

‘Oh, have I?’ she said, looking away embarrassed.

‘I don’t think Mariella’s changed a bit,’ said Martin with surprise.

‘Ah, well,’ said Julian, coming out of a deep musing, ‘I _feel_ changed, Heaven knows.... Now I shall have a short sleep, my children, and then I am at your disposal for a jolly game of tag. Judith has, as usual, cured me of most of my bad temper, and slumber will complete the process. Judith, angel, you’ll stay by me, won’t you, and wave cigarettes?... Go away, chaps. Judith and I are going to converse until I fall asleep. Remember I haven’t seen her for three years.’

‘I’m going to look for a place to bathe,’ said Martin. ‘Mariella, will you come?’

‘Yes.’ She held out her hands to him, giving him her sweet, small smile of the lips. He pulled her up on to her feet and they started to walk away.

‘I’ll come and find you,’ called Judith. ‘I want to bathe too.’

Martin turned eagerly.

‘There are one or two pools somewhere down this way,’ he said. ‘Will you follow us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’

He waved and she waved back; and they were lost round the corner.

Julian lay down in the shade of an elder bush, lit another cigarette, and looked at Judith with bright appraising eyes.

‘Well, Judith?’ he said, and smiled. And as of old the smile transfigured the whole harsh face with beauty.

‘Well, Julian? What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’

‘You’re happier than you were last time I saw you.’

‘What makes you say that?’

She hesitated.

‘Your--acting is much more natural.’

He laughed and made a face at her.

‘Doesn’t my elegant and elaborate window-dressing dazzle you? Well, never mind. It never did, did it? And I never minded. You’re the only woman I’ve never been able to deceive to whom I have remained consistently attached.’

‘Are there many you’ve been able to deceive, Julian?’

He paused.

‘There are some who have loved me,’ he said. ‘So they must have been deceived.’

‘You think if they hadn’t been they couldn’t have loved you?’

He nodded.

‘Ah, I don’t believe that. Nor do you.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a thing I never would have believed ... how one can go on loving a person one knows to be--cruel and selfish and indifferent.’

Whom did she have in mind,--she wondered as she said it. That was not Jennifer, surely: surely not Roddy?

‘Not,’ she added quickly, ‘that you’re any of those things. I can’t allow you the satisfaction of thinking so.’

‘I’m all of them,’ he said:

‘_ ... bloody, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin That has a name...._

And that reminds me, Judy, I hear you acquitted yourself with supreme distinction in your tripos. I’m very glad--very proud to know you.’

‘It hasn’t given me much satisfaction.’

‘Now, now! Less of that.’

‘Oh, it’s true. I’m not being modest.’ She turned away from him and said: ‘I worked very very hard. I thought of nothing but work, because I didn’t have anything else--particularly pleasant--to think about. One doesn’t much value that sort of success.’

There was a silence.

‘And I suppose,’ said Julian, ‘that’s all I’m to be told about it.’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Oh, there’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Just that.’

‘Nobody ever will confide in me,’ he complained. ‘I don’t know why. I’m quite madly interested--especially in love affairs. I suppose my face puts them off.’

She laughed.... No, nobody would confide in Julian. He would be too clear-sighted, too scientifically interested, too cold and reasonable. He would give such good advice and so much of it. People only wanted a muddle-headed outpouring of sympathy.

He went on:

‘It’s far too long since I last saw you. Why didn’t I come to see you at College? Or write to you? I meant to.’

‘Why not indeed?... Because you forgot about me.’

‘I never forgot about you, Judy. You were always in the back of my mind. But life was very full.... And I wanted to wait.’

He gave her a quick glance, whose meaning she did not pause to interpret. She said hurriedly:

‘I am glad life was full. You have been happy, haven’t you? Tell me about these three years.’

‘They haven’t been--outwardly--dramatic,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s been ill-health, and again ill-health for me.’

‘Oh, poor Julian!’ She took up his hand and pressed it for a moment; and her eyes started with tears. She had forgotten the asthma which had hollowed his always hollow cheeks, ploughed deeper the lines about the mouth, lifted and bowed the always high stooping shoulders.

‘It’s all right,’ he said rather awkwardly. ‘It’s given me a good excuse for never doing anything I didn’t want to do. These years since the war have been an uninterrupted succession of self-indulgences. I was happy in a way at Oxford. But I only stayed a year. It didn’t do really. The locust-eaten years behind me were too strong. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t play. I was too old altogether. But the gentleness of people, the peace, the beauty!--all that was very comforting. I took to my music again, a little.... But, as I say, it wasn’t any good trying to recapture what I had once found there. And then of course the climate did me in. So I came down,--a physical wreck, but more or less sane again. Since then I have been in France, Switzerland, Austria--all over Europe. I have composed a ballet which will never be performed. I have written three songs. I have contributed pseudo-highbrow criticism of modern music to several periodicals. I have listened--oh, listened very happily to a great deal of music in a great many countries. I have had a Russian mistress, and a French and an Austrian. I think that was all.’ He gave her a quick look as if to see what effect this announcement had upon her; but her face remained unmoved. Julian’s passions had always been an uninteresting if not distasteful subject for speculation. ‘And I got tired of them all and treated them monstrously and left them. They seemed to me quite insupportable after a bit--so stupid. I have tried in vain to be cured of asthma at the inept hands of countless doctors. I have read a lot--and talked more, as you may guess. I have spent and still spend much time looking for someone to whom I might attach myself permanently. But that of course is the most tiresome romantic folly. Nobody could love me for long: I know that well. And I daresay I myself am incapable of anything except a little passing lust. In short, Judy, you see in me what is known as a waster. It’s in the family I’m afraid. Roddy’s another. Charlie was designed for one from birth.... But he’d have been a happy one, poor boy.... Whereas my conscience pricks.’ He rolled over on the grass to look at Judith, lazily, laughingly. ‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

‘No, no. Go to sleep. I’ve nothing to tell you.’

‘The mosquitoes have all disappeared,’ he said. ‘Why? Perhaps I’d better take the opportunity--I shall be so charming when I wake up again. Thank you, Judith. You’ve done me good.’ He shut his eyes; and re-opened them to say: ‘I told you you were always in the back of my mind. It’s true. Always.’ He took her hand. ‘Judith, am I going to be allowed to know you at last?’

‘Oh yes, Julian, of course.’

‘Hum--I wonder.’

He was staring at her with intense inquiry and concentration; but she turned her eyes away. She could not feel that the matter was of much importance.

‘We’re going to see each other a lot?’

‘As much as you like.’

‘What are your plans?’

‘I’m here till the end of July. Then I go abroad with Mamma. To France. To Vichy part of the time. She will believe the cure does her good.’

‘I shall come and find you in France. I shall come to Vichy and take you away from Mamma. I do better in France. You might find me quite a pleasant companion. There’s so much I should like to show you--do with you. Shall I come?’

‘Oh yes, Julian. Do.’

‘And you’d talk to me?’

She nodded.

‘In the end,’ he said, watching her intently, ‘I believe you will.... I told you I could wait.’

He relinquished her hand, and shut his eyes.

She got up and sprang away from him down the bank.

* * * * *

The afternoon was breathless with a thundery heat. The fern-clad slopes were sculptured and glittering cascades. Monk’s Water hid between its shady banks. She followed its twisting course, looking ahead of her for the blue of Martin’s shirt, the white of Mariella’s linen frock.

Roddy was a waster.... It was in the family.... Roddy was no good, he was a waster. Perhaps, like Julian, he had mistresses: a French, an Austrian, a Russian--countless mistresses. Perhaps that was an integral part of being a waster....

She came round a sharp corner, and saw, through the elder bushes, a whitish form in the water. It straightened itself swiftly, alert at the sound of her footsteps.

‘Judy?’ called a voice uncertainly--Mariella’s voice.

Judith parted the elder bushes and looked through: and there was Mariella standing naked in midstream with clear brown water up to her knees.

‘Goodness, I’m glad it’s you!’ she cried happily. ‘I thought it might be someone else. Come on in, Judy. It’s so lovely.’

She stood in the full sunlight, her arms lifted and laid across her forehead to shade her eyes, her lips laughing. Her tall body glowed in the glowing air, narrow of hip, breastless almost, with faint, long young-looking curves; the whole outline smooth and very firm in spite of its slenderness. Her voice vibrated gaily, excitedly. She was happy.

‘We took off our shoes and stockings,’ she called, ‘and waded down till we found this pool. Martin said he thought he remembered a place where it got deeper, and he was right, wasn’t he? It’s not _very_ deep, but still you can swim round. The water’s full of tiny trout. I’ve been watching them. Martin’s bathing a little further down in another pool. I’ve left my clothes under that bush. You leave yours there too and come on in.’

Judith stripped and waded out to join her.

‘This is the sort of bathing I love,’ she went on. ‘Nothing on and not very much water. You know, it’s funny, I never could learn to swim properly; I don’t know why. The boys used to laugh at me so because I always sank and had to be rescued. I gave it up in the end.’

It was the first time since childhood, thought Judith, that they two had been alone together. How deep was the difference in them? Mariella, naked, with her childish curly head and her unself-conscious body looked much the same now as she had looked that evening long ago when Judith had stayed the night with her, and they had had their evening bath together. And yet, a little while ago, it had seemed so certain that Mariella was profoundly changed: in the set of her face especially,--in the grown-up expression of reserve and sadness,--the whole look of a woman whose countenance has started to assume the cast it will wear in middle age. But now, alight and laughing in sun and water, it had once more the blank clearness and candour of her childhood.

Mariella splashed the water, hummed a little tuneless tune, laughed when a stone gave way beneath her foot and threw her headlong into the stream; and the bathing days with Jennifer returned to Judith with a pang. The body beside her now was like Jennifer’s in height, strength, firmness of mould: and yet how unlike! This body seemed as unimpassioned as the water which held it; and Jennifer’s had held in every curve a mystery which compelled the eyes and the imagination.

‘I really wish I’d brought Peter,’ said Mariella, stooping down to peer into the water. ‘He’d have been so excited about these little fishes. Martin and I have just made him a little aquarium and he’s so thrilled with it.’

‘What fun, Mariella! It must be fun having him to play with. He’s such a good age now.’

‘Well, he really likes playing by himself best,’ she said, looking faintly troubled. ‘He’s such a quiet queer little boy.’

‘Well, that’s much better for him than always having to be amused, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is!’ She cheered up. ‘He--I s’pose it’s him being an only child and me being fairly busy--and then I do think it’s much better for a child to learn to play by himself, don’t you?’ She echoed Judith’s words complacently, as if they sprang from her own original and profound conviction.

After a pause she went on reflectively:

‘That governess of his is a very strict person. She says she must have entire charge of him.’

‘She’s new, isn’t she?’

‘Quite new.’ Then gravely, like a child pretending to be grown up: ‘I thought perhaps I might sack her. I’m not altogether satisfied with her.’

She seemed to be waiting to be encouraged in her desperate plan.

‘But why, Mariella?’

She hesitated, flushing.

‘Well, she’s so _frightfully_ superior,’ she said at last, looking apologetic, a little sheepish. ‘I do hate bossy people, do you?’ Her eyes sought Judith’s with a flicker of appeal.

‘I should think I do.’

‘Well, that’s what it is,’ she said with relief.

Judith took her arm and patted it, saying laughingly: ‘Mariella, you’re afraid of her, I do believe! You know you’d never _dare_ sack her. Shall I come and do it for you?’

‘Well’--Mariella dropped her voice and said in an embarrassed confiding way, ‘She simply doesn’t take any notice of me--absolutely none. His own mother! I really sometimes wonder if.... Do you suppose----’ She stopped, and a faint flush suffused her whole face.

‘What, Mariella?’ said Judith softly.

‘Well, I sometimes wonder if Julian could possibly have told her I--I don’t know how to look after him.’

She stooped again over the water, and her curls fell forward, hiding her face.

‘Oh no, Mariella! He couldn’t.... He’d never do a thing like that.’

But was it not more than possible?

‘Well p’raps not.... But he might, you know....’ She picked pebbles out of the water, her face still hidden. ‘He never did think I was much good at looking after Peter. You see, the thing is I ought to be very grateful to him really....’

‘Why, Mariella?’ asked Judith. To herself she said: ‘In another minute I shall get to know Mariella:’ and she almost held her breath to listen, waiting for the moment of revelation, and fearful lest a word or movement of hers should alarm the speaker, close her lips suddenly, and for ever.

‘Well, he’s very helpful about Peter.’ Still she picked pebbles from the stream and threw them away again. She went on as if with an effort: ‘The thing is, you see, he got that governess for Peter, interviewed her and everything. Isn’t he funny? He said poor old Pinkey--you remember her--wasn’t good for him and he must have somebody more suitable for his nervous temperament. I’m afraid he _has_ got a very nervous temperament. I s’pose it’s being musical.... He took simply terrific trouble to find that governess. I daresay she does manage nervous children well. Peter seems very cheerful with her I must say.... And he doesn’t wake up with one of his screaming fits nearly so often.... So I can’t say anything, can I? Julian always will think he knows best. He always was an awful boss, wasn’t he?’ She raised her face to smile with a suspicion of roguishness.

‘Yes, always, Mariella.’ Judith smiled back, eager to encourage Mariella with a sense of shared amusement.

The stratagem was successful. Mariella swam a few strokes to the bank, sat down there, splashing the water with her feet, and said, more cheerfully: ‘Of course it’s very nice he takes such an interest.’

Judith came and sat beside her on the bank, and continued: ‘Where shall you send Peter to school?’

Her face clouded over again, troubled and alarmed.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t thought. I’m not very good at that sort of thing. He’s so delicate and ... I suppose Julian will see about it.... I think he’s got some plans.... Of course Peter isn’t quite like other children because he’s so musical, Julian says....’

There was a long silence. The sun had dried their wet bodies, and they leisurely dressed again and continued to sit on the bank side by side, watching the flow of the water. The faintest ruffle of breeze had sprung up, and the sculptured fern cascades were coming to life, stirring now and then. The golden light on the beeches had become richer and more tender.

‘It must be very interesting to have a child,’ said Judith at last.

‘Oh, do you think so? Do you want one?’

Judith nodded.

‘I never wanted one.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I always thought puppies so much nicer than babies.’

‘But what did you feel when your baby was born, Mariella?’

She shook her head.

‘I can’t remember.’ Her lip quivered. ‘I didn’t feel much. I was awfully ill and--there seemed so many bothers going on. I didn’t see him for quite a long time and then--Oh, I don’t know! He was such an ugly miserable little baby and I simply couldn’t believe he was mine. It didn’t seem as if it could possibly be true that I had a baby. I just kept on thinking: What on earth am I to do with him? Then the doctor told me he might not live. And then I s’pose I suddenly wanted him to live.’

‘Yes. You loved him.’

‘I s’pose so.... I began to think of names for him.... And I thought after all it might be nice if he grew up and--and stopped being pale and thin. But he never has. Still we’re all more or less pasty faced, aren’t we? Then there was Julian ... and I thought--Oh, I don’t know.... Poor Grannie was dying and I took him to see her. She was so happy because he’d been born; because you know she absolutely adored----’ She stopped, her high unnatural little narrative voice failing abruptly.

The simplicity, the pathos, the unreality of her life!... Judith felt the tears burn her lids as she remembered that strange marriage, the deaths of Charlie and of the grandmother--the only woman who had ever in all her life protected, cared for and advised her--and realized in what child-like bewilderment and dismay she had borne her child.

She had never talked at such length or with so obvious a satisfaction in talking. For once, Mariella had things she needed to say.

Judith put a hand lightly on hers as it lay on the grass. It quivered a moment, startled, then lay still, and Mariella turned her amazing eyes full on Judith. Sun and sky were mirrored in them so that they swam with more than their usual blind radiance, but the expression of her lips was tremulously pleased and grateful. Soon she sighed and said:

‘I s’pose _he_’d have adored Peter too. He and Julian were like that about children. I s’pose he’d have done everything for him. He was looking forward awfully.... It’s a pity really Peter’s not more like him--in looks I mean--not in----’ She checked herself.

Mariella was talking of Charlie: in a small, shy but unreluctant voice, she was talking of him: she was preparing to say the things which it had seemed never could be said. In another few moments it would be possible to say gently: ‘Mariella, why did you marry him?’

She leaned her cheek on her elbow and continued:

‘I don’t really understand children.’

‘But later on, Mariella, when he’s older you’ll be so happy with him,--doing things together. You’ll be such a marvellously young mother for him.’

‘Oh, later on!’ was all she said; and added: ‘I don’t believe boys care much anyway about their mothers being young.’

If Julian had heard her say that, so shrewdly, would he not have been disconcerted?

Judith turned to her, opened her mouth to speak.

But then, as on another occasion, Martin burst in upon the pregnant moment--coming round the corner with a loud ‘Hullo!’--fresh, pink and cheerful from his bathe; and Mariella rose from Judith’s side, her lips lifted lightly to smile him an agreeable welcome, her whole customary manner enfolding her in one instant.

‘Hullo!’ she called back. ‘Did you have a nice bathe? We did, didn’t we, Judy?’ Empty little voice, with perhaps a trace of relief in it.... It was all over.

They went back to find Julian.

* * * * *

They slipped back towards home along the chalky roads in an evening heavy with dark shadows.

Martin drove in silence, and Judith sat beside him. Perhaps she would tell him to drive straight home without bothering to drop her; and then they might invite her to come in for a moment, and she would see Roddy--see for herself how ill he was.

Martin turned and looked at her suddenly, and said with a nervous twitch of his mouth:

‘It is such fun seeing you again.’

‘Such fun, Martin.’

‘At Cambridge----’ He stopped.

‘Yes, Martin?’

‘It was ghastly not seeing you oftener at Cambridge.’

‘I know, Martin. It seemed so difficult with those disgusting rules. It was hopeless trying to see one’s friends.’

‘It wasn’t my fault we didn’t meet oftener,’ he stammered out. ‘I wanted to. I thought you were fed up with me, so I kept away.’

‘What made you think such a silly thing, Martin?’

He hesitated, and flushed.

‘Because I--didn’t get on--with your friends.’

She sighed.

‘You mean Jennifer?’

‘Well--yes.’

‘You didn’t like her, did you?’

Jennifer had always been at her worst when Martin was there.

‘I--I couldn’t hit it off.... I--of course I could see she was--very nice ... I could understand why you--were so fond of her....’ He floundered on, his eyes fixed on the road in front of him, his foot gradually forgetting to press the accelerator. ‘But you seemed--quite different when she was there ... at least you were different to me. It felt as if we were strangers.’

She sighed again, and said patiently:

‘I’m sorry, Martin.’

Impossible to try to explain to him. What he said was all so true. Let him think what he liked: she was not responsible to him for her behaviour, not obliged, as he seemed to think, to treat him with consideration. Dull, dull, tiresome Martin. No wonder he had roused a devil in Jennifer.

‘Oh!’ he said, overcome. ‘Good heavens, there’s nothing for you to be sorry about. I wasn’t meaning to accuse you.’

‘It sounded as if you were,’ she said in an aggrieved voice. It was an easy game, upsetting Martin.

‘Oh, Judy, you _know_ I wasn’t,’ he said unhappily; and in his agitation he completely forgot to accelerate, and the car slowed down till she scarcely crawled.

‘Hey, sir!’ shouted Julian from the back. ‘May I ask what you are up to, sir? Does the road belong to you, sir, or does it not?’

Martin made a grimace over his shoulder and drove on.

‘All I meant,’ he said presently, very quietly, ‘was that I’d missed you awfully, and that I’m terribly glad I’ve--I’ve met you again.’

‘So am I, Martin. Honestly I am.’

She was remorseful.

‘I’m going away to-morrow--must get back to the farm.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I wonder if--I’d awfully like you to meet my mother. Would it bore you frightfully to come and stay?’

‘It wouldn’t bore me one little bit. I’d love to meet your mother.’

‘Oh, good!’ He beamed. ‘I’d love to show you my home. It’s rather nice.’

Mariella leaned over his shoulder to say:

‘Drive straight to the station, Martin. Julian will miss his train if we don’t hurry.’

In another ten minutes they were at the station.

‘We’ll come and see you off, Julian,’ said Mariella.

‘I mustn’t wait,’ said Judith. ‘Mamma’s having supper early. I promised I’d be back. Good-bye and thank you all very very much. Good-bye, Julian.’

She held out her hand to him. He took it and elegantly kissed it.

‘_Au revoir, mademoiselle_,’ he said. ‘_Nous nous reverrons au mois d’Août. Sans faute, n’est ce pas?_’

She nodded.

‘_Alors au plaisir_....’

He gave her one searching look, waved his hand and disappeared into the booking-office.

Mariella, following him, turned back for a moment to say in a small voice:

‘Good-bye, Judith. I’ll see you again, shan’t I?’

Her face was for once without its little smile. It was composed and--yes--quite grown up: yes, it had turned into one of those unnumbered women’s faces, masked with a faint fixed perplexity and sadness: and, behind the mask, not alive at all.

She turned to Martin who still lingered beside her.

‘Then--if my mother writes to you?--’ he said.

‘Yes, Martin. I’ll come.’

‘You must come.’

‘I’d love to.’

To see one of the circle detached and against a separate background of home and parents would be interesting: though, alas, Martin’s father had died. It was he who had been brother to Mariella’s mother, and to the father of Julian and Charlie, and of Roddy. Martin’s mother was quite external.... Still, there might be portraits, photographs, all sorts of family things....

She detached her hand from his, and started to run.

The train was not even signalled yet. In five minutes she could be with Roddy. She would make some excuse--say she had left something. She could reckon on a clear quarter of an hour at least in which to see him, tell him she was sorry, tell him ... and quickly go away again.

* * * * *

She knocked on the sitting-room door.

‘Come in,’ said a cross voice.

‘Roddy,’ she said timidly, standing at the door. ‘I’ve come to see you. Just to ask how you are. Only for a minute. Am I disturbing you?’

‘Oh, come in, Judy.’ His voice was polite and surprised.

He was sitting at the writing-table. He wore no tie, and his shirt was open at the neck; his sleeves were rolled up and his hair was standing on end. He looked tired: his face was more sallow than usual, and his lips drooped. The sunlight came into the room through the lowered red blinds, heavy and dark, and as if with a sinister watchfulness. Values were not normal in this queer house light. It altered the character of the friendly and familiar room, and gave to the lonely-looking figure of Roddy an unreal significance and remoteness; gave it terror, almost, and strangeness. The living light seemed to make the blood beat in time with its own dark-blooded feverish pulse.

‘Nice of you to come, Judy.’ His voice made him utterly unapproachable. ‘How cool you look. Did you enjoy your picnic? I should have thought it was much too hot to be comfortable anywhere.’

‘It was horrid without you, Roddy.’

‘Nonsense. You didn’t miss me at all.’ His smile was bland and cold.

‘Didn’t I? Didn’t I? Roddy--it was all spoilt for me when they told me you weren’t well. I couldn’t bear to think of you alone with a headache on a day like this.’

‘Oh, the headache’s gone. It wasn’t much. My own stupid fault.’

‘Are you sure it’s gone? You don’t look very well.’

He laughed.

‘I’m all right. I can’t think why you should be so concerned about me.’

He was not going to allow you the satisfaction of sympathising with him.

‘Then there’s nothing I can do for you?’

‘Nothing at all, thank you, Judith.’

He still sat in front of the writing-table, leaning his head on his hand and looking at her with a curious hard expression. Presently he rubbed his eyes with an impatient gesture, as if they hurt him; bent his head rather drearily and started to draw figures on the blotter.

‘You oughtn’t to try to write if your eyes hurt you. You ought to rest.’

‘I have been resting.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the old capacious nursery sofa, whose tumbled cushions still bore the impress of his body. ‘I got sick of it. I had some letters to write, so I thought I’d better get them done. I’m going away to-morrow or the day after.’

‘Back to Paris?’

‘No. To Scotland with my mother.’ His eyes twinkled for a minute. ‘She thinks I need a holiday.’

To Scotland with his mother. Why did not he say, like Martin: ‘I want you to meet her?’

She came and stood beside him.

‘Well, I must go now.’ She could not keep the utter wretchedness out of her voice. ‘I only came to see how you were.’

‘It was very sweet of you, Judy.’

His voice was all at once gentle and caressing. He took her hand up lightly, and played with the fingers; and she felt the old helplessness start to drown her.

‘Well, it’s good-bye, I suppose, Roddy,’ she said very low.

‘It looks like it, Judy.’

‘Always, always going away. Aren’t you?’

He smiled at her.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t seen more of you, Judy. We haven’t had any of our serious conversations this time, have we?’

Oh, the charming mockery and indifference!... She took her hand away and said briefly:

‘No, we haven’t.’

This time there would be nothing new and delightful to remember. Save for this present vain exchange of words, they had scarcely spoken to one another. The evening when they had all bathed together, the afternoon she had played tennis with them, neither eyes nor voices had encountered each other secretly, alone together. She had seen him watching her now and then: that was all.

‘Last time we met,’ he said, his eyes on her, ‘we had a very serious conversation.’

‘Ah, I thought you’d forgotten that.’

She felt herself tremble slightly.

‘No. No.’ His fixed gaze never wavered from her face; and she could not move. She looked down and saw, on the writing-table, a white square and the name Anthony Baring, Esq., on it. Roddy had a delicate and graceful hand-writing.

‘There’s the car,’ he whispered.

‘Oh, I must go.’

‘Come this way, through the garden door.’

He got up and put his arm round her and led her towards the door, clasping her close to him. The reddish light pressed, whispering and furtive.

‘You kissed me last time,’ he murmured. ‘Will you kiss me again?’

She swiftly kissed his cheek.

He laughed; then drew his breath in suddenly and stopped laughing. Down came his stranger’s face to hers. She felt his mouth hard, and her own terribly soft and yielding. The pressure of his lips was painful, alarming,--a contact never dreamed of. She drew back and saw, in the mirror opposite, her own white-faced reflection, one hand to its mouth.

‘To-night,’ he said very low, ‘shall I come and fetch you in the canoe? We’ll go down, down,--to the islands. Just us two. Shall I come?’

She nodded, speechless.

‘Late. Be waiting for me about eleven.’ He added, in his usual, careless voice: ‘Not unless it’s fine, of course. There may be a thunderstorm.’

She went out of the room, into gold deeps of light and the evening shadows.

* * * * *

She came back into her own garden. The sinking sun flooded the lawn. Its radiance was slit with long narrow shades, and the great chestnut trees piled themselves above it in massed somnolence. The roses were open to the very heart, fainting in their own fragrance; and around them the dim lavender-hedges still bore white butterflies upon their spear-tips. The weeping beech flowed downwards, a full green fountain, whispering silkily. Forms, lights, colours vibrated, burned, ached, leapt with excess of life. The house was wide open at every door and window; and Mamma, going up the steps with a basket of flowers, paused and drew up the striped Venetian blind.

3

For hours, it seemed, they had not spoken a word. The paddle fell now and again upon the water with a light musical clash, like the sound of the shattering of thinnest crystal. Now and again the moving blade woke the water to a rich and secret murmur; as if a voice half woke out of sleep to speak a tender word; then swooned into sleep again.

She saw his arm move and glimmer; his form was just discernible in the stern of the boat, shoulders bowed forward, head motionless. Once or twice he started to whistle a fragment of tune, and then was silent again.

She lay among cushions in the bows, and watched the dark yellow moon rise, bare of clouds, behind the poplar trees. The night was heavy and still.

The canoe slipped down towards the islands. Then she would move, if her limbs still remembered how to move: he would give her a hand to help her out and they would stand among the little willows and whisper together.

Mamma was fast asleep at home, her alien spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover.

And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger.

The boat hissed suddenly among willows, and came to rest against a shallow bank. The clustering thin light blades of the willow-leaves fell over them as they stepped out, bit them with infinitesimal teeth.

She followed him without will, or conscious movement, through nettles and long grass, to a clearing among the bushes, in the middle of the leafy little mound which was the island. In the old days they had often picnicked here, and thought the minute patch of earth a whole world and made themselves kings and queens of it. They had gathered blackberries from these low bushes in the hot sun; and come home again with purple mouths and fingers.

Now the little boy Roddy was this tall man whose shoulder touching hers was more bewildering than the moon-rise; whose head above hers was a barrier blocking out the world.

They stood side by side. He turned to her and whispered:

‘Well, Judy?’

‘Oh, Roddy!...’

‘Judy, I’m going to say good-bye to you here.’ His voice was low, grave, distinct.

‘For a long time, Roddy?’

She saw him nod his head; and she bowed her own and began to sob, but without tears.

He murmured some low inarticulate exclamation, and took her gently in his arms.

‘Don’t cry, Judy. Don’t cry.... Darling, don’t.’

The tenderness of his voice checked her in an instant. His hand moved up and down her bare arm, lingering over its curves, tracing the outline with a touch that made her shiver.

‘Lovely smooth arm,’ he whispered. ‘You are so lovely.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. I think so. I’ve always thought so.’

‘As long as you think so, then--that’s all I care about. You--can have it all.’

‘Oh, Judy!’

Now the moon rose, clear at last above the tree tops, and gleamed strangely into the eyes bent upon her face. His lips were smiling a faint fixed smile. His teeth glinted. The two faces gazed at one another, floating wan upon darkness.

The web had broken. Roddy had shaken himself free and come close at last. The whole of their past lives had led them inevitably to this hour.

‘Oh, Roddy, I love your hair....’ Her hand went up and stroked it; and he shut his eyes. ‘I love your eyes.’

‘I love you all--every bit of you.’

Breathless, sure of him at last, with a delicious last-minute postponement of his embrace she moved away, softly laughing.

‘Roddy, how much do you like me? This much?’

She held out her hands, parting them slowly.

‘More than that.’

‘This much?’

He copied her, laughing eagerly but silently.

‘This much?’

He held his arms out wide. She hesitated a moment and then came into them; and he was not laughing any more, but covering her face and neck with kisses.

It was a quivering darkness of all the senses, warm, melting, relentless, tender. This stranger was draining her of power; but underneath, the springs of life welled up and up with a strong new beat. He clung to her with all his force as if he could never let her go. He was a stranger, but she knew him and had known him always. She took his caressing hands and held them on her breast. In that moment he was her child; and she longed to lay his head where his hands quietly lay. He drew deep breaths, and now and then his rich voice murmured a broken word or two.

She raised her head from his shoulder and gazed in passionate detail at his face.

‘Speak, Roddy, speak.’

He shook his head and smiled--a ghost of his former smile, flickering on his lips alone. His half-shut eyes glittered as if with tears. In the moonlight she worshipped his dark head and moon-blanched features. Gradually he loosened his hold, threw his head back, and stood motionless, arms hanging at his sides, his face an unconscious, sleeping mask. If Roddy were to die young, this was how he would look.

‘Roddy--Roddy--Roddy--I love you--I love you--I love you.’

No answer. He stooped his head and fell to closer kissing.

‘Roddy--say----’

‘What do you want me to say?’ he whispered. Again the flickering smile.

‘I love you, Roddy.’

Ah, if he would whisper back those few words, there would be peace for ever.

She laid her cheek against his, murmuring endearments.

‘My dear, my darling, my little one, I love you. My dear, I’ve always loved you. Did you know it?’

He shook his head faintly.

‘I love you too much, I’m afraid.’

Oh, far too much, if she was to wait in vain for any response save kisses....

‘No, Judy, no.’ The words broke from him painfully. ‘You must forget about me now. Kiss me and say good-bye.’

‘Why, oh, why?’ She clutched him desperately.

‘I’m going away,’ he whispered.

‘But you’ll come back? You’ll come back, Roddy?’

He was silent, utterly silent.

‘I can’t. I can’t,’ he said at last.

‘I’ll wait, Roddy. I don’t care how long I wait. I shall never want anyone else. I’ll wait years.’ There was no answer; and after a while she added in a small laboured whisper: ‘If you love me a little.’

‘Oh!’ He threw up his head with a sort of groan. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

‘You love me?’

He must, he _must_ say it.

‘Yes, I love you.’ The words came out on a groaning breath. She put her lips on his, and stood silent, drinking in her bliss.

He tossed his head suddenly, as if waking up.

‘Oh, Judy, we must go back, we must go back.’

He sighed and sighed.

‘No. A little longer. We’ll talk a little before we go. We must talk.’

He laughed--a normal teasing laugh.

‘A little conversation,’ he said. ‘You’re a tiger for conversation, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t mind your laughing at me.’

They were going to laugh gaily at each other, with each other, for ever.

He put his hand beneath her chin and turned her face up to his.

‘Lovely Judy. Lovely dark eyes.... Oh, your mouth. I’ve wanted to kiss it for years.’

‘Oh, Roddy, you can kiss it whenever you want to. I love you to kiss me. All of me belongs to you.’

He muttered a brief ‘Oh!’ beneath his breath, and seized her, clasped her wildly. She could neither move nor breathe; her long hair broke from its last pins and fell down her back, and he lifted her up and carried her beneath the unstirring willow-trees.

* * * * *

He had brought her back home. Languorous and bemused she stepped out upon the bank in the breaking dawn, and turned to look at him beneath her heavy lids. She could not see him clearly, he seemed blurred, far away.

‘Good-bye,’ he said briefly.

‘I’ll see you before you go,’ she said mechanically.

Not that it really mattered now. Time was not any more and he would be with her for ever.

He nodded; and then abruptly turned the canoe down stream again: looked at her once, faintly smiled, waved his hand an instant and went on.

She walked through the waiting, clear pale-coloured garden, into the house, up to her bedroom; stared in the dim glass at her strange face; sank into bed at last.

4

It was on the next evening that she awoke to the realization that Roddy had not come--might not--certainly would not now. He was going away. He, who always found self-expression, explanations, so difficult, would be at a loss to know what to say when he too woke up. He who never made plans would be helpless when it came to making any which should include her too in the future. Last night he had been dumb, he had sighed and sighed, whispered inarticulately: he would find it hard to be the first to break silence, to endeavour to re-establish the balance of real life between them. She would write him a letter, tell him all; yes, she would tell him all. Her love for him need no longer be like a half-shameful secret. If she posted a letter to-night, he would get it to-morrow morning, just before he left.

She wrote:

Roddy, this is to say good-bye once more and to send you all my love till we meet again. I do love you, indeed, in every sort of way, and to any degree you can possibly imagine; and beyond that more, more, more, unimaginably. The more my love for you annihilates me, the more it becomes a sense of inexhaustible power.

Do you love me, Roddy? Tell me again that you do; and don’t think me importunate.

I am so wrapped round and rich in my thoughts of you that at the moment I feel I can endure your absence. I almost welcome it because it will give me time to sit alone, and begin to realise my happiness. So that when you come back--Oh, Roddy, come back soon!

I have loved you ever since I first saw you when we were little, I suppose,--only you, always you. I’m not likely ever to stop loving you. Thank God I can tell you so at last. Will you go on loving me? Am I to go on loving you? Oh, but you won’t say no, after last night. If you don’t want to be tied quite yet, I shall understand. I can wait years quite happily, if you love me. Roddy, I am yours. Last night I gave you what has always belonged to you. But I can’t think about last night yet. It is too close and tremendous and shattering. I gasp and nearly faint when I try to recall it. I dissolve.

When I came back to my room in the dawn I stared and stared at my face in the glass, wondering how it was I could recognize it. How is it I look the same, and move, eat, speak, much as usual?

Ought I to have been more coy, more reluctant last night? Would it have been more fitting--would you have respected me more? Was I too bold? Oh, this is foolishness: I had no will but yours. But because I love you so much I am a little fearful. So write to me quickly and tell me what to think, feel, do. I shall dream till then.

There is so much more to tell you, and yet it is all the same really. My darling, I love you!

Judy.

She posted it. Next morning she hurriedly dressed and ran downstairs in the sudden expectation of finding a letter from him; but there was none.

Now he would have got hers.... Now he would have read it.... Now he would be walking to the station....

She heard the train steam out; and doubt and sorrow came like a cloud upon her; but only for a little while.

In the cool of the evening she wandered down to the river and sat beside it dreaming. She dreamt happily of Jennifer. She would be able to love Jennifer peacefully now, think of her without that ache, see her again, perhaps, with all the old restlessness assuaged. Jennifer’s letter would surely come soon now....

If Roddy were to ask her to come away with him at once, for ever, she would take just the copper bowl from her table and spring to him, and leave all the rest of the past without a pang.

Perhaps Roddy had written her a letter just before he had gone away; and if so it might have come by the evening post. She left the river and went to seek it.

Who could it be coming towards her down the little pathway which led from the station to the bottom of the garden and then on to the blue gate in the wall of the garden next door? She stood still under the overhanging lilacs and may-trees, her heart pounding, her limbs melting. It was Roddy, in a white shirt and white flannels,--coming from the station. He caught sight of her, seemed to hesitate, came on till he was close to her; and she had the strangest feeling that he intended to pass right by her as if he did not see her.... What was the word for his face? Smooth: yes, smooth as a stone. She had never before noticed what a smooth face he had; but she could not see him clearly because of the beating of her pulses.

‘Roddy!’

He lifted his eyebrows.

‘Oh, hullo, Judith.’

‘I thought you’d gone away.’

‘I’m going to-morrow. A girl I know rang up this morning to suggest coming down for the day, so I waited. I’ve just seen her off.’

A girl he knew.... Roddy had always had this curious facility in the dealing of verbal wounds.

‘I see.... How nice.’

A face smooth and cold as a stone. Not the faintest expression in it. Had he bidden the girl he knew good-bye with a face like this? No, it had certainly been twinkling and teasing then.

‘Well, I must get on.’ He looked up the path as if meditating immediate escape; then said, without looking at her, and in a frozen voice: ‘I got a letter from you this morning.’

‘Oh, you did get it?’

There could never have been a more foolish-sounding bleat. In the ensuing silence she added feebly: ‘Shall you--answer it--some time?’

‘I thought the best thing I could do was to leave it unanswered.’

‘Oh....’

Because of course it had been so improper, so altogether monstrous to write like that....

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I thought.... I’m sorry.’

She ought to apologise to him, because he had meant to go away without saying anything, and she had come on him unawares and spoilt his escape.

‘I was very much surprised at the way you wrote,’ he said.

‘How do you mean, surprised, Roddy?’ she said timidly.

She had known all along in the deepest layer of her consciousness that something like this would happen. Permanent happiness had never been for her.

It was not much of a shock. In a moment that night was a far, unreal memory.

‘Well’--he hesitated. ‘If a man wants to ask a girl to--marry him he generally asks her himself--do you see?’

‘You mean--it was outrageous of me not to wait--to write like that?’

‘I thought it a little odd.’

‘Oh, but Roddy, surely--surely that’s one of those worn-out conventions.... Surely a woman has a perfect right to say she--loves a man--if she wants to--it’s simply a question of having the courage.... I can’t see why not.... I’ve always believed one should....’

It was no good trying to expostulate, to bluff like that, with his dead face confronting her. He would not be taken in by any such lying gallantries. How did one combat people whose features never gave way by so much as a quiver? She leaned against the wooden fence and tried to fix her eyes upon the may-tree opposite. Very far, but clear, she heard her mother at the other end of the garden, calling her name: but that was another Judith.

‘I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me,’ he said.

‘Yes. I’ve misunderstood you. You see--this sort of thing has never happened to me before and I thought ... when a person said.... Why did you say.... I didn’t know people said that without meaning it.... I suppose we must mean different things by it. That’s what it is. Well....’ Her voice was terrible: a little panting whine.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Probably that was true: he had forgotten he had ever said: ‘I love you.’ She could not remind him; for in any case he would not be affected. What were three little words?... And after all, she had probably more or less forced him to say them: she had wanted to hear them so much, she had driven him to say them. Yes, he had groaned, and quickly repeated them to keep her quiet, stop her mouth so that he could go on kissing her. She said:

‘But why, Roddy, _why_ did you take me out ... behave as you did ... kiss me so--so.... I don’t understand why you bothered ... why you seemed....’

He was silent. O God! If only he would wound and wound with clean thrusts of truth, instead of standing there mute, deaf.

‘Roddy, after all these years, these _years_ we’ve known each other, can’t you tell me the truth? We were good friends once, weren’t we?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Oh, I see! I see! And you could never feel like being--more than that.’

He shook his head.

‘I see, Roddy.’ The pain was sharp now, hard to fight down. ‘I see. And you thought there had better be an end ... because you were never going to love me: and I obviously--was it obviously?--was becoming more and more--foolish--and tiresome. So you thought--you’d say good-bye--like that--and then go away for good. Was that it!’

He passed a hand across his forehead: his first gesture. Then he too was feeling, however slightly.

‘I thought that was what you wanted: what you were asking for,’ he said.

‘Oh, so you thought you’d oblige----’ No, no, not sarcasm. She waited a moment and added: ‘I see. You misunderstood me. I daresay it was quite natural. You thought I wanted what you wanted--just a little--a little passion--to round off a flirtation--and be done with it. Well....’

The lane was so still that she could hear the dull beat of oars in passing boats on the other side of the fence. The evening had become very cold.

She gave a little laugh and said:

‘I really am very sorry to make this fuss. It’s too laughable that I should--_I!_ ... I suppose you never dreamed I--wasn’t used to this sort of thing--from men?’

‘I thought you knew pretty well what you were about.’

‘And I didn’t! I didn’t! I was being _deceived_--like any.... Oh, it’s so _vulgar_!’ She shut her eyes, laughing weakly. ‘That’s why you didn’t make your meaning plainer, I suppose. You thought I was quite used to--that sort of thing--kissing--just for a lark. Just for a lark, Roddy--that was it, wasn’t it? And I got serious, and tried to--to let you in for more.... I tried to _catch_ you. Poor Roddy! But you’d never get let in, would you? You know your own mind. You’re cautious. You’ll see--,’ she waved her hand slightly, ‘I’m not dangerous. I’ll never bother you any more. And I’m very _very_ sorry.’ She broke down with a gasp, but did not weep.

‘I’m sorry, Judith. I apologise. I----’ His voice had now the faintest trace of emotion.

‘_Oh!_’ She controlled herself. ‘Apologise! Have _I_ accused you? This is just another damned muddle. I’m only trying to understand it.’

‘I really think I had better go,’ he said.

‘No!’ She put out a hand and clutched his arm in desperate protest. ‘Not yet, Roddy. Not for a moment. Can’t we--O God! I wish I’d never written that letter. Then there’d have been no need for all this.... You’d have gone away and said nothing--and gradually I’d have understood. I should have seen it all in its proper light. Things would have somehow come right again, perhaps. And now I suppose they never can.... Can they, Roddy, can they? Oh, if they could!’

How he was hating this scene! It was a shame to prolong it. He swallowed hard and said, rather nervously:

‘Do you suppose you really meant--all you said in your letter?’

It was her chance. She must say it was all nonsense, that letter, that it was written in a moment of madness; that she did not mean it now. Then they might somehow manage to laugh together and part friends. He was such a good laugher! She could go away and bury her disappointment; and next time they met, be to him what he wanted: a light flame of passion, blown out, relit again. He had given her the taste for his kisses. She would miss them, and desire them painfully. If she could act her part skilfully now, she need not be for ever without them.

But it was no good: the thing would not be lied about.

She nodded, gazing at him in utter despair. She went on nodding and nodding, asserting the truth in silence and with all her force, compelling him to believe it. She saw him flush faintly beneath his sallow skin.

‘I’m very sorry then,’ he said, in his frozen voice.

She cried out:

‘Oh, _Roddy_! Did you never like me? Didn’t you even _like_ me? All these years! It seemed as if you did.... I couldn’t have grown to--like you so much if you hadn’t given me a little--a little return....’

‘Of course I liked you very much,’ he said. ‘I always thought you were extremely attractive.’

‘Attractive!’ She bowed her face in her hands. ‘Yes. I was attractive to you. And so.... That you should have treated me so lightly, Roddy! Oh, did I really, really deserve that?’

He was silent.

‘If you’d warned me, Roddy ... given me some hint. I was so romantic and idealistic about you--you’ve no idea.... I thought you _must_ think of me in the same sort of way I thought about you.... Couldn’t you have warned me?’

He said in a voice choked with exasperation:

‘I did try to shew you, I tell you. I should have thought I’d shewn you often enough. Didn’t I say I was never to be taken seriously?’

She sighed and nodded her head drearily. She was beaten.

‘Yes. Yes, you did. I wouldn’t be warned, I was such a fool. Oh, it’s all my fault. A good sell for me.’

‘Well, I’d better go now,’ he said after a pause.

He took a step or two and then turned back. She still leaned against the wall, and something in her attitude or expression seemed suddenly to move him. He lingered, hesitated. His face shewed a little trouble and confusion.

‘I suppose you’re all right?’ he said.

‘Oh, I shall be quite all right.’

‘Please forget all about me.’

‘I shan’t forget about you. But I shall forget all this--if you will do the same. We will meet in the future, Roddy, won’t we?--just as usual,--with all the others?’

‘I think it would be better not to. I think we’d better not write to each other or ever meet again.’

‘Not ever meet again, Roddy?’ How did he come to be master of such cold decisions? She felt like a child in futile conflict with the fixed and unalterable will of a grown-up person. ‘Why? Why? Why? Please do let me. Please do. I won’t ever be a nuisance again, I promise. You’ve said you liked me. Oh, I must see you! If I can’t see you, I can’t ever see any of them again. Don’t you see? And then I’d have _nothing_.... You wouldn’t tell them, would you, Roddy? Please let me see you again.’

It had lasted too long. In another moment she would be on her knees to him, hysterical, loathsome.

A nervous quiver of his lips checked her suddenly and made her quiet. In some obscure way he was suffering too. He looked like the little boy whose face had implored her not to cry that time of the rabbit’s death. Yes, the spectacle of other people’s pain had always affected him unpleasantly.

‘It’s all right, Roddy,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll get on without you.’

‘I’m not worth wasting one moment’s regret on,’ he said, almost earnestly. ‘Believe me, Judith. It’s true.’ He looked at her for the last time. ‘I can only say again I’m very sorry and ask you to forget all about it.’

She took a deep breath.

‘One thing more,’ she said. ‘I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in loving a person and saying so.’

It was not true. The shame of her surrender, her letter, her unrequited love would go on gnawing, burning, till the end of her life.

He left her, walking away from her with a graceful and noiseless tread.

* * * * *

After all, it did not seem to hurt much: certainly not more than could be borne in secret, without a sign.

It had all been experience, and that was a salutary thing.

You might write a book now, and make him one of the characters; or take up music seriously; or kill yourself.

It was all so extraordinary.... That night had seemed to Roddy so insignificant that instead of hurrying away quickly when he got that letter, he had had a girl he knew down for the day: and that was how he had spoilt his own escape.

Shut the door on Roddy and turn the key and never open that room again. Surely it would be quite easy. She saw herself as a tiny person walking firmly away and not once looking back. There were plenty of other things to think about.... What was there, safe and simple, to think about?

Strawberries and cream for supper. Good. Two new frocks: but he was to have admired her in them.... A visit to London next week, and a play.

She noticed suddenly that her hands were bleeding from slight abrasions. How had that happened? Best to go in now and arrange her face a little. This shivering had been going on for a long time.

5

Three weeks later she stepped out of the train at a little country station in Hampshire; and was there met by a beaming Martin, and conveyed swiftly in his car to his home.

The long drive wound through shrubbery and great beech trees, and opened in a wide sweep before the long low many-windowed house-front. It was an old manor, built of exquisitely time-tempered brick. The great porch was covered with clematis and jasmine; and here and there climbing bushes of yellow or white roses wove their way up the walls and coiled around the window-frames. Beyond it and on each side of it she caught or imagined glimpses of a rich old garden, lawns and a herbaceous border, cedar trees, yew hedges, and an espalier of peach-trees along a high wall.

A butler appeared, took her suitcase and slid away again.

Martin led the way through the oak-panelled hall into a large bright flowery chintz drawing-room. All the colours were blue and pink and white; and there were photographs everywhere, and vases full of delphiniums, roses and lilies. The French windows opened on to the sunny lawn, and, set in front of them, the tea-table shone with blue and white china, and silver, and glass jars of honey and jam. Behind the tea-table sat Martin’s mother, smiling.

She was as clean and fresh, as white and pink and blue as her drawing-room. Her erect and trim little figure was crowned with white hair; her blue rather prominent eyes held the wistful appeal of the short-sighted as she looked into Judith’s face to greet her. Her thin mouth smiled and went on smiling, happily, vaguely, with a kind of sweet and weak persistence. All the lines in her face ran upwards as if she had spent her life smiling. She had a white skin with a clear rose flush over each cheekbone. She was really very pretty in her white lace dress and fleecy pale blue wrap: a mother to take out to dine in her best black frock and all her diamonds and feel proud of.

‘So this is Judith that I’ve heard so much about,’ she said charmingly; and put a hand on her arm to lead her to the tea-table.

Three black spaniels begged and adored at her feet; or rolled over, waving limp self-conscious devotional paws.

Over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of Martin’s dead father. He had been Governor of somewhere: an important man. He looked reliable and kindly, with Martin’s brown eyes and untidy features.

On the opposite wall hung a sentimental pastel portrait, life-size, of Martin at the age of three: golden-brown curls, pink cheeks, a white silk blouse with a frilly collar. There were some books in glass-fronted book-cases, some goodish furniture and china; one or two good water-colours and some indifferent ones; abundant plump cushions in broad soft chairs and couches. It was a house that shewed in every detail the honourable, conventional, deeply-rooted English traditions of Martin’s people.

And yet not they, with their sober steadfastness, but that wild sister, the disgrace, Mariella’s mother, had prepared, it seemed, the strange mould for the next generations: for all, that is, save Martin himself.

He was in high spirits. He smiled with all his white teeth, and threw sandwiches to the dogs, and teased his mother, and stared in a sort of delighted astonishment to see her actually sitting at tea with him in his home. He looked almost handsome in his bright blue shirt, open to shew a white strong well-modeled throat rising cleanly from the broad shoulders.

He did not know that Judith was dead: that a dummy was sitting beside him. He had declared several times how well she was looking.

He said suddenly:

‘Heard from Roddy, Judith?’

She was not prepared for that name; and she felt a faintness sweep over her.

‘No, Martin, I haven’t.’

‘I had a letter from him this morning. It’s pure agony for Roddy to answer an invitation, even, so I was flattered. He and I and one or two other chaps are going to do some sailing next month, off the Isle of Wight, and he actually wrote to make arrangements.’

‘What fun that will be, Martin.’

She bowed her head over the plate in her lap, crumbling a scone to fragments.

‘Why don’t you come too, Judith? Do! It’d be perfectly proper wouldn’t it, Mummie? We’re her bachelor uncles.’

It was precisely at those words, at the unexpected recalling of all that light-heartedness, that happiest day of all, that the thing leapt to life within her, and fiercely, horribly pressed towards birth. Oh, now there was no hope. Roddy had arisen all in a moment from his false burial.

With a vast effort she prevented her eyes from closing quite; but to speak was impossible.

‘Roddy says----’ began Martin, glanced across at her, and stopped uncertainly, startled. He was silent, and then said:

‘Tired, Judith?’

‘A bit--after my journey--it’s so hot to travel. Isn’t it?’ She turned to his mother.

‘Yes, my dear, it is,’ she said cooingly. ‘Come, I’ll take you to your room and you shall rest till dinner.’

Martin had got up and was hovering over her, anxious and despondent. But she could smile at him now, and she said:

‘I’d rather go out if I may, and get cool. The garden looks so lovely.’

‘That’s right then,’ said Martin’s mother encouragingly. ‘Take her out, Martin darling, and shew her the rock-garden. Martin and I have been making a rock-garden, Judith--I may call you Judith, mayn’t I?’ She laid a hand again on Judith’s arm. ‘It’s such fun. Martin and I are both ridiculous potterers and experimenters. Are you like that?’

‘Not practically, I’m afraid.’

‘Ah, well, it’s a delightful hobby. It keeps me busy and healthy, doesn’t it, Martin?’ She looked up into his face, and he put a large hand upon her little shoulder. ‘There,’ she added, ‘Run along now. Don’t let Martin take you in the fields or up to his precious farm: you’ll spoil your pretty shoes. Aren’t they darling shoes, Martin? And such a _pretty_ frock.’

With little pats and handwavings and vague benevolence she saw them out of the French windows down the steps into the garden.

* * * * *

Martin said:

‘Wait. I’ll take a gun. We’re simply tripping over rabbits this year. It’s awful.’

She did not hear properly; nor, when Martin came back to her, did she grasp the significance of the gun over his shoulder.

He led her out of the garden by a wooden bridge over a stream half-hidden in forget-me-nots, kingcups and iris plants; through the meadow where grazed the pedigree cows which, so he said, were his mother’s pride; over a stile and up on to the chalky rabbit-pitted hillside.

She was standing among the willow trees, and out of the moonlight a voice was saying in a low hurry: ‘I love you’--and saying another thing damnably characteristic: ‘Lovely Judy! Lovely dark eyes!’ His teeth gleamed as he smiled in the moonlight.... He closed his eyes.... It was all in such bad taste, in such bad taste....

Martin was pointing out the marches of the estate. There were beech copses and farms and two gentle folds of sun-drenched sheep-strewn hill between them and its final hedgerows.

‘You know I do love it,’ said Martin shyly. ‘I worship the soil.’ He hesitated and then said with a laugh: ‘Funny: Sometimes I absolutely wish I were dead so that I could be buried in it and have it all over me and inside me for ever and ever.... Look at the way those slopes overlap....’ His eyes fastened on them, with a hungry expression.

Then this was Martin’s secret bread. It was his land that nourished him at the source, and made of him this man with an individual dignity and simplicity at the core of his ordinariness. She made an effort to come nearer to him in mind.

‘Yes ... I know Martin.’

He turned joyfully.

‘I always tell you everything, Judith. I suppose it’s because I know you’ll understand.’

‘Which bit do you want to be buried in, Martin?’

‘I don’t care--as long as I’m well inside it.’

‘Would you ever commit suicide?’

‘Would I what?’

‘Commit suicide. To--to get there quicker.’

He laughed and said comfortably:

‘Well, I’ve never been tempted to so far....’

‘It’s an old family place is it, Martin?’

‘Oh, yes. My father was born here, and all the others. Roddy’s father and Julian’s, and the only sister--Mariella’s mother. She was very beautiful you know--and absolutely wild--almost mad I should think. She ran away from her husband and goodness knows what sort of life she led. I believe it simply broke my grandfather’s heart. He died, and then Grannie--you remember Grannie?--couldn’t bear to go on living here alone. All the children were scattered or married or dead. So she moved to the little place on the river--next door to you.... Poor old lady, she didn’t have much of a time. She outlived all her children except Roddy’s father: and he was never much use to her. He quarrelled with his father when he was quite a boy and left home. I don’t know what about. Grandpapa was a terrible martinet.... Yes, they were an unlucky family.’

‘And they all died young, Martin?’

‘More or less. But we none of us ever live to be old,’ he said cheerfully.

They had reached the top of the hill; and, suddenly, up went Martin’s gun. Then, with an exclamation of disgust, he lowered it again.

‘Wasn’t ready for him. Once they get into that bracken----’

‘What’s that, Martin?’

‘Rabbit. Didn’t you see? Beastly vermin.... Never saw anything like them. Much as we can do to keep pace with them.’

He was muttering to himself in an annoyed way.

‘But, Martin--do you mean to shoot them?’

‘Shoot them? I should say I do, if I get the chance.’

‘I never have been able to understand how people can bear to shoot rabbits.’

‘Hum,’ said Martin, grim and indifferent. ‘You mustn’t expect _me_ to be sentimental about ’em.’

His eyes roved round alertly; his gun was ready to go up in a trice. He was not giving a thought now to Judith walking beside him.

Just over the crest of the hill came a sudden small kicking and flurry. A tiny pair of fur legs started away into the bracken, the white scut glancing and bobbing. But the bracken thinned away to nothing here: the small form was bound to emerge again in a moment.

There was a sharp crack.

‘Aha!’ said Martin; and he went forward to where something flipped in the air and fell back again, horribly twitching in a mechanical and aimless motion.

‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ She stood rooted where he had left her, aghast.

He was stooping to examine it....

She knew how it was looking--laid on its flat side and shewing the tender and vulnerable whiteness beneath its frail stiff paws. He was stooping just as a figure had stooped above that other rabbit.... What years ago!... Roddy’s rabbit whose death and burial had started this awful loving. Who was it devilish enough to prepare these deliberate traps for memory, these malicious repetitions and agonizing contrasts?

Oh, this world!... No hope, no meaning in it; nothing but perversities, cruelties indulged in for sport, lickings of lips over helpless victims. Men treated each other just as Martin treated small animals. The most you could hope for was a little false security: they gave you that to sharpen their pleasure in the blow they were preparing: even the ones that looked kind: Martin for instance. As for Roddy--Roddy liked experimenting. He chose girls sometimes: that was more voluptuous. She saw his face, pallid and grinning, crowds of leering faces, all his. The hillside darkened. She sank on her knees, shaking and perspiring.

He was striding back.

‘I buried it,’ he called. ‘It was a little smashed about the head.’

She had to lift her face towards him; but she made it blind. He came and stood beside her--he dared to, red-handed as he was.

‘I’m afraid it wasn’t one of the cleanest shots,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I got him at too long a range. Still,--that’s one less.... Come on.’

Her mind would frame only one sentence; and she tried over and over again to say it.

‘I will not be a witness of your butcheries. I will not be a witness of your butcheries.’

But he would not understand. Perhaps it did not make sense anyway.

‘Oh dear!’ She sat there, tearing up turf with shaking cold wet hands, face averted, eyes staring, mouth open and out of shape, impossible to control. ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!’ The repetition was a sort of whine or mew.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said sharply. He sank down beside her, and his astounded face came round her shoulder.

‘Oh, the poor little thing, the poor little thing!...’

‘Do you mean the rabbit?’

She nodded.

‘But, Judith--good heavens! A rabbit.... Judith. I’d never have shot it if I’d dreamed you’d mind.’

She went on staring and pulling up the grass.

‘Oh, this world!’

‘Judith....’ He was silent, completely at a loss.

‘Still--it can’t be helped.... I suppose one gets accustomed....’

Her mind grew black again with formless and colossal conceptions of torture, murder, lust: and Roddy’s face went on grinning among them. All was lost, lost.

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Martin helplessly.

‘Oh, I don’t blame....’

‘It didn’t suffer you know. Did you think it had? That kicking didn’t mean anything: it was simply reflex action.’ He thought he had found the clue; and added cheerfully: ‘You’d do the same if I shot you dead at the back of the head.’

‘I wish you had.’

She wept.

‘Good God! Really, Judith.... I’ve said I’m sorry. I can’t go on saying it, can I? I didn’t know you were so--you oughtn’t to be so--easily upset. Rabbits have to be kept down, you know. They destroy everything. Ask my mother.’

She went on weeping; and after a little while he got up and strode a few steps away, and stood with his back to her, shoulders hunched.

Worse and worse: he was deserting her.... She bit hard on her thumb till the pain of it steadied her, waited and then called tremblingly:

‘Martin!’

He turned, saw her hand held out and came quickly and knelt beside her.

‘What is it, Judy, what is it?’

‘Oh, Martin! Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t ask, _don’t_.... Only--just--only----’

His arms went round her and she abandoned herself against him, pressing her head into his shoulder, groping for comfort, sobbing vast sobs, while he knelt beside her quietly and let himself be wept on; and now and then gave her shoulder a little pat.

* * * * *

After a long time she was so empty of tears that their source seemed dry for ever. She would never in her life weep any more. In the thin crystalline buoyancy of exhaustion she lay back on his shoulder and observed the gold light lying tender and still in the folds of the hills; and two rabbits skipping unperturbed not so very far away; and blue butterflies swinging on the long grasses; and all the evening shadows slanting beautifully downwards. Peace and comfort dropped upon her. The heavy ache for Roddy was gone. Oh, now to make this no-pain permanent, to fix this languor and mindless calm, to smother the voice which cried and cried: ‘I am cheap and shameful. I have been used for sport!’ Now was the time to turn to Martin and see if he could save her.

She sat up and dried her eyes.

‘There!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you, Martin. You are a dear. You’ve always been very kind to me, haven’t you?’

‘Kind to you! Oh, Judith, you know----’

‘I think you must rather like me, Martin.’

He said with a deep intake of breath:

‘Like you! You know I’ve loved you for years.’

She was silent, tasting a faint relief and satisfaction; and then said:

‘Well, what would you like me to do about it, Martin?’

She saw that his hands were trembling, and he answered shakily:

‘Do about it ... I.... What do you want to do about it?... I’ve said I----’

‘Would you like me to marry you?’ she asked softly.

‘God! If there was a chance!...’

‘Well--I might, Martin.’

She started to laugh and cry weakly at sight of the transfigured face he turned towards her; and a voice went on protesting inside her: ‘No! No! No! It isn’t true. I never will.’

‘Oh, I’m so tired, Martin, I’m so tired!’

‘Come home, my dear, come home.’

It was compassion and exultation and doubt and certainty, all mixed in an inarticulate eloquence.

He lifted her and brushed her skirt.

There was nothing to do but accompany him down the hill.

He left her at her bedroom door. His mother, he said, would come and give her aspirin and put her to bed, and see that dinner was brought up to her. His mother was splendid about headaches. To-morrow there would be plenty of time to talk.

He had behaved perfectly.

* * * * *

She fell asleep that night in her white room with its cretonne wreaths of pink roses tied up with blue ribbon, and dreamed of Roddy. He sat on the hill, close to where the rabbit had been shot, and conversed in friendly fashion. He had come back from abroad, from some remote island. He took a puff at his pipe and said with apparent irrelevance: ‘Not wives, my dear girl--mistresses. It’s more convenient. When I return I intend to take Martin as my partner.’

‘Martin wouldn’t come. Not if it’s mistresses....’

‘Oh, dear me, yes. He’ll soon forget you over there. It’s a very voluptuous clime.’

She said very humbly:

‘Would you care for me to come, Roddy?’

‘I fear you’re supered,’ he said with elaborate courtesy.

‘I suppose so.’

He studied a notebook.

‘Where do I come in your list, Roddy?’

‘You’re in the twenties, somewhere,’ he said indifferently.

‘Oh, miles down----’

He seemed suddenly bored or suspicious, and shifted his position. As he did so, she saw his face for an instant, heavy-lidded and dissipated. She understood that he was thinking of voluptuous climes.

It seemed then there was no use in hoping to win him back. He was, obviously, bored to death with her.

‘What’s in here?’ he said suddenly, and plunged his hand into the earth.

The rabbit!... the rabbit!... Everything shrieked,--and she started awake, sweating, in horror and desolation.

* * * * *

She leaned out of the window and saw the moon high in the sky. Beneath it, the trees had suffered their moon-change and were sculptured masses of dark marble, washed over with a silver-green phosphorescence. A tragic night, sleepless and staring beneath the urgent pressure of the moon: there was no comfort in it.

This house was full of ghosts.... Perhaps Roddy’s father had slept in this room as a small boy. He had grown up here and then shaken the dust of his home from his feet and gone away and begotten Roddy.... Charlie must have looked like the beautiful wild sister, and that was why the grandmother had given him all that anxious and painful love.

The sister had given birth to Mariella, and then run away and led God knows what sort of life. Poor Mariella! She had never had the sun on her: she had lived from birth--perhaps before birth--in the shadow cast by her bright mother; and when she grew up she had not emerged from it. That was the truth about Mariella.

The family portraits were in the dining-room. To-morrow she would see them, study and compare....

It was madness to have come to this haunted house.

Oh, Roddy! She could not live without him. He must, he must come back and take her for a year--a month even. Perhaps he had found out by now that he did love her after all, and was too proud to write and confess it. Martin had said it was agony to him to answer even an invitation. She must write to him again, give him an opening.

Where was he now? If she could be transported to him now, this minute, she could make him succumb utterly to loving her. She would think of such ways of delighting him with caresses that he would never be able to do without her again.... It was sheer stupidity to go on enduring this agony when it only needed a trifling effort to end it all. For instance, if you leaned a little further out of the window.... But one did not commit suicide in other people’s houses: that was the ultimate error of taste.

And then, poor Martin’s feelings at the inquest!

‘_Mr. Martin Fyfe, who was overcome with emotion several times, stated that a few hours previously deceased had declared her willingness to become his wife. This avowal, made on her own initiative, had met with ample response on his side, and there seemed every cause for joy and congratulation. The coroner in returning a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind observed that this reversal of the customary procedure in betrothals was but another example of the lack of self-control so deplorably frequent in the young woman of to-day, and seemed to him sufficient in itself to suggest a distinct lack of mental balance in deceased. He tendered his sincerest sympathy to Mr. Fyfe and absolved him from all blame._’

And Roddy might depart from his habits and inclinations once again, and write Martin a letter of condolence.

No, no. She was going to show him she did not care, was not weeping for him: she was going to announce her engagement to Martin before long.

There would be a paragraph in ‘The Times,’ congratulations, letters to write--(_I am a very lucky girl_)--a pretty ring--and almost certainly photographs in the illustrated weeklies.

Roddy would smile his cynical smile because she had behaved just as women always did behave: so long as they hooked some poor devil--no matter whom--they were quite satisfied. And a damned fuss they made if a chap refused to be hooked.

Martin would probably insist on being married in Church, and ask Roddy to be his best man.

No. Poor Martin was not going to be able to save her. Perhaps, instead, she was going to destroy him.

She went back to bed and tossed between her sheets till dawn.

6

Next morning Martin’s face of suppressed excitement shewed only too clearly how deeply the web was tangled now.

She went with him after breakfast to visit his little farm.

There was something in the brown soft earth, in the dark warmth of byres and stables, in the rich smell of animal breath and hay and soil mingled, something in the many secret, silent heads lifting, snuffing, reaching tentatively out, then tossing away from the outstretched hand; especially something in the clear golden-brown eyes curiously greeting you for a moment, then recoiling, relapsing into their animal aloofness: something that painfully suggested Roddy. He was like animals, electric and mysterious. The half-distrustful fleeting glance, the dark soft glossy head, the appealing grace: these were attributes he had in common with the farm dog, and the calves, the black kittens playing all over the stables, the dark chestnut colt in the meadow.

There was no escape from him in all the world.

She said to herself, moving her lips:

‘Sick fancies. Sick fancies.’

If she could see Roddy as a natural human being, then only could she hope to be free of him.

She climbed a slope and sat on a stile at the top, waiting for Martin while he interviewed a farmer.

Below lay the house and garden she had elected to share with Martin all her life: lovely, intricate patterns of roof and wall in the morning sun; enchanting shapes of violet shadow spilt across the mellow brick; charming lavender smoke spirals from the chimneys; exquisitely-ordered paths and lawns, hedges and flower-beds; two cedar trees motionless in their great planes of gloom on green brightness, green on gloom; and beyond the fruitful walls, the enfolding patiently-productive land which was Martin’s.

You would be thought lucky indeed to live here. Perhaps the land might compensate, drug the mind and give it slow contented musings. Perhaps you could escape from Martin and feel alone with it.... But no: with its medium tints and mild companionable expression it was he himself. You could never get away from Martin here.

As he came running up the hill, eagerly, like a cheerful dog, she watched him coldly. With a faint distaste she observed his agile leap on to the stile beside her.

‘Well?’ he burst out happily.

‘Well, Martin?’

‘What are you thinking of, looking so solemn?’

The unpardonable question. And he would always be asking it and she always answering sweetly with a lie; or else disagreeably with: ‘Nothing.’ No peace ever again, not even to think one’s private disloyal venomous thoughts.

‘I was thinking, Martin, I don’t believe you know a bit what I’m like.’

‘I know enough to know I love you anyway,’ he said with hearty confidence.

‘You don’t,’ she said petulantly. ‘Because you’ve never troubled to find out what I’m really like. It’s never occurred to you there might be anything more than what you see. That’s so like a man.... Lord, how stupid! Everybody dismissed with a little label. Everybody taken for granted once they’ve passed a few idiotic conventional tests....’

‘What on earth have I done now?’ cried Martin despairingly.

‘Nothing. Nothing. I’m only warning you.’

After a pause of non-comprehension he said gently:

‘Of course I don’t take you for granted, Judith. I could never do that. You’re so clever and beautiful and marvellous--much, much too good for me. Oh, my dear!--you don’t know how I value you.’ The tears came into his eyes. ‘Whatever happens, nothing can alter my idea of you. If I _could_ believe you had any faults, they’d only make me love you more.’

‘Would they? Would they? You don’t know what revolting ones they are.’

He laughed and said indulgently:

‘It’s no good trying to frighten me.’

‘It’s _true_,’ she cried. ‘D’you suppose I’m trying to be humble because I think it’s the correct idea?’

He said nothing, and she felt him trying with perplexity to think out the proper method of dealing with her mood. Finally he said:

‘Judy. I’ll tell you what seems to me the only important thing--and that is, that we should be absolutely truthful with each other. Don’t you agree? I think telling the truth is my only principle--besides washing. As long as I know exactly where I am, I can stand anything.’ He drew her to him and turned her face so that his warm kind eyes could look into hers. ‘I’ve always dreamt of finding someone I could tell everything to, and trust absolutely.’

Tell everything to.... O God! Was he going to say: ‘My wife and I must have no secrets from each other’? Was he that sort of fool? He went on:

‘Judith I might as well try to lie to myself as you. And I can’t lie to myself. Why if I were to stop loving you even--if that _could_ be--I’d have to tell you straight out. I couldn’t pretend. I _hope_ you couldn’t either.’

‘No, I couldn’t.’

He went on with a shade of anxiety.

‘And supposing there was ever anything worrying you--anything on your mind--please try to tell me. You needn’t be afraid. I hope perhaps--you might think it was--rather nice to feel there was a person you could rely on always. Would you, Judith?’

He paused, breathless and deeply moved.

‘Yes, Martin.’

‘Please think of me as that person.’

‘I will, Martin.’

‘You’re not worrying about anything now?’

‘No, no.’

‘That’s right. As long as I _know_. I thought yesterday.... But I suppose it was the rabbit?’

She shuddered, and nodded her head, remembering her dream, unable to speak.

He said in an amused, tender, big-man-to-little-woman way:

‘You poor little thing to be so upset.’

She laughed in response, deprecatingly, drearily.

He tightened his arm round her, sighed happily and said:

‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Nor can I.’

‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’

‘Nor did I.’

‘After all these years.... Do you know, I’ve been in love with you ever since I’ve known you? Never anybody else for a moment. But I didn’t dare hope.... I wonder what Roddy will say when we tell him.’

‘I wonder.’

‘You know I was almost sure not so very long ago that if you liked any one of us specially it was Roddy.’

‘Were you really, Martin?’

‘Yes, and what’s more I thought he was bound to fall in love with you. God, I was jealous!’

‘Jealous of Roddy? Were you? How ridiculous!’

‘Not really ridiculous. Roddy’s so terribly nice and attractive, it seemed only natural you should prefer him to a dull chap like me.’

‘He didn’t ever _say_ anything, did he, Martin?’

‘Not he. Roddy’s the darkest horse I know.’

‘Yes, he is, isn’t he?’ She laughed. ‘I suppose heaps of people fall in love with him?’

‘Yes,’ he said gravely. ‘He’s run after all right.’

‘Does he--do you suppose he--falls in love himself, much?’

‘Oh, more or less, I suppose.’

‘Not seriously?’

He laughed and shook his head.

‘Not very seriously I don’t think.’

‘Perhaps he _was_ a tiny bit in love with me ... for a bit....’

‘I dare say he was. I don’t see how anybody could help being,’ he said with light tenderness, dropping quick kisses on her hair.

‘And then I suppose he stopped.... And found somebody else....’

‘Perhaps he did. Don’t let’s worry about him anyway. He and I have different ideas about--all that sort of thing. He’s rather naughty and spoilt I think--though he is such a good chap,’ he added hastily, as if fearful of sounding disloyal.

She persisted, in anguish:

‘How do you mean, naughty and spoilt, Martin?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He was embarrassed, unwilling to give his friend away. ‘A bit of a sensation-hunter perhaps.’

That was it then: she had been a new sensation: one that had quickly palled, because she had been so swiftly, so entirely yielded up to him. She should have whetted his appetite by offering only a little at a time and then withdrawing it: so, he might still be desirous of her. Instead she had satiated him at the outset.

She would know better next time.... But there would be no next time. Instead, there was Martin now who said:

‘Won’t you kiss me?’

She looked at him, aching with tears that were like an inward bleeding; and put her lips on his cheek for half a second.

‘Listen, Martin.’ She took his hand and started to speak hurriedly, for fear of more kissing. ‘About that truth business. What was I going to say....’ She steadied her voice. ‘Yes. If you tried to--compel the truth you’d expect a lie, wouldn’t you? That’s logic. I’d always expect a lie anyway. I mean ... I shouldn’t be at all surprised by it. I’d say it was my fault for not leaving you alone--not letting you be free enough--I’d think: well, I tried to coerce him, so he chose to deceive me. He was quite right.’

‘A lie’s a lie,’ said Martin obstinately.

‘A lie’s a--What does that mean? It doesn’t mean anything. Unless you believe God watches and writes down in his notebook: Martin Fyfe told a lie on Monday. If this goes on he won’t get his harp. Do you? Truth! What’s truth? Why, half your so-called truths are built on lies. You can scarcely distinguish. I could--I bet I could--act a lie to you all my life and you’d never know it. _Be_ a lie.’

He flushed swiftly at the last words and said in a stiff way:

‘I daresay you could. You’re clever enough for anything and I’m a fool. But don’t try, please....’

‘But there must be no compulsion, Martin!’ she insisted, horribly. ‘You wouldn’t try--to get at me--would you? You’d let me be, by myself? If you ever forced me when I was unwilling I’d tell lies and lies and congratulate myself for it. And I’d _never_ forgive you.’

He lit a cigarette and said, close-lipped, eyes fixed on the grass:

‘Does all this mean you want me to understand you’ve--changed your mind and wish to cry off?’

She threw out her arms dramatically, crying:

‘Can’t I say anything? Can’t I say anything without being misunderstood?... being....’

‘I’ve never seen you like this, Judith.’ He got up and stood looking at her in despair. ‘It worries me. I don’t understand.’

‘It’s not customary, I suppose, in an engaged young lady....’

She shut her eyes, and the tears scorched their lids bitterly.

‘Judy, what is it? Oh, Judy!’

‘Oh, Martin!’ Hands pressed to forehead, voice a faint moan, she struggled on: ‘Only there are--some things--aren’t there?--there might be things which _can’t_ be told. Things one must forget--try to--at once----’

‘Yes. Yes. If you say so,’ he soothed and whispered.

‘Because of the useless misery ... and because they’ve--withered up your heart--so that you couldn’t recall them--even if you tried.’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘I’ve had--one or two unhappinesses in my life. Everybody has, I suppose. I want to forget them....’

‘Of course, Judy, of course. You must _never_ tell me anything you’d rather not.’

She put her arms round his neck a moment.

‘Thank you, Martin.’ She dried her eyes and said: ‘I won’t be so silly any more.’

And if a doubt or a fear had begun to cloud his mind, his voice was none the less gentle, his eyes none the less trusting.

He took her back to the garden and gathered sun-warmed strawberries for her; and they talked cheerfully together until lunch time.

* * * * *

That afternoon Martin fished for trout in the stream, and she sat on the bank and read a page of her book now and then; and sometimes watched him; and mostly dreamed.

His small-boyish absorption was amusing and rather appealing. He was immensely happy, moving along the bank in cautious excited silence, casting deftly up and down stream. If he were to be disturbed or upset in his pursuit, he would say ‘Ach!’ and swear, and flush all over his face, just as he had in the old days. Even if she were the disturber, it would make no difference. She knew better than to interfere, or to speak except when spoken to, and then briefly and to the point. That was in his eyes one of her most admirable qualities. He loved to have her beside him, behaving nicely and looking pretty, shewing interest, and smiling when it was seemly.

By the constant upward curve of his lips and by occasional dwelling glances, she knew he had thrown off the memory of this morning’s unnatural emotional perplexities, and was content.

If only their marriage could be a perpetual sitting on a green bank by a stream, watching him tolerantly, almost tenderly, with quiet pleasure in his bodily magnificence, with a half-contemptuous smile for his happiness, and yet with comfort in the knowledge of it, and in the knowledge that her mere presence was sufficient for it, while her mind was off on its own, worlds removed from him!...

It would be such an immense easing of the burden if only so much insincerity as was implicit in the acquiescent body was required, without the lies of the lips and the mind. She on the green bank always, with leisurely musings, and he moving past her, up and down, not touching her or demanding or possessing, but fishing for ever: it would be a pleasant enough marriage. He would look up now and then, smile approvingly, and say:

‘Still there, Judith?’

‘Still here, Martin.’

‘Quite cheerful?’

‘Quite.’

‘Feeling safe?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘That’s right. Well, I’ll go on fishing then.’

‘And I’ll go on thinking.’

And he would smile again and send his line whipping and hissing through the air.

All the rest could go by, remain unsaid, with no falsehood at all. Perhaps, after years of patient sitting, even Roddy might be forgotten; or transformed into an object for idle pleasurable regrets.

In the midst of these speculations, Martin came back and threw himself down beside her.

‘No luck, Martin?’

‘Not a nibble.... I don’t care. I’d rather talk to you.’ He gazed lovingly at her and said:

‘What are you thinking of?’

She clenched her hands; then answered softly:

‘_ ... of nothing ... When I muse thus I sleep._’

He turned her face towards him with a hand beneath her chin, and gently kissed her lips.

* * * * *

‘Oh, Judith, I’ll try to make you happy.’

‘And I’ll try to make you happy, Martin.’

Perhaps in time.... Perhaps in time even Roddy....

At that moment of wistful peace it seemed admirable to undertake the task of making Martin happy.

He said shyly:

‘I wonder what made you say you’d marry me.’

‘Because I’m so fond of you.’

‘Ah! That’s not quite the same as loving, is it?’ His voice was wistful, but not disappointed.

She took his hand.

‘No, Martin, not quite the same.’

He wrung her hand and said cheerfully:

‘Well, it’s something to be going on with. It’s a great deal more than I deserve. Of course I don’t expect you to feel romantic about me. Nobody could feel romantic about me, anyway.’

‘Oh, I think lots of people could. I’m sure they could,’ she said; and felt suddenly ashamed. For indeed he was a man whom many women might love. What right had she to take him?

‘Well, I don’t want them to,’ he said. ‘Your liking’s more than enough for me.’

‘Oh, Martin! I promise you, at any rate, I wish I were in love with you.’

‘Mightn’t that be the first step?’ he said smiling.

‘No, no,’ she answered lightly. ‘I’ve finished with falling in love. I was in love once.’

‘When?’

‘Years ago! It doesn’t amuse me. I reject it. Never again....’ She felt her lips start to curl and quiver, and stopped: then added in the same bantering tone: ‘Foolishness. That’s what it is. And as far as you are concerned, it would seem almost incestuous.’

‘Don’t use horrid words.’ He sat up, amused but startled.

‘Well it would. Not that I disapprove at all of incest, in theory. Yet I must confess my instinct’s against it.’

‘And so’s mine,’ said Martin firmly. ‘Let’s have no more nonsense.’

He bent forward and dismissed the nonsense with a hearty kiss.

That was the last straw. Her mood, stretched finer and finer in the preceding few minutes, snapped. She rolled over away from him and stared into the water.

The tiny brilliant green water-plants and cresses grew up from the mud and pebbles and spread their leaflets below the surface in delicate array, motionless as if under glass. Oh, to slip into the water and become something minute and non-sentient, a sort of fresh water amœba, living peacefully among their thin-spun tangle of whitish roots--now at once, before Martin noticed her disappearance! He would peer and peer into the water, with his red anxious face; and all in vain. In the shadow of his face her unimpressive form would be but the more obscured; and, unmoved, she would stare back at him.

God!--to go mad, crack-brained, fantastic, happy mad; or to be stretched upon a rack in a physical anguish which precluded thought!

‘Tea-time,’ said Martin. ‘What a good afternoon it’s been.’

In the hall they were met with a telegram for Judith. “_Decided go abroad this week instead of next. Come home to-morrow. Mother._”

Mamma had grown restless then, a trifle sooner than you had expected; and sent this peremptory summons. What an undreamed-of godsend!

‘You can’t go to-morrow, Judy,’ said Martin, much upset.

‘I must, Martin. There’ll be such a lot to see to. I must go as soon as I possibly can. I ought to go to-night.’

The sooner she was out of the house the better.

‘You couldn’t possibly get there to-night by train. It’s such a beastly journey.’ He was struck with an idea and his face cleared a little. ‘I tell you what. Wait till after dinner and I’ll drive you back. If we started about eleven we’d be at your home soon after daybreak. Do, Judy, do. It’d be a marvellous drive. And I’ll break in on Mariella and cadge some breakfast. There’s so much to talk about. And if you’re going abroad we shan’t see each other for weeks. It’s most infernally disappointing, isn’t it?’

She agreed that it was. But as for the drive, that would be a marvellous arrangement. If Martin would send a wire to tell Mamma to leave the front door key under the mat, she would go and explain to his mother. As she left him, her heart felt almost light. Perhaps she could manage to wriggle out and escape now, after all.

7

Martin’s mother stood on tiptoe to kiss her good-bye, while Martin went to fetch the car.

Her box was ready in the hall. She had given a last glance through the open dining-room door at the family portraits. She had been thankful to find them few and devoid of the likenesses she dreaded. They were just anybody’s respectable family portraits. Of the dead sister there was no likeness.

Martin’s little sitting-room, with its photograph on the mantelpiece of a solemn Roddy in Eton clothes, its cricket groups including Roddy in flannels and a blazer, its painted green fire-screen decorated by Roddy with strange figures--that had been far more terrifying. She would not have to sit there now and look at Martin’s photograph and scrap albums, as he had suggested.

‘I’m sorry you must go,’ said his mother, charming and abstracted.

‘I’m sorry too.’

‘But,’ she said gaily, ‘what a delightful idea, to drive through the night. Martin loves it, you know. I often hear him going off on a lovely night like this. Funny boy.... His horn sounds so dreadfully lonely it makes me want to cry. He likes to have a companion. I used to go with him sometimes, but I’ve had to give it up. I feel too old next day.’

She smiled sweetly; and suddenly, standing above her and seeing her so small and ageing, Judith felt no longer the great barrier of difference of generation, but the basic intimacy of their common sex; and with this an extreme tenderness and pity. She bent and kissed her--the poor thing, who must lie flat in her room thriftily husbanding her resources for the morrow, while she herself, coming thirty years of nights behind her, had the open dark for friend.

She knew well enough you did not love her son: she trusted you not to betray him by marrying him. It would be horrible to force her to hate you ... unthinkable.

Car-wheels grated on the gravel outside, and Martin sounded his horn.

In another few minutes they had waved good-bye to the small figure on the steps, and taken the road.

* * * * *

Into the deep blue translucent shell of night. The air parted lightly as the car plunged through it, washing away in waves that smelt of roses and syringa and all green leaves. The moon struggled with clouds. She wore a faint and gentle face.

‘I shouldn’t be surprised if there was rain before daybreak,’ said Martin; and, reaching at length the wan straight high road, accelerated with a sigh of satisfaction.

‘Faster, Martin, faster.’

Faster and faster he went. She settled herself close against him, and through half-shut eyes saw the hawthorn and wild-rose hedges stream backward on either hand. The night air was a drug from whose sweet insinuating caress she prayed never to wake. Soon, through one leafy roadway after another, the headlights pierced a tunnel of green gloom. The lanes were full of white scuts and little paws, paralyzed; and then, as Martin painstakingly slowed down, dipping and twinkling into the banks. Moths flickered bright-winged an instant in the lamplight before being dashed to their fried and ashy death. Once or twice came human beings, objects of mean and foolish design, incongruous in the night’s vast grandeur; and here and there, under the trees, upon the stiles, in the grass, a couple of them, locked face to face, disquietingly still, gleamed and vanished. She observed them with distaste: passion was all ugliness and vulgar imbecility.

Now the moon looked exhausted behind a gathering film of cloud.

Soon came the rain, with a low murmurous hushing and whispering through the trees; and then a white blindness of lightning aching on the eyelids.

‘Shall we stop?’ asked Martin.

‘No, no.’

‘I remember you hated lightning when you were a tiddler.’

‘Do you remember that?’

‘Yes. I shall never forget the day we were trapped by a thunderstorm in the old boathouse--you and Roddy and I. How you howled! And then you said you’d seen the lightning fall on Roddy’s head and had he been struck dead. I kept on yelling that if only you’d open your eyes you’d see him in front of you, as alive as anything; but you only went on shrieking. And soon we all of us began to believe Roddy might go up in flame any minute.’

‘Oh, yes! I’d forgotten.’ She laughed. ‘I remember Roddy’s face, so solemn and red and doubtful as he felt the top of his head. He was terrified I was making a fool of him and he wouldn’t say a word. I asked him privately afterwards if he thought the Lord had visited him with a tongue of fire. He was disgusted.’

Martin threw his head back to laugh.

‘You were a comic child. We used to think you were a little mad.’

‘Did you, Martin?’ she said, and doubt and sadness swept over her again.

Perhaps even in those days Roddy had laughed at her, thought of her as a joke, never as a companion.

‘It’s a pity really that we----’ She stopped, remembering that she was going to marry Martin--on the verge of finishing her sentence:--“that we met again after we grew up.”

Their relationship should have remained unspoilt in the mysterious enchantment of childhood, and then she would never have seen Roddy grow from that lovable small boy into the elegant indifferent young man who experimented in sensations.

No more lightning; and the rain came softly on to her face through the open wind-screen, blurring eyes and mind and all, until she sank into a half-sleep. Martin clasped her hard against his shoulder, once, as who should say: “Sleep. I am here;” and she felt his enormous protectiveness flowing over her.

When next she opened her eyes, the darkness was taking back first one veil, then another. Purple paled to lilac and lilac wasted to grey. The sky was immaculate and without a glow. The country-side woke from sleep, gently staring and austere, each object upon it separately outlined without interrelation of colour and shadow under the uniform wan light. On the far horizon, a cornfield flashed out one moment in a pale flood of sunlight; but the sun was still hidden. The hedges frothed palely with meadowsweet.

Soon came the beech woods crowning the chalk hills. In the valley below ran the river, blanched and rain-flattened between its willows; and the road sloped gently down till it ran beside it. They were home.

Stiff and blinking, she stumbled out of the car, and stood on the steps of the porch.

‘Thank you, Martin. It was marvellous. I hoped we should never get here. I thought we wouldn’t--I don’t know why. I got it into my head you’d manage a quiet smash without my noticing it. Everything I passed I said good-bye to--looking my last on all things lovely; and when I finally dropped off to sleep I thought I’d never wake up. And after all you brought me safe home, clever boy. I _suppose_ I’m grateful. But what an effort to have to start again in an hour or two!’

He did not answer at once; but after a few moments of fingering his hat looked away and said:

‘Are you _very_ unhappy, Judith?’

‘Well--not very, I suppose. Rather. Not more than’s good for me. I shall get over it.... I’m so sleepy I don’t know what I’m saying. Don’t take any notice.’

‘I thought you weren’t happy----’ He stopped, overcome.

‘It’s all right, Martin. Don’t you worry. I laugh at myself. How I laugh at myself!’

‘Can’t you tell me what it’s about?’ he said gruffly.

‘I don’t believe I can.’

He turned away and leaned despondently against the porch.

The sky was glowing now through all its length and breadth, like the inside of a shell. The dew shimmered over the grass and the greyish roses reddened, yellowed on their bushes. The birds bedazed the air with wild crystalline urgent repetition.

‘You go in a day or two,’ he said at last.

‘Yes. And you?’

‘I join Roddy next week.’

‘Ah, yes.’ She turned to unlock the door, and fumbling for the key, lightly remarked: ‘There’s a person I shall never see again.’

‘Who?’

He affected surprise; but he was only pretending. She could feel him saying to himself: ‘So that’s it.’ And suddenly she hated herself for exposing herself, and him for guessing and dissembling, for forcing her to pronounce that name; and she added:

‘I can’t marry you, Martin, after all.’

Silence.

‘Well, I’ve told you the truth at last. I thought I could pretend to you all my life, but I can’t. You ought to be glad.’

He inclined his head.

‘Aren’t you going to say something, Martin?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Please forgive me,’ she said; but she could not feel contrition: only a great weariness.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. I never really believed you’d marry me anyway.’

‘Luckily I’m going abroad. You’d better forget all about me.’

‘It’s no good saying that,’ he said, with a brief and bitter laugh. ‘It was too late for that years ago.’

‘You must try to hate me. I deserve it.’

‘Oh, what’s the good of talking like that?’ he said impatiently. ‘Do you _want_ me to hate you? You know you don’t.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘You know perfectly well I can’t do anything except go on loving you.’

He still leaned with dejected shoulders against the porch, talking out into the garden. The eastern sky swam brightly, and the first beams of the sun shot into the garden; and the fluting clamorous chorus redoubled their enthusiasm.

‘I haven’t seen the sun rise for years. Have you, Martin?’ She came near to him and put a hand on his sleeve. At the touch he turned round and confronted her in dumb despair, his eyelashes wet.

‘Martin, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

‘I can’t leave you like this,’ he said, and clung to her. ‘Judith, is there nothing I can do?’

She reflected.

‘Yes. Will you do something for me?’

‘Of course I will.’ His eyes lit up for an instant.

‘Listen, Martin. Suppose he ever mentions me----’

She felt herself going white and stopped.

‘Yes?’ he muttered.

She went on breathlessly:

‘I don’t think he will, but if he should.... Supposing he ever starts to tell you something that happened--between him and me--please, you mustn’t let him. Promise! If he begins, stop him. I shall never see him again; soon I shall stop thinking about him: but you mustn’t know what happened. It was just a little silly thing--I shall see it quite differently some day ... but if I thought people knew I should _die_. Martin, don’t try to find out.’

‘All right, Judith. It’s none of my business.’

‘Perhaps men don’t tell things in the awful way women do? He doesn’t generally tell things, does he?’

She could hardly bear to listen for his reply.

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Make it be as if you’d never known me. Oh, don’t talk about me!’

‘I won’t. I promise.’ He looked at her; and she knew by his eyes how deeply she was making him suffer.

After a long time she added:

‘One more thing. Of course I know that whatever he’d done you’d feel just the same towards him, wouldn’t you?...’

‘I love Roddy ...’ he said, his breath, his whole being struggling in anguish.... ‘I’ve always had him--ever since I can remember ... more to me than a brother ever could have been. But if I thought----’ His voice altered, grew terrible--‘if I thought he’d done you an injury----’

‘It was nothing he could be blamed for,’ she said slowly, with intense concentration: ‘It was my fault. If I thought it was going to come between you I should be more unhappy than ever. Will you see that it doesn’t?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he said in a dead voice.

She began to tremble violently.

‘I must go in now, Martin. What shall you do?’

‘I’ll go straight back. I don’t feel like--seeing Mariella--or any one.’

‘But don’t you want something to eat?’

‘No. I’m not hungry.’

It seemed unbearably pathetic that he should not be hungry--he who was always hungry.

‘Good-bye then, Martin.’

‘Good-bye.’

He took her outstretched hand and clutched it.

‘Judith, if you should want me for anything while you’re abroad--let me know. I’ll come to you. Will you promise?’

‘I promise, my dear.’

He looked a shade less unhappy.

‘And please let me see you when you come back. I won’t be tiresome; but I must see you sometimes.’

‘When I come back then, Martin--if you really want to. But by that time you’ll realise what a pig I am.’

He put his arms round her suddenly.

‘Oh, Judith,’ he whispered, ‘can’t you ever ...?’

‘Martin, can’t you ever not?’

‘No.’ He laid his head down on her shoulder for a few moments; then straightened himself and said with an effort at cheerfulness:

‘Well, I hope you’ll have a good time.’

‘I hope you will. But you’re sure to.’

To think he would be with Roddy for weeks, sharing work and talk and jokes and meals--seeing him sleep and wake; while she herself ... never again. If she saw him coming towards her, she must turn back; if she passed him in the street she must look away.

‘Please take care of yourself, Judith.’

She nodded, smiling wearily.

He jerked round and went down the steps and she waited for him to turn his head again. But, when he reached the corner, without looking back, he waved his hand in a young quick awkward pretense of jauntiness, and strode on.

She stood and saw the fresh garden filling with light and shade; and thought: ‘Poor Martin’s crying’; and shut the door on him and the sun and the screaming of the birds.

8

The hotels and shops made a circle round the great _Place_; and to and fro all day went the people to their baths and douches and sprays. Bilious obese old Jews and puffy, pallid Americans thronged and perspired; and ancient invalids came in bathchairs with their glum attendants. There was one, a woman long past age and change, with a skin of dusky orange parchment, black all round the staring eyeholes, tight over the cheeks and drawing back the dark lips in a grin. She was alive: her orange claws twitched on the rug. Perched high upon her skull, above the dead and rotten hair, she wore a large black sailor hat trimmed with a wild profusion of black feathers. Every morning, seated idly in front of the hotel, Judith watched for that most _macabre_ figure of all in the fantastical show.

The sun poured down without cloud or breeze, and the buildings and pavements seemed to vibrate in the air. It was too hot to stay in the valley. She joined parties and motored up through the vineyards into the hills--racing along in search of a draught on her face, eating succulent lunches at wayside inns, coming back in the evening to play tennis and bathe; to change and dine and dance; to hear a concert at the Casino; to sit in the open air and drink coffee and eat ices.

The hours of every day were bubbles lightly gone.

She was Miss Earle, travelling with her elegant and charming mother, staying at the smartest hotel and prominent in the ephemeral summer society of the health-resort. Her odd education sank into disreputable insignificance: best not to refer to it. She was adequately equipped in other ways. She had a string of pearls, and slim straight black frocks for the morning, and delicious white and yellow and green and pink ones for the afternoon; and white jumpers with pleated skirts and little white hats for tennis; and, for the evening, straight exquisitely-cut sleeveless frocks to dance in. She had them all. Mamma had ordered them in Paris with bored munificence and perfect taste, and an unenthusiastic ear for the modiste’s rapturous approval of her daughter.

‘If you were a little more stupid,’ said Mamma, ‘you might make a success of a London season even at this late date. You’ve got the looks. You _are_ stupid--stupid enough, I should think, to ruin all your own chances--but you’re not stupid all through. You’re like your father: he was a brilliant imbecile. I never intended to put you into the marriage-market--but I’ll do so if you like. _If_ you haven’t already decided to marry one of those young Fyfes.... They’re quite a good family, I suppose.’

She appeared to expect no answer and received none.

Judith laughed at Mamma’s epigrammatic dictums and was a social success. She motored, chattered, danced and played tennis, at first with effort--with Roddy rising up now and again to make all dark and crumbling; then gradually with a kind of enjoyment, snapping her fingers at the past, plunging full into the comedy, forgetting to stand aside and watch: silly all through--stupid even: stupider every day.

Demurely she passed through the lounges: they all knew her and looked her up and down as she went, discussed her frocks in whispers, with smiling or stony faces. In the streets they stared, and she liked it; she admired her own reflection in the shop windows. An elderly French count, with two rolls of fat in the back of his neck, entreated Mamma for her daughter’s hand in marriage. It was a very good joke.

Then, one evening after dinner, while she sat in the lounge with Mamma and discussed the clothes of her fellow-visitors, she saw Julian walk in. He wore an old white sweater with a rolled collar, and his long hair was wild upon his pale chiselled forehead. His face, hands and clothes were grey with dust, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright with extreme weariness. He stood alone by the door, unself-conscious and deliberate, his gaze roving round to find her among the staring, whispering company. Even before she recognized him, her heart had leapt a little at sight of him; for his fine-drawn blonde length and grace were of startling beauty after a fortnight of small dapper men with black moustaches and fat necks.

‘It’s Julian!’

She ran across the room and took his hand in both her own, joyfully greeting him. A friend from England! He was a friend from England. How much that meant after all! He had, romantically, kept his promise and come to find her, this distinguished young man at whom they were all staring. He and she, standing there hand in hand, were the centre of excited comment and surmise: that was flattering. She was pleased with him for contriving so dramatic an entry.

He had motored from Paris, he said, going all day over execrable roads in stupefying heat. He had found her hotel at the first guess.

He booked a room and went off to have a bath and to change. Judith went back to explain to Mamma, who asked for no explanations. It was, she remarked, pleasant to see a new face; and those Fyfes had always looked well-bred. She was glad Judith would now have a congenial companion while she finished her cure. If to her cat-deep self she said: “So that’s the one!” her diamond-like eyes did not betray her.

He came down half an hour later, elegant in his dinner-jacket, sat down beside Mamma and started at once to entertain her with the easy, civilized, gossiping conversation she enjoyed.

Then, when the band started to pluck voluptuously at the heart-strings with _Einmal kommt der Tag_, he turned for the first time to Judith, crying:

‘We’ll dance to it, Judith.’ He jumped up. ‘What a tune! We’ll express our sentimentality.’

Mamma’s rasping little laugh of amusement sounded in her ears as she rose and followed him.

He put an arm closely round her and murmured:

‘Come on now. Perform! Perform!’--and they went gliding, pausing and turning round the empty floor, while everyone stared and the band smilingly played up to them. The rhythm of their bodies responded together, without an error, to the music’s broken emotionalism.

‘Once, Julian, you refused to dance with me.’

‘Ah, you were a little girl then. It would have been no use. _Et maintenant, n’est-ce-pas, la petite est devenue femme?_ We shall get on very well.

After a silence he said:

‘You wear beautiful clothes. You carry yourself to perfection. You have an air.... There is nobody in this room to touch you. What are you going to do with it all?’

‘Oh, exploit it, exploit it!’

He held her away from him a moment to look down into her face.

‘_Tiens! Tiens!_ Is gentle Judith going to start being a devil?... It would be amusing to see her try.’

‘Oh, I will! I’d be most successful. You shall see.’

He laughed, watching her.

‘May I help you? Shall we tread the primrose path together?’

She nodded.

‘Well, start by looking a little more as if you were going to enjoy it. Have you ever been happy? No. Whenever you come near to being, you start thinking: ‘Now I am happy. How interesting.... Am I really happy?’ You must learn a little continental _abandon_--I’ll teach you.’

‘You!’

‘---- and scornful as well! Oh, Judith, you’re getting on. I like to see your mouth trying to be hard. It has such pretty points.’

The music stopped, and she disengaged herself. A few people clapped, and she nodded and smiled to the band ... performing, performing; conspicuously self-possessed....

‘Good!’ said Julian. ‘Oh, good!’

She turned to him and said:

‘Thank you, Julian. That was exhilarating.’

‘Yes, you look as if you’d found it so.’

His eyes, brilliant with nervous fatigue, pierced her with a glance too penetrating.

‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘you’re so unhappy.’

‘If it were so,’ she said, starting to walk back towards her chair, ‘it would be a pity.... Or perhaps that would be exhilarating too.’

‘Oh, don’t be enigmatical with your old friend,’ he said plaintively.

She laughed and gave him her hand.

‘Good night, Julian. You go to bed. You’re so tired you can hardly stand upright. To-morrow we’ll start enjoying ourselves frightfully. You’ll stay a bit, won’t you?’

‘Oh, I’ll stay,’ he said. ‘I think the moment is auspicious for me.... Didn’t I always say I could wait my turn?’

‘Yes, you said so. You have a _flair_ undoubtedly. You are full of _finesse_.... Good night.’

She waved a hand and left him.

Something was afoot.... He had come casting shadows before and behind him. Old things were stirring: the old illness of remembering was going to start again. And ahead was not a glimmer.

9

In that thick, steamy world, in the mingled soils of sickly heat, bilious faces, rich food, sensual dancing, heavy scents of women, applied bow mouths, soft perspiring flesh--sprouted and flourished her response to Julian. Rooted in reluctance, nourished by his skilful arts, it grew, a curious plant: stronger and more curious with every stab of reawakening memory.

Julian must save her this time: surely his wit and wisdom, surely the unknown world of sexual, emotional and intellectual experience which he held so temptingly, just out of reach--surely these would, in time, heap an abiding mound upon the past.

Neither by touch nor look did he seem to desire her. He wove his net with words: he understood her and she felt him coming closer, a step at a time.

He made himself the perfect companion--gossiping and exchanging cynicisms with Mamma, executing commissions for her, his car always at her disposal; taking them to hear music, to eat delicious meals; playing tennis with Judith and her hotel acquaintances.

He even went so far as to say tennis was good for his asthma and played in the tennis-tournament, with herself for partner; and they were barely defeated in the finals by the Brazilian brother and sister, amid scenes of hilarious enthusiasm.

His car was waiting outside the ground to whisk her away from the hot crowd.

Happy, perspiring, dazed with heat and fatigue, she climbed in beside him and lay back.

‘We’ll go and find somewhere to bathe,’ he said.

‘Yes!’

‘And have supper at an inn, and stay out much later than we ought.’

‘Yes. Oh, Julian, we have done nice things together. I shall always remember them.’

She put a hand on his knee, and he smiled and nodded, all simple and brotherly.... He had tried his very hardest to help her win. She was grateful to him for fitting himself to her mood.

The car went spiralling up the vine-covered hills, and the electric air quivered away on each side of them in visible waves. The sun sank magnificently, without a cloud, a blood-red lamp. Its rays had long ago passed from the tortuous, steep and rock-bound way through which they now went; and a grey-green tranquil coolness blessed every sense. Then the road ran into profounder, wooded loneliness, and she espied a stream, leaping and plunging in little falls, far down in the gully below the side of the road.

‘Stop here, Julian. We must bathe.’

She went springing down towards the water and he followed with the bathing suits and towels.

The stream was shallow and broken up with boulders: no use for bathing.

‘Let’s follow it, Julian. We’ll find something, I know.’

Soon it took a turn deeper into the wood’s heart, and began to grow in depth and volume; then all at once plunged in a smooth gentle cascade into a wide rock basin. There it had pause, deep and silent, before dropping again at the basin’s further edge in a sheer plumed column, and racing on downwards, and downwards again.

‘Oh, Julian, _what_ a bathing-pool! Is it possible? Look at that colour I ask you. Is it limestone?’

The whole circular sweep of the rock shimmered in faint silver through the dim bluish depth of water.

‘And deep enough to dive into, Julian--if we dare break into such fairiness.... What do you suppose lives here? It may put a spell on us.... I don’t care! I long to be spell-bound. Don’t you think, if one plunged in, one might come out all silver-blue and cold and gleaming? I’d love to walk through the hotel lounge naked like that, with long blue dripping hair! Oh, come on, Julian--let’s both try! I’ve had no luck for ages, have you? Perhaps it’s turned to-day. You undress here and I’ll go behind this bush and talk to you out of it, like God. Come--off with our lendings!’

And, in a flash, with the uttering of the last words, Jennifer came back, slipping the clothes down off white shoulder and breast, talking and laughing. A tide of memories; Jennifer’s head burning in the sunlight, her body stooping towards the water--the whole of those May terms of hawthorn blossom and cowslips, of days like a warm drowsy wine, days bewildered with growing up and loving Jennifer, with reading Donne and Webster and Marlowe, with dreaming of Roddy.... Where had it all gone--Where was Jennifer?--Whom enchanting now?--How faintly remembering Judith? Compared with that tumultuous richness, how sickly, how wavering was this present feeling--what a sorry pretense! Would one ever be happy again?

Julian, lean and hairy in his bathing-suit, was already feeling the water with his toe when she emerged and, spurring her flagging spirits, leapt down through the bushes, paused a moment beside him, cried ‘Ah!’ and dived into liquid twilight.

He plunged in after her, and they came up together, ‘You shouldn’t have dived like that,’ he cried. ‘Don’t do it again. There’s a great jag of rock just below where you went in,--you might have hit your head. You’re a very naughty girl.’

‘Pooh!’ She splashed and kicked round him, and went swimming close under the waterfall, feeling its weight press down and bubble upon her shoulder. The water was cold: the sun could never reach it save in light flecks through leafy branches. The pouring of the falls made a soft, full, lapsing speech. Nothing in the world was so smooth as the polished silk of their down-curving necks.

‘Hey!’ cried Julian.

She looked round and saw him near the further edge of the basin, trying to save himself from being carried over. She laughed, but he did not laugh back, and dragged himself out and sat on a rock in silence; and she saw that his legs and arms were grazed and bleeding. She went to him remorsefully and washed the blood away with palmfuls of water and sat by him, murmuring little sympathies until the stinging pain eased. He was not strong, she must remember: the shock and pain had made him white about the lips. Poor Julian.... How smooth and creamy her limbs looked beside his....

‘One more dip before dressing, Julian. You sit there and rest.’

He sat and watched while she slipped in again and, lying on her back, pushed off vigorously from the side with both feet and floated in a great ruffle of water to the other edge. Then she climbed out and stood opposite him, dripping and smiling.

Something leapt into his eyes as they rested, for once, full on her: not admiration or desire, but something harsh and hostile, as if the sight of her exasperated him.

‘Oh, yes, it shows you off well,’ he said.

‘What does?’

‘Your _maillot_. I suppose you weren’t aware of it?’

‘No!’ She spat the word at him; and went quickly away.

* * * * *

They had supper at a white inn by the edge of the wood, about half a mile farther on. The same stream flowed, sedately now, through the garden; and a dark plump Madame with great glossy raven plaits brought omelettes and trout and salads and fruits to their table beneath the plane-tree. Birds were singing the last of their songs in all the branches.

‘Listen, Julian!--if that isn’t a thrush? What is he doing out of England? Can you imagine a French thrush? Oh, he sounds homesick!’ A sudden nostalgia overcame her. ‘I want to go home, too! I’m not a traveller. Sick for home--that’s what I am. This thrush and our pool are probably the things I shall most remember about France--and all because they made me think of England.... There was a girl at College I used to bathe with.... You’d have loved to look at her. Her name was Jennifer Baird....’

‘Oh, I think I’ve met her.’

What was he saying so casually?

‘You’ve met her?’ Hands clasped, heart thumping, she stared at him.

‘Yes, I’m sure that was the name. I was staying in Scotland with some cousins of hers.’

‘When, Julian?’

She could scarcely speak.

‘Last year, I believe. I remember now she was at Cambridge and said she knew you; but she wasn’t very forth-coming about you. I’d never have guessed from her that you were bosom friends.’ His voice sounded mocking.

‘No, you wouldn’t!’ she retorted, stung and scornful. ‘She doesn’t tell just anybody when----’ She checked herself; for perhaps after all it had been that Jennifer had not remembered her much in absence. She added quietly: ‘She was a person I knew well for a time. Tell me.... What did you think of her?’

‘Oh, mad as a hatter. But she was more alive than most people. A flame, let us say.’ His voice was ambiguous, unkind.

‘You didn’t like her, then?’

‘No, nor she me.’ He laughed briefly. ‘But she had a power, I admit. I intend to go and find her again some day. I dare say I might make her--like me.’

‘I don’t think you could!’ She wanted to strike him for his cold-blooded self-assurance. ‘If you think you could--manage her, control her, I pity you, that’s all! I’d like to see you try! You’d think you’d got her easily--and then in another moment she’d have slipped through your fingers.... How I’d laugh!... Personally I didn’t need to make her like me: she just did.’

She felt that she was speaking wildly, and fell silent, weak before the flooding onslaught of the past.

It was too much pain. What was the use of trying to go on? You could never get free of the past. It came all around again at a word, and in a trice all save its shadows was trivial and insubstantial.

Julian was watching her; raising his eyebrows in a pretense of polite surprise and watching closely.

‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘Calm yourself, my serpent. You have convinced me my best endeavours would be wasted.’

She hid her face, stooping it over the table with both hands across her forehead, feeling the nausea and sweat of faintness.

He helped himself to grapes and remarked:

‘Not that I shan’t be sorry never to see her on a horse again. She looked magnificent.’

‘Oh, yes! She....’ Still with her face hidden she added, summoning a faint but steady voice: ‘I’d go to her now, this minute, if I knew where she was. But I don’t.’

There was a silence; and then he said gently:

‘I’ll find her for you if you like, my dear.’

She stretched a hand across the table to him.

‘No. Help me forget her ... and everything else....’

He stroked the hand; and without a word left her, to pay the bill. When he came back she was able to raise a calm and smiling face to him.

* * * * *

The stars were out when they took the road again, and the coming dark flowered like a field of pansies.

‘Hadn’t we better go home now, Julian?’

‘No. I’m not going to take you home yet.’

She sat beside him, silent and dully apprehensive.

‘It’s a pity you’re so unhappy,’ said Julian. ‘I think I said so before.’

She made no answer.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re a fool to take on like this.’

Silence.

‘You’re simply destroying yourself over it and it can’t be worth it. Why don’t you tell me about it? I’ll be nice.’

She shook her head.

‘Do tell me, darling. You know, things have a way of swelling to monsters if we lock them up inside us. You see if you won’t feel better after you’ve once got it out of you.’ He spoke like a kindly father, and put an arm round her.

‘I’m in love with someone,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all. I thought it was finished.... Oh, dear, dear, dear, how awful!...’ She drew deep choking breaths.

‘Poor devil,’ he said.

‘You needn’t be sorry.’ She collected herself. ‘It’s good for me. Besides, it _is_ finished really: I scarcely ever think of it now.’

‘Does that yellow-haired female come into it then?’

‘Jennifer? No. Though she’s gone too ... and that makes it all far worse....’ She added quickly: ‘It’s nobody you know.’

His silence told her that he was not deceived.

‘Anyway,’ she said lightly, ‘there’s one bad thing over in my life: falling in love, I mean. I’m _free_ of it!’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, my dear child! _Don’t_ be such a fool! Why, you haven’t mastered your infant primer yet. _I_ know! Do you mean to tell me this unknown fellow has absorbed all your powers of loving to the end of your life? I’m sorry then: you’re less of a person than I thought you. Ah, you think I’m mocking, and you hate me. And I do mock. Yes, yes! And I’m so sorry for you I---- But of course you won’t believe that.’

He spoke with passion, slowing the car down till she scarcely crawled, then finally stopping her altogether by the edge of the road, beneath an overhanging rocky hillside. It was getting very dark: she felt rather than saw the tense expression of his eyes and mouth.

‘You won’t believe that,’ he repeated, ‘and you’re thinking at this moment that such a brute as I never before existed.’

‘No.’ She felt dazed. ‘I think you’re meaning to be kind. But you don’t understand.’

‘Aha! Of course not. How can a coarse male animal like myself understand the feelings of a refined and sensitive young lady?’

‘Oh, Julian--unfair ... unkind!’

‘Well, _damn_ you, don’t you see I love you myself?’ he cried in a perfect fury. ‘Here am I, alone with you at last for a paltry ten days--after waiting years, mind you, _years_ for my opportunity, and I find you moping and moaning over your lost schoolgirl illusions! Good God! Haven’t you the guts to snap your fingers at a fellow who can’t be bothered with you? Aren’t you attractive and intelligent? Can’t you laugh? Aren’t there plenty of others? What am I here for? Go to the devil for a bit--I’ll help you. I’ll see you through it. But _don’t moan_.’

He paused for breath, and went on:

‘Here am I, as I said, with ten days of your company as my limit--ten days in which to make you _look back_ into my eyes, not through them, to make you stop smiling and being polite and tolerant and sorry for me--oh, anything rather than your damned indifference! Why don’t you hate me? I could do some good with you then. I thrive on hatred. Here am I, of all people, not able to sleep or eat for wanting to kiss you, shaking all over when I see you coming, raging when you talk to another man--and here are you, making a fool of yourself--obstinately wasting our time making a romantic fool of yourself.’

‘Well, we’re quits then,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘I love without being loved and I’m a fool. I agree with you. You love without being loved. You’re another.’

He turned to her and said delightedly:

‘You’re angry. I’ve stung you up. You’ve lost your temper.’

‘Oh, you’re impossible.’

‘No, no, I’m not,’ he said coaxingly. ‘Look, I’ll be so nice now. Listen to me, Judy darling. You’re not the sort of person to have one abortive little romance and go to your grave an old maid. An old maid who’s had a disappointment, Judy!--isn’t that what it’s called? There, I’m teasing again and I said I wouldn’t. Darling, what’s the use of being so damned constant? _Do_ find someone else quick. You’ve no idea how delightful you’ll find it when you’re old to remember what a lot of people you’ve loved. And it’s the _very_ best remedy, Judy, for your indisposition.’

‘Shall you employ it if----’

‘If you turn me down? Probably. But don’t turn me down--not without a trial. Here am I, ready to hand: you could do a damned sight worse than take me. I’ll see we have a good time.’

Moths flittered and spun in the light of the head-lamps; beyond the two still long shafts of brightness the night looked very dark. How many miles from home?

At length she said:

‘I take it this is not a proposal of marriage, Julian.’

He laughed.

‘No, my dear, it is not. Nothing so grim.’

‘Ah, I see--your mistress.’

Her voice and her words made her wonder if she were not holding a conversation in a dream: there was the same feeling of having made a pronouncement of the first importance; but whose meaning you could not detect.

Julian’s mistress.... The idea was for some reason profoundly shocking.

A French, an Austrian, a Russian; and now an English.... But perhaps he had been lying then. He did tell such lies about his experiences.

‘I’m not made for matrimony any more than you are,’ he said in a voice of gentle explanation. ‘Can you imagine me as a husband? What hell for some poor fool!... Yet,’ he added with a sigh, ‘I’d be fond of my children. I’d like to bring up a son. But I shall never have one.’

‘If you would marry Mariella,’ she said, still out of her dream, ‘you could bring up Peter. She’d like that. I think she loves you.’

He took no notice; and she wondered if she had not spoken aloud, after all; or whether her small voice had not penetrated his absorption.

‘Why, what would we make of each other married?’ he went on. ‘It would be one long succession of _agaçements_. We’re both so self-conscious, so fastidious, so civilized.... Oh, it would be appalling.’

‘Yes, it would.’

‘But, Judith, lovely delightful Judith,’ he pleaded, his voice deep and beautiful, ‘for a season, for a season! A clean leap in, and out again the minute it started to be a failure. Think what we could give each other!’

‘It would be very good for us I suppose....’ She held her head in her hands, trying to think. What could he possibly give her that she would want?

‘It would, it would. We’d _live_ a bit instead of thinking. I’d make you forget, I swear: and what things I’d give you to remember instead!--good things that have been my secrets for years, that I’ve longed for years to share, to offer to your lovely quick intelligence. No one else has had them, Judith. They’ve been waiting for you: nobody else has ever come near you in my mind. Judith, it wouldn’t be the irritating tiresome old bore you know: that isn’t I! I’ve got secrets. Let me tell you them. So much beauty I’d enrich you with, and then I’d let you go. Isn’t that fair? Isn’t that worth having? Go and marry and breed afterwards if you must, but let me give you this first. Try me, Judith, try me. You can’t refuse to try me. I want you so much.’

She wanted to stop her ears: for she felt herself helplessly yielding to the old syren of words.

‘Julian--I couldn’t give you--what you wanted. Oh, I couldn’t! It’s such a step--you don’t realise--for a woman. She can’t ever get back--afterwards, and be safe in the world. And she might want to.’

‘I’d see you got back if you wanted to. But I don’t think you will. You won’t want to be safe. That’s not for you. Oh, Judith, I know you better than you know yourself.’

‘No. No.’

She was locked away from him and he did not know it. What he mistook for her living self was a mummy, with a heart of dry dust. He had not the perspicacity to see it.

He was silent and then said:

‘I wouldn’t ask you for anything you--weren’t prepared to give me. I hope--that might come. But for the present all I want is to help you live again--in better, more enduring, ways. Will you let me? Will you allow me to love you, Judith?’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps, Julian. I’ll try. I’ll try to love you too.’ The words broke from her on top of a great sigh.

‘My dear!’ She felt his triumph. He put an arm round her and lightly kissed her, and she thought: ‘Now I’ve been kissed by all three of them.’

‘But wait, Julian!’ she protested, near to nervous tears. ‘Don’t say any more now. Take me home.’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll take you home now.’ His voice was soothing and tender. He was letting her see that his patience was infinite. This time, she was caught.

The car glided downwards from the hills into the plain, through the lovely calm. Once she broke silence to say:

‘Nothing’s worth while, Julian? It doesn’t matter what one does? There’s no point, really, in being alive?’

He laughed.

‘Poor Judy! Give it up! You’ll have to in time. Resign yourself, and the compensations won’t seem so preposterously inadequate. There was a time.... But that’s past. So long as there’s a balance of happiness I’m content to be alive. That it’s all futile has ceased to trouble me. It’s not really difficult to be happy, Judith.’

‘Well--you shall show me.’

But she felt crushed with melancholy to hear him; and his calm voice echoed drearily in her heart.

* * * * *

She bade him good-night in the empty lounge, and went upstairs to the bedroom’s rose and gilt harshness.

She was going to be Julian’s mistress.... He was sure of her: she had noted his triumphant eyes and smiling mouth when he said good night.... Perhaps if she had offered to be Roddy’s mistress he would have agreed with alacrity. He too was not made for matrimony.

She wished suddenly for Martin and sat down and started a letter to him; gave up after a few sentences, too heavy-minded to think; and went to bed.

10

The next day was _jour de fête_: there were to be grand balls, carnivals and exhibition-dancing in all the hotels.

‘We’ll make the round of them, Judy,’ said Julian. ‘And afterwards we’ll take the car and go up into the hills--shall we?’

And she thanked him and agreed.

He was debonair, gay and gracious: the lines in his face seemed to have been smoothed out, and the likeness to Charlie was strongly in evidence.

Dreaming ahead, she saw herself reluctantly, helplessly, plunging further and further into relationship with him. He would not weary of her soon. When once the thing started, the break with the past would inevitably be complete. Together they would be reckless, free; together they would snatch pleasure out of life’s worthlessness; for Julian had promised faithfully that he was going to give her exactly what she wanted, that he had learnt precisely how happiness was to be come by, and would teach her.... She had given him leave to teach her.

Judiciously he absented himself for the day; and she spent the morning with Mamma, watching all the internally-disordered people pass, cup in hand up and down the _Place_ from spring to spring; and the afternoon with Mamma at the dressmaker’s; and the hours between tea and dinner with Mamma in the hotel-lounge, drearily banishing and recurring to thoughts of Roddy.

Mamma sent her out to buy a copy of the Continental Daily Mail, which shrill-voiced women were excitedly advertising in the _Place_. Through her lorgnette, Mamma scanned the announcement of recent arrivals, the political outlook, the new French train smash, yawned, remarked that the holiday season in England seemed marked as usual by murders and drowning fatalities, yawned again and went upstairs to rest before her bridge-party.

An hour yet till dinner and nothing to do but sit and think of things.

Idly she picked up the evilly printed sheets. _Triple Boating Tragedy._ Why were they always triple? What must it be like to be relatives and friends of a triple boating tragedy? But that was a class disaster, like a charabanc death--not general.

_Sailing Fatality off St. Catherine’s, Isle of Wight._ That was where Martin and Roddy were yachting. They might have witnessed it. _Tragic End of Well-known Young Yachtsman._

She had an impulse to put down the paper; but a name caught her eye and she had to go on reading.

_A dense fog in the Channel is presumed to be the cause of the death of Mr. G. M. St. V. Fyfe, one of the best known of the younger Solent yachtsmen._

_According to information at present available, Mr. Fyfe, who was an expert sailor and swimmer, had been out since early morning of the--th sailing his small cutter “Sea Pink” single-handed. About noon a heavy sea-fog drove up from the channel with great suddenness and in the evening his friends became alarmed at his failure to return. Next morning a life-buoy and some other wreckage identified as belonging to Mr. Fyfe’s boat was found washed up on the shore near Brooke. It is thought that the boat must have been run down by a liner or other large vessel off St. Catherine’s Head during the fog of the previous afternoon. The body has not yet been recovered._

_Mr. G. M. St. V. Fyfe, who was twenty-four years of age, was the only son of the late Sir John Fyfe, K.C.B., and of Lady Fyfe of the Manor House, Fernwood, Hants. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was among the most_....

There followed a few more words, but the type was illegible.

It could not be Martin, because he was Mr. Martin Fyfe. Martin’s initials were--O God!--forget you knew his initials. She could see them now written in her own hand on an envelope: G. M. St. V. Fyfe, Esq. Such dignified, satisfying initials.... It could not be Martin because an unfinished letter to him was lying upstairs waiting to be sent. Martin was sailing safely with Roddy and one or two others. He would not sail a cutter single-handed in a fog, because that was so dangerous; and he never did dangerous things.

The body had not yet been recovered....

If she read the thing through again calmly she would realize it was somebody else.

Perhaps better not.

Just the date though.... Two days old, this thing was now.... Mr. G. M. St. V. Fyfe--Martin Fyfe--_Martin_ had been nothing for two days....

She thought: If I pretend I never saw it, it will be just as if it hadn’t happened. I won’t know it, and then it’ll stop being true.

She folded the newspaper carefully, took it and went upstairs; and dressed for dinner with meticulous care. She was going to dine with Julian at the hotel which promised the best exhibition dancing; and she had agreed to wear his favourite frock to-night.

* * * * *

It was a very rich and expensive dinner that Julian had ordered; and a bouquet of red carnations lay beside her plate. Lobster and champagne. What a crowd of excited people! Bare flesh was very ugly, and all those waved heads of women were intolerable. The monotony of faces in a crowd!...

Julian was studying her covertly, with flickering glances, though his attention was ostensibly for the company. He drank restlessly: the lines in his face were very marked. She would say something to him about the monotony of faces in a crowd; and then something about waved hair. After that she said:

‘Julian, does anybody know you’re here?’

‘No, not a soul.’

‘You left no address?’

‘No. Paris is my headquarters. When I go off like this I prefer that the great world should await my return, not follow me.’

‘Ah, you’re wise.’ She laughed. ‘It must make you feel so free.’

‘Why did you ask?’

‘Because it just occurred to me.’

Because they might have sent him a telegram: he was the eldest of the family, and they might have wanted him for all sorts of reasons: for the funeral.... But the body had not yet been recovered. Soon she must say to him: ‘Julian, Martin has been drowned.’ He would not much mind: they had never been very intimate: but of course they had shared that blood-intimacy of the circle. She must really tell him soon.

They were dancing now. The room was full of smoke and light and sickly scent; and the heat was choking. Everybody was rising to dance.

One of the American young men from her hotel was bowing and murmuring in front of her.

‘Not just now, thank you so much.’ She flashed a smile at him. ‘Perhaps later on....’

Oh, the queer marionettes bobbing up and down in their mechanical motions! How could people look so serious and perform such imbecile antics? But they were not real people.

‘Look, Julian, there’s the Spanish boy we played against in the tournament. He’s good-looking, isn’t he? He’s simply enrapturing that girl. Hasn’t he got a lazy smile?... You know, however ugly a Frenchwoman’s body is at any rate it is a body and she’s not ashamed of it. Those English people are just bundles of clothes. If you undressed them there’d be nothing. That’s the whole difference.... Oh, look, they’re giving out favours. Oh, I’d like a fan. Let’s dance.’

Threading her way through the crowded tables, she passed a party of fat elderly Frenchmen and heard one say to another, loudly and with drunken excitement:

‘_Mais regardez donc un peu! En blanc--vois tu? Elle est bien, celle-là. C’est tout à fait mon type._’

Their faces leered at her out of a dream.

Julian took her once round the room and then looked down at her and said:

‘You can’t dance to-night. What’s the matter?’

She gazed at him in dread, dumb. There was a reason. Soon--soon she would have to tell him; and then, when it had been spoken, imparted, it would be true for ever and ever. Not yet.

After a little while Julian held her as if he had ceased to expect or desire any response or rhythm from the lumpish wooden body he had to push. It was no good trying to keep things going much longer.... All things were coming waveringly to an end. The end would come with her own voice saying: “Martin has been drowned.” After that there would be a breaking-up and confusion, a going away to hide.... Not yet.

The dancing competition had started, amid loud laughter and applause. The couples, gradually thinning out, circled self-consciously. The little soft-eyed half-caste brother and sister--they were the ones. Their bodies were lithe and flat and sinuous, their proudly-carried small heads shone like black water, their eyes and lips were dreamy, sensual, sad, their limbs made poetry and music as they moved. They agreed, as prize-winners, to dance an exhibition dance.

Blushing, her teeth sparkling in a smile, she glided from the other end of the room towards her brother. He gave her his hand, she paused with a swirl of her long full yellow skirt,--and then they started swaying and circling together. They whirled; stopped dead; whirled again. He lifted her in the air and there she hung poised, laughing at him, pointing her tiny foot, then dropped like a feather and went weaving on.

Oh, let them dance for ever! While they danced, people could die, gently, easily, as a dancer sinks to earth, without pain to them or horror to others. Let them dance for ever!... It was over. Hand in hand they curtsied and bowed, and ran off the floor.

‘That was dancing,’ said Julian. ‘Nobody but each other to dance with, you see, poor little devils. That’s the way to learn.’

Roddy would have danced with that soft-smiling side-long-glancing little dancer: he would have made a point of it, not out of pity. Martin would have left her alone with quiet distaste.

_Then, in a flash, saw the sea try With savage wrath and efforts wild To smash its rocks with a dead child._

To smash its rocks with Martin.

Everybody was very gay now. Through the smoke, all the eyes and mouths laughed, excited with wine and dancing. Balloons and favours waved; the band blared. The musicians donned false noses and moustaches and stood up, leaping and shouting.

_Oh, this place is Hell!_

Yes, Hell. Grimacing faces, obscene bodies, chattering parrot and monkey voices; Hell’s musicians, with vicious tunes and features dark with unmentionable evil....

The lights were dimmed, the floor cleared. A dancing girl leapt into the middle of the space, throwing flowers. Her white ballet skirts spun mistily. The lights were extinguished altogether, and you saw that the outline of her bodice and her skirts, her shoe-buckles and the star on her forehead had been painted with luminous paint; so that now she was three stars and some circles and loops of light, wheeling fantastically in the dark.

Now was the time to slip out. Julian would not notice.

Half-way across the _Place_ he caught her up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘There’s something I must show you. Come with me.’

He followed in silence, into the hotel, upstairs, into the sitting-room.

‘Wait there, then. I’ll come back.’

She saw that she was carrying a purple balloon. She dropped it and watched it go bouncing like a great bubble across the room.

In the bedroom she found the letter in the folds of the blotter. ‘_What a silence, Martin! I have been missing you_....’ Aghast, she tore it in shreds.

Now to go back to Julian.

He was standing in the middle of the room, waiting.

‘Julian, what are Martin’s initials?’

He thought.

‘Something St. V.--G. M. St. V.--George Martin St. Vincent.’

He raised his eyebrows--but grew pale.

‘Ah, yes.’

The paper lay on the window-seat; she went to get it. ‘Take it away and read. There, where I’ve marked it.’ She made a cross with her thumbnail.

She went back to the bedroom and locked the door; and, after a few minutes, heard him going downstairs again.

Then she flung herself upon the bed, weeping for Martin whom she loved: whom she had left crying for her sake; who should have lived to be loved by his children, and honoured and full of years; Martin who was kind when all else was unkind--Martin who had been dead two days, rolling about in the waves; Martin for whom poor Roddy had searched the sea in vain; Martin who had been comely and now was destroyed utterly and made horrible,--sea-water in his mouth and eyes and hair, sea-water swelling his shapely body to a gross lump.

Whom had he thought of while he drowned? Had he fought and cursed? Or had he welcomed death because of somebody’s unkindness and deceit?

‘Martin, I didn’t mean it.’

Martin was almost in the room--quite in the room--standing just behind her, saying: “I’m all right.” He had come to comfort her.

Martin had entered into everlasting life. Yes!

No. No. No. Dead. Unconscious. Nothing. Beyond sight and touch for ever.