Chapter XLIV…

Chapter XLIV

Ilverthorpe was at the other side of the county, and Beth had to go from Slane to Morningquest by train in order to get there. Dan continued to be disagreeable in private about her going, but he took her to the station, and saw her off, so that the public might know what an admirable husband he was.

On his way from the station he met Sir George Galbraith, and greeted him with effusion.

"I hope you were coming to see us," he said, "for that would show that you don't forget our humble existence. But my wife isn't at home, I am sorry to say. She has just gone to stay with Mrs. Kilroy."

Sir George looked keenly at him. "I hope she is quite well," he said formally.

"Not too well," Dan answered lugubriously; "and that is why I encouraged her to go. The fact is, Sir George, I think I've been making a mistake with Beth. My mother was my perfection of a woman. She didn't care much for books; but she had good sound common-sense, and she attended to her husband and her household, and preferred to stay at home; and I confess I wanted my wife to be like her. Especially I wanted to keep her pure-minded and unsuspicious of evil; and that she could not remain if she got drawn into Mrs. Kilroy's set, and mixed up with the questions about which women are now agitating themselves. I know you're with them and not with me in the matter, but you'll allow for my point of view. Well, with regard to Beth, I find I've made a mistake. I should have let her follow her own bent, see for herself, and become a woman of the day if she's so minded. As it is, she is growing morbid for want of an outlet, and hanging back herself, and it is I who have to urge her on. It's an heroic operation so far as I'm concerned, for the whole thing is distasteful to me; but I shall go through with it, and let her be as independent as she likes."

"This sounds like self-sacrifice," said Sir George. "I sincerely hope it may answer. We are going different ways, I think. Good-morning." He raised his hand to his hat in a perfunctory way, and hurried off. The next time he saw Mrs. Kilroy, he described this encounter with Dr. Maclure.

"This is a complete change of front," said Angelica; "what does it mean?"

"When a man of that kind tells his wife to make the most of her life in her own way and be independent, he means 'Don't bother me; another woman is the delight of my senses!' When he says to the other woman 'Be free!' he means 'Throw yourself into my arms!'"

Angelica sighed. "Poor Beth!" she said, "what a fate to be tied to that plausible hog!"

* * * * *

From having been so much shut up in herself, Beth showed very little of the contrasts of her temperament on the surface,--her joy in life, her moments of exaltation, of devotion, of confidence, of harshness, of tenderness; her awful fits of depression, her doubts, her fears, her self-distrust; her gusts of passion, and the disconnected impulses wedged into the well-disciplined routine of a consistent life, ordered for the most part by principle, reason, and reflection. Few people, meeting her casually, would have suspected any contrasts at all; and even of those who knew her best, only one now and then appreciated the rate at which the busy mind was working, and the changes wrought by the growth which was continually in progress beneath her equable demeanour. Those about her, for want of discernment, expected nothing of her, and suffered shocks of surprise in consequence, which they resented, blaming her for their own defects.

But it was of much more importance to Beth that she should be able to pass on with ease from one thing to another than that she should have the approval of people who would have had her stay where they found her, not for her benefit, but for their own convenience in classifying her. Beth made stepping-stones of her knowledge of other people rather than of her own dead self. She picked to pieces the griefs they brought upon her, dissected them, and moralised upon them; and, in so doing, forgot the personal application. While in the midst of what might have been her own life tragedy, she compared herself with those who had been through theirs and did not seem a bit the worse or the better, which observation stimulated her fortitude; when she contemplated the march of events, that mighty army of atoms, any one of which may be in command of us for a time, none remaining so for ever under healthy conditions, she perceived that life is lived in detail, not in the abstract. The kind of thing that makes the backbone of a three-volume novel, is but a phase or an incident; everything is but an incident with all of us, a heart-break to-day, a recollection to-morrow, a source of encouragement and of inspiration eventually perhaps; the which, if some would remember, there would be less despair and fewer suicides. The recognition of this fact had helped Beth's sense of proportion and was making her philosophical. She believed that life could be lived so as to make the joys as inevitable as the sorrows. We are apt to cultivate our sense of pleasure less than our sense of suffering, by appreciating small pleasures little, while heeding small pains excessively. Beth's deliberate intention, as well as her natural impulse, was to reverse this in her own case as much as possible; she would not let her physical sense of well-being on a fine morning and her intellectual delight in a good mood for work be spoilt because of some trouble of the night before. The trouble she would set aside so that it might not detract from the pleasure.

But fine mornings and good moods for work had not come to her aid since she discovered the mean treachery of Dan and Bertha, and when she left Slane she was still oppressed by the sense of their hypocrisy and deceit. As the train bore her swiftly away from them both, however, her spirits rose. The sun shone, the country looked lovely in its autumn bravery of tint and tone; she felt well, and the contemplation of such people as Dan and Bertha was not elevating; they must out of her mind like any other unholy thought, that she might be worthy to associate with the loyal ladies and noble gentlemen whose hands were outheld to help her. The people we cling to are those with whom we find ourselves most at home. It is not the people who amuse us that we like best, but those who stir our deeper emotions, rouse in us possibilities of generous feeling which lie latent for the most part, and give form to our higher aspirations; and Beth anticipated with a happy heart that it was with such she was bound to abide.

Mrs. Kilroy met her at the station at Morningquest. "What a bonny thing you are!" she exclaimed in her queer abrupt way. "I didn't realise it till I saw you walking up the platform towards me. There's a cart to take your luggage to Ilverthorpe. Do you mind coming to lunch with Mrs. Orton Beg? She has a dear little house in the Close, and we thought you might like to see the Cathedral. Here's the carriage. No, you get in first."

"But does Mrs. Orton Beg want me?" Beth asked when they were seated.

"We all want you," said Mrs. Kilroy, "if you will forgive our first mistake with regard to you, and come out of yourself and be one of us. And you'll be specially fond of Mrs. Orton Beg when you know her, I fancy. She's just sweet! She used to hate our works and ways, and be very conventional; but Edith Beale's marriage opened her eyes. She would never have believed that men countenanced such an iniquity had she not seen it herself. The first effect of the shock was to narrow her judgment and make her severe on men generally; but she will get over that in time. Man, like woman, is too big a subject to generalise about. He has his faults, you know, but he must be educated; that is all he wants. He must be taught to have a better opinion of himself. At present, he wallows because he thinks he can't keep out of the mire; but of course he can when he learns how. He's not a bit worse than woman naturally, only he has a lower opinion of himself, and that keeps him down. With his training we shouldn't be a bit better than he is. In all things that concern men and women, you dear, you will find that, when they start fair, one is not a bit better or worse than the other. Here we are."

Mrs. Orton Beg came into the hall to greet her guest. She was a slender, elegant, middle-aged woman, in graceful black draperies, with hair prematurely grey, and a face that had always been interesting, but never handsome--a refined, intellectual, but not strong face; the face of a patient, self-contained, long-enduring person, of settled purpose, slowly arrived at, and then not easily shaken. She welcomed Beth cordially, and placed her at table so that she might look out at the old grey Cathedral. It was the first time Beth had seen it, and she could have lost herself in the sensation of realising its traditions, its beauty, and its age; but the conversation went on briskly, and she had to take her part. Lady Fulda Guthrie, an aunt of Mrs. Kilroy's, was the only other guest. She was a beautiful saint, with a soul which had already progressed as far as the most spiritual part of Catholicism could take it, and she could get no farther in this incarnation.

"I hope you are prepared to discuss any and every thing, Mrs. Maclure," Mrs. Orton Beg warned Beth; "for that is what you will find yourself called upon to do among us. The peculiarity of man is that he will do the most atrocious things without compunction, but would be shocked if he were called upon to discuss them. Do what you like, is his principle, but don't mention it; people form their opinions in discussion, and opinions are apt to be adverse. Our principle is very much the opposite."

"I have just begun to know the necessity for open discussion," Beth answered tranquilly. "I do not see how we can arrive at happiness in life if we do not try to discover the sources of misery. I know of nothing that earnest men and women should hesitate to discuss openly on proper occasions."

"Oh, I'm thankful to hear you say 'men and women,'" Angelica broke in. "That is the right new spirit! Let us help one another. Any attempt to separate the interests of the sexes, as women here and there, and men generally, would have them separated, is fatal to the welfare of the whole race. The efforts of foolish people to divide the interests of men and women make me writhe--as if we were not utterly bound up in one another, and destined to rise or fall together! But this woman movement is towards the perfecting of life, not towards the disruption of it. I asked a sympathetic woman the other day why she took no part in it, and she answered profoundly, 'Because I am a part of it.' And I am sure she was right. I am sure it is evolutionary. It is an effort of the race to raise itself a step higher in the scale of being. For see what it resolves itself into! Men respond to what women expect of them. When warriors were the women's ideal, men were warriors. When women preferred knights, priests, or troubadours, a man's ambition was to be a knight, priest, or troubadour. When women thought drunkenness fine, men were drunken. Now women want husbands of a nobler nature, strong in all the attributes, moral and physical, of the perfect man, that their children may be noble too, and thus the ascent of man to higher planes of being become assured."

"Great is the power of thought," said Lady Fulda. "By thinking these things the race is evolving them. Thought married to suggestion is a creative force. If the race believed it would have wings; in the course of ages wings would come of the faith."

"And discussion is not enough," Beth resumed. "We should experiment. It is very well to hold opinions and set up theories, but opinions and theories are alike valueless until they are tested by experiment."

"I see you are a true radical," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "You would go to the root of the matter."

"Oh yes, I am a radical in that sense of the word," Beth answered. "I have a horror of conservatism. Nothing is stationary. All things are always in a state of growth or decay; and conservatism is a state of decay."

"Yes," said Angelica. "That is very true, especially as applied to women--if they are ever to advance."

"Then don't you think they are advancing?" Beth asked.

"Yes," said Angelica, "but not as much as they might. When you mix more with them in the way of work you will be disheartened. Women are their own worst enemies just now. They don't follow their leaders loyally and consistently; they have little idea of discipline; their tendency is to go off on side issues and break up into little cliques. They are largely actuated by petty personal motives, by petty jealousies, by pettinesses of all kinds. One amongst them will arise here and there, and do something great that is an honour to them all; but they do not honour her for it--perhaps because something in the way she dresses, or some trick of manner, does not meet with the approval of the majority. Women are for ever stumbling over trifling details. To prove themselves right pleases them better than to arrive at the truth; and a vulgar personal triumph is of more moment than the triumph of a great cause. In these things they are practically not a bit better than men."

"They seem worse, in fact, because we expect so much more of them in the way of loyalty and disinterestedness," said Mrs. Orton Beg; "and their power is so much greater, too, in social matters; when they misuse it, they do much more harm. This will not always be so, of course. As their minds expand, they will see and understand better. At present they do not know enough to appreciate their own deficiencies--they do not measure the weakness of their vacillations by comparing it with the steady strength of purpose that prevails; and, for want of comprehension, they aim their silly animadversions to-day at some one whose work they are glad enough to profit by to-morrow; they make the task of a benefactress so hard that they kill her, and then they give her a public funeral. I pity them!"

"Oh, do not be hasty," said Lady Fulda. "Human beings are not like packs of cards, to be shuffled into different combinations at will and nobody the worse. There are feelings to be considered. The old sores must be tenderly touched even by those who would heal them. And when we uproot we must be careful to replant under more favourable conditions; when we demolish we should be prepared to rebuild, or no comfort will come of the changes. These things take time, and are best done deliberately, and even then the most cautious make their mistakes. But, still, I believe that the force which is carrying us along is the force that makes for righteousness. We women have in our minds now what will culminate in the recognition by future generations of the beauty of goodness. Woman is to be the mother of God in Man."

Beth's heart swelled at the words. This attitude was new to her; and yet all that was said she seemed to have heard before, and known from the first. And she knew more also, away back in that region beyond time and space to which she had access, and where she found herself at happy moments transported by an impulse outside herself, which she could not control by any effort of will. That day, with those new friends, she felt like one who returns to a happy home after weary wanderings, and is warmly welcomed. A great calm settled upon her spirit. She said little the whole time, but sat, sure of their sympathetic tolerance, and listened to them with that living light of interest in her eyes to which the heart responds with confidence more surely than to any spoken word. The evil influences which had held her tense at Slane had no power to trouble her here. She was high enough above Dan and Bertha to look down upon them dispassionately, knowing them for what they were, yet personally unaffected by their turpitude. It was as if she had heard of some bad deed, and knew it to be repulsive, a thing intolerable, meriting punishment; yet, because it did not concern her, it had lapsed from her thoughts like a casual paragraph read in a paper which had not brought home to her any realisation of what it recorded.

During the afternoon her mind was stored with serene impressions--service in the venerable Cathedral; the fluting of an anthem by a boy with a birdlike voice; some strong words from the pulpit, not on the dry bones of doctrine, nor the doings of a barbarous people led by a vengeful demon of perplexing attributes whom they worshipped as a deity, but on the conduct of life--a vital subject. Then, as they drove through the beautiful old city, there came impressions of grey and green; grey gateways, ancient buildings, ivy, and old trees, and, over all, sounding slow, calm, and significant, the marvellous chime, the message which Morningquest heard hourly year by year, and heeded no more than it heeded death at a distance or political complications in Peru.

The same party met again at Ilverthorpe, but there were others there as well--Ideala, Mrs. Kilroy's father and mother Mr. and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells, and Lady Galbraith, but not Sir George.

In the drawing-room after dinner, Beth was intent upon a portfolio of drawings, and Ideala, seeing her alone, went up to her.

"Are you fond of pictures?" she said to Beth.

"Yes, that is just the word," Beth answered. "I am so 'fond' of them that even such a collection as this, which shows great industry rather than great art, I find full of interest, and delight in. Happy for me, perhaps, that I don't know anything about technique. Subject appeals to my imagination as it used to do when I was a child, and loved to linger over the pictures on old-fashioned pieces of music. Those pictures lure me still with strange sensations such as no others make me feel. I wish I could realise now as vividly as I realised then the beauty of that lovely lady on the song, and the whole pathetic story--the gem that decked her queenly brow and bound her raven hair, remained a sad memorial of blighted love's despair; and that other young creature who wore a wreath of roses on the night when first we met; and the one who related that we met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me; he came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me, and concluded that 'twas thou that had caused me this anguish, my mother. There was the gallant corsair, too, just stepping out of a boat, waving his hat. His curly hair, open shirt collar, and black tie with flying ends remain in my mind, intimately associated with Byron, young love, some who never smiled again, the sapphire night, crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all sparkling with frosty brightness--impressions I would not exchange for art understood, or anything I am capable of feeling now before the greatest work of art in the world--so strangely am I blunted."

"What, already!" Ideala said compassionately. "But that is only a phase. You will come out of it, and be young again and feel strongly, which is better than knowing, I concede. The truest appreciation of a work of art does not take place in the head, but in the heart; not in thinking, but in feeling. When we stand before a picture, it is not by the thoughts formulated in the mind, but by the appreciation which suffuses our whole being with pleasure that we should estimate it."

"But isn't that a sensuous attitude?" Beth objected.

"Yes, of the right kind," Ideala rejoined. "The senses have their uses, you know. And it is exactly your attitude as a child towards the pictures on the songs. You felt it all--all the full significance--long before you knew it so that you could render it into words; and felt more, probably, than you will ever be able to express. Feeling is the first stage of fine thought."

Mr. Hamilton-Wells strolled towards them. He was a rather tall, exceedingly thin man, with straight, thick, grey-brown hair, parted in the middle, and plastered down on either side of his head. He was dressed in black velvet. His long thin white hands were bedecked with handsome antique rings, art treasures in their way. One intaglio, carved in red coral, caught the eye especially, on the first finger of his right hand. As he talked he had a trick of shaking his hands back with a gesture that suggested lace ruffles getting in the way, and in his whole appearance and demeanour there was something that recalled the days when velvet and lace were in vogue for gentlemen. He spoke with great preciseness, and it was not always possible to be sure that he at all appreciated the effect of the extraordinary remarks he was in the habit of making; which apparent obliviousness enabled him to discourse about many things without offence which other people were obliged to leave unmentioned.

"Nowadays, when I see two ladies together in a corner, talking earnestly," he observed, "I always suspect that they are discussing the sex question."

"Oh, the sex question!" Ideala exclaimed. "I am sick of sex! Sex is a thing to be endured or enjoyed, not to be discussed."

"Indeed!" said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, nodding slowly, as if in profound consideration, and shaking back his imaginary ruffles. "Is that your opinion, Mrs. Maclure?"

"I keep a separate compartment in my mind for the sex question," Beth answered, colouring--"a compartment which has to be artificially lighted. There is no ray of myself that would naturally penetrate to it. When I take up a book, and find that it is nothing but she was beautiful, he loved her, I put it down again with a groan. The monotony of the subject palls upon me. It is the stock-in-trade of every author, as if there were nothing of interest in the lives of men and women but their sexual relations."

"Indeed, yes," said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, with bland deliberation, "but society thinks of nothing else. Blatant sexuality is the predominant characteristic of the upper classes, and the rage for the sexual passion is principally set up and fostered by a literature inflated with sexuality, and by costumes which seem to be designed for the purpose. In the evening, now, just think! Even quite elderly ladies, with a laudable desire to please, offer themselves in evening dress--and a very great deal of themselves sometimes--to the eye that may be attracted."

When he had spoken, he shook back his imaginary ruffles, brought his hands together in front of him with the fingers tip to tip in a pious attitude, and strolled up the long room slowly, shaking his head at intervals with an intent expression, as if he were praying for society.

"What a bomb!" Beth gasped. "Is he always so?"

"Generally," Ideala rejoined. "And I can never make out whether he means well, but is stupid and tactless, or whether he delights to spring such explosives on inoffensive people. He sits on a Board of Guardians composed of ladies and gentlemen, and the other day, at one of their meetings, he proposed to remove the stigma attaching to illegitimacy. He said that illegitimacy cannot justly be held to reflect on anybody's conduct, since, so he had always understood, illegitimacy was birth from natural causes."

"And what happened?"

Ideala slightly shrugged her shoulders. "The proposition was seriously discussed, and a parson and one or two other members of the board threatened to retire if he remained on it. But remain he did, and let them retire; and I cannot help fancying that his whole object was to get them to go. Sometimes I think that he must have a peculiar sense of humour, which it gives him great gratification to indulge, as others do good, by stealth. He makes questionable jests for himself only, and enjoys them alone. But apart from this eccentricity, he is a kind and generous man, always ready to help with time and money when there is any good to be done."

When Beth went to her room that night, she experienced a strange sense of satisfaction which she could not account for until she found herself alone, with no fear of being disturbed. It seemed to her then that she had never before known what comfort was, never slept in such a delightful bed, so fresh and cool and sweet. She was like one who has been bathed and perfumed after the defilements of a long dusty journey, and is able to rest in peace. As she stretched herself between the sheets, she experienced a blessed sensation of relief, which was a revelation to her. Until that moment, she had never quite realised the awful oppression of her married life; the inevitable degradation of intimate association with such a man as her husband.

The next day the ladies went out to sit on the lawn together in the shade of the trees, with their books and work. There were no sounds but such as, in the country, seem to accentuate the quiet, and are aids, not to thought, but to that higher faculty which awakes in the silence, and is to thought what the mechanical instrument is to the voice.

"How heavenly still it is!" Beth ejaculated. "It stirs me--fills me--how shall I express it?--makes me cognisant in some sort--conscious of things I don't know--things beyond all this, and even better worth our attention. The stillness here in these surroundings has the same benign effect on me that perfect solitude has elsewhere. What a luxury it is, though--solitude! I mean the privilege of being alone when one feels the necessity. I am fortunate, however," she added quickly, lest she should seem to be making a personal complaint, "in that I have a secret chamber all to myself, and so high up that I can almost hear what the wind whispers to the stars to make them twinkle. I go there when I want to be alone to think my thoughts, and no one disturbs me--not even my nearest neighbours, the angels; though if they did sometimes, I should not complain."

"They come closer than you think, perhaps," said Lady Fulda, who had just strolled up, with a great bunch of lilies on her arm. "Consider the lilies," she went on, holding them out to Beth. "Look into them. Think about them. No, though, do not think about them--feel. There is purification in the sensation of their beauty."

"Is purification always possible?" Beth said. "Can evil ever be cast out once it has taken root in the mind?"

"Are you speaking of thoughts or acts, I wonder?" Lady Fulda rejoined, sitting down beside Beth and looking dreamily into her flowers. "You know what we hold here: that no false step is irretrievable so long as we desire what is perfectly right. It is not the things we know of, nor even the things we have done, if the act is not habitual,--but the things we approve of that brand us as bad. The woman whose principles are formed out of a knowledge of good and evil is better, is more to be relied upon, than the woman who does not know enough to choose between them. It is not what the body does, but what the mind thinks that corrupts us."

"But from certain deeds evil thoughts are inseparable," Beth sighed; "and surely toleration of evil comes from undue familiarity with it?"

"Yes, if you do not keep your condemnation side by side with your knowledge of it," Lady Fulda agreed.

The night before she returned to Slane, Beth attended a meeting of the new order which Ideala had founded. It was the first thing of the kind she had been to, and she was much interested in the proceedings. Only women were present. Beth was one of a semicircle of ladies who sat on the platform behind the chair. There were subjects of grave social importance under discussion, and most of the speaking was exceedingly good, wise, temperate, and certainly not wanting in humour.

Towards the end of the evening there was an awkward pause because a lady who was to have spoken had not arrived. Mrs. Kilroy, who was in the chair, looked round for some one to fill the gap, and caught Beth's eye.

"May I speak?" Beth whispered eagerly, leaning over to her. "I have something to say."

Angelica nodded, gave the audience Beth's name, and then leant back in her chair. The shorthand writers looked up indifferently, not expecting to hear anything worth recording.

Beth went forward to the edge of the platform with a look of intentness on her delicate face, and utterly oblivious of herself, or anything else but her subject. She never thought of asking herself if she could speak. All she considered was what she was going to say. She clasped her slender hands in front of her, and began, slowly, with the formula she had heard the other speakers use: "Madam Chairman, ladies--" She paused, then suddenly spoke out on The Desecration of Marriage.

At the first resonant notes of her clear, dispassionate voice, there was a movement of interest, a kind of awakening, in the hall, and the ladies on the platform behind her, who had been whispering to each other, writing notes and passing them about, and paying more attention to the business of the meeting generally than to the speakers, paused and looked up.

Suddenly Ideala, with kindling eyes, leant over to Mrs. Orton Beg, grasped her arm, and said something eagerly. Mrs. Orton Beg nodded. The word went round. Beth held the hall, and was still rising from point to point, carrying the audience with her to a pitch of excitement which finally culminated in a great burst of applause.

Beth, taken aback, stopped short, surprised and bewildered by the racket; looked about her, faltered a few more words, and then sat down abruptly.

The applause was renewed and prolonged.

"What does it mean?" Beth asked Ideala in an agony. "Did I say something absurd?"

"My dear child," Ideala answered, laughing, "they are not jeering, but cheering!"

"Is that cheering?" Beth exclaimed in an awe-stricken tone, overcome to find she had produced such an effect. "I feared they meant to be derisive."

"I didn't know you were a speaker," Mrs. Orton Beg whispered.

"I am not," Beth answered apologetically. "I never spoke before, nor heard any one else speak till to-night. Only I have thought and thought about these things, and I could not keep it back, what I had to say."

"That is the stuff an orator is made of," some strange lady muttered approvingly.

Chapter XLV

When Beth returned to Slane, Dan received her so joyously she wondered what particularly successful piece of turpitude he had been busy about. He was always effusive to her when evil things went well with him. At first she had supposed that this effusiveness was the outcome of affection for her; but when she began to know him, she perceived that it was only the expression of some personal gratification. He had been quite demonstrative in his attentions to her during the time that Bertha Petterick stayed in the house.

"By the way, there is a letter for you," he said, when they were at lunch.

"Is there?" Beth answered. "Who from?"

"How the devil am I to know?" he rejoined, glancing up at the mantelpiece. "I can't tell who your correspondents are by instinct."

Beth's eye followed his to the mantelpiece, where she saw a large square envelope propped up against an ornament in a conspicuous position, and recognised the unmistakable, big, clear, firm hand of Bertha Petterick, and the thick kind of paper she always used.

Beth had been thinking about Bertha on the way home. She knew that, if Bertha had been as wrong in body as in mind and moral nature, she would have had compassion on her; and she had determined to tolerate her as it was, to do what she could for her maimed soul, just as she would have ministered to her had her malady been physical. But Dan's hypocrisy about the letter ruffled her into opposition. He knew Bertha's handwriting as well as she did, and was doubtless equally well acquainted with the contents of the letter; and this affectation of ignorance must therefore mean something special. Probably he was anxious to propitiate her with regard to whatever Bertha might be writing about. But Beth was not to be managed in that way, and so she let the letter be.

As she was leaving the room after lunch, Dan called after her: "You have forgotten your letter."

"It doesn't matter," Beth answered. "Any time will do for that."

The letter was left there for days unopened, and it had the effect of stopping the conversation at meals, for although Dan did not allude to it again, he constantly glanced at it, and it was evident that he had it on his mind.

At last, one day, when he came in, he said, "I have just seen Mrs. Petterick, and she tells me Bertha wrote to you days ago, and has had no answer."

"Indeed," Beth observed indifferently. "I shouldn't think she could have anything to say to me that specially required an answer."

Dan fidgeted about a little, then burst out suddenly, "Why the devil don't you open the girl's letter?"

"Because you pretended you didn't know who it was from," Beth said.

"I declare to God I never pretended anything of the kind," Dan answered hotly.

Beth laughed. Then she went to the mantelpiece, took down the letter, turned it over and displayed the huge monogram and scroll with "Bertha" printed on it, with which it was bedizened, laughed again a little, and threw the letter unopened into the fire, "There!" she said. "Let that be an end of the letter, and Bertha Petterick too, so far as I am concerned. She bores me, that girl; I will not be bothered with her."

"Well, well!" Dan exclaimed pathetically, looking hard at the ashes of the letter on the coals: "that's gratitude! I do my best to make an honest living for you, and you repay me by affronting one of my best patients. And what the unfortunate girl has done to offend you, the devil only knows. I'm sure she would have blacked your boots for you when she was here, she was so devoted."

"She was pretty servile, I grant that," Beth answered dispassionately. "But that is enough of Bertha Petterick, please. Here is the butcher's bill for the last month, and the baker's, the milk, the wine, the groceries, all nearly doubled on Bertha's account. If adding to your expenses in every way makes a good patient, she was excellent, certainly. I'll leave you the bills to console you; but, if you value your peace of mind, don't dare to worry me about them. You were quite right when you said I was too young to be troubled about money matters, and I shall not let myself be troubled--especially when they are matters, like these bills, for which I am not responsible." She was leaving the room as she spoke, but stopped at the door: "And, Dan," she added, quoting his favourite phrase, "I'd be cheery if I were you. There's nothing like being cheery. Why, look at me! I never let anything worry me!"

She left Dan speechless, and went to her secret chamber, where she sat and suffered for an hour, blaming herself for her lightness, her contrariness, her want of dignity, and all those faults which were the direct consequence of Dan's evil influence. She was falling farther and farther away from her ideal in everything, and knew it, but seemed to have lost the power to save herself. The degeneration had begun in small matters of discipline, apparently unimportant, but each one of consequence, in reality, as part of her system of self-control. From the moment we do a thing thinking it to be wrong, we degenerate. If it be a principle that we abandon, it does not matter what the principle is, our whole moral fibre is loosened by the gap it makes. Beth, who had hitherto shunned easy-chairs, as Aunt Victoria had taught her, lest she should be enervated by lolling, now began to take to them, and so lost the strengthening effect of a wholesome effort. Other little observances, too, little regular habits which discipline mind and body to such good purpose, slipped from her,--such as the care of her skin after the manner of the ladies of her family, who had been renowned for their wonderful complexions. This had been enjoined upon her by her mother in her early girlhood as a solemn duty, and had entailed much self-denial in matters of food and drink, quantities being restricted, and certain things prohibited at certain times, while others were forbidden altogether. She had had to exercise patience, also, in the concoction and use of delicately perfumed washes of tonic and emollient properties, home distilled, so as to be perfectly pure; all of which had been strictly practised by her, like sacred rites or superstitious observances upon the exact performance of which good fortune depends. In such matters she now became lax. And, besides the care of her person, she neglected the care of her clothes, which had been so beneficial to her mind; for it must be remembered that it was during those long hours of meditation, while she sat sewing, that her reading had been digested, her knowledge assimilated, her opinions formed, and her random thoughts collected and arranged, ready to be turned to account on an emergency. Until this time, too, she had kept Sunday strictly as a day of rest. Books and work, and all else that had occupied her during the week, were put away on Saturday night, and not taken out again until Monday morning; and the consequence was complete mental relaxation. But now she began to do all kinds of little things which she had hitherto thought it wrong to do on Sunday, so that the sanitary effect of the day of rest--or of change of occupation, for sometimes Sunday duties are arduous--was gradually lost, and she no longer returned to her work on Monday strengthened and refreshed. Little by little her "good reading" was also neglected, and instead of relying upon her own resolution, as had hitherto been her wont, she began to seek the prop of an odd cup of tea or coffee at irregular hours, to raise her spirits if she felt down, or stimulate her if she were out of sorts and work was not easy; all of which tended to weaken her will. Then, by degrees, she began to lose the balance of mind which had been wont to carry her on from one little daily doing to another, with calm deliberation, taking them each in turn without haste or rest, and finding time for them all. Now, the things that she did not care about she began to do with a rush, so as to get to her writing. She wanted to be always at that; and the consequence was a wearing sensation, as of one who is driven to death, and has never time enough for any single thing.

But it was in these days, nevertheless, that she began to write with decision. Hitherto, she had been merely trying her pen--feeling her way; but now she unconsciously ceased to follow in other people's footsteps, and struck out for herself boldly. She had come back from Ilverthorpe with a burning idea to be expressed, and it was for the shortest, crispest, clearest way to express it that she tried. Foreign phrases she discarded, and she never attempted to produce an eccentric effect by galvanising obsolete words, rightly discarded for lack of vitality, into a ghastly semblance of life. Her own language, strong and pure, she found a sufficient instrument for her purpose. When the true impulse to write came, her fine theories about style only hampered her, so she cast them aside, as habitual affectations are cast aside and natural emotions naturally expressed, in moments of deep feeling; and from that time forward she displayed, what had doubtless been coming to her by practice all along, a method and a manner of her own.

She produced a little book at this time, the first thing of any real importance she had accomplished as yet; and during the writing of it she enjoyed an interval of unalloyed happiness, the most perfect that she had ever known. The world without became as nothing to her; it was the world within that signified. The terrible sense of loneliness, from which she had always suffered more or less, was suspended, and she began to wonder how it was she had ever felt so desolate, that often in the streets of Slane she would have been grateful to anybody who had spoken to her kindly. Now she said to herself, sincerely, "Never less alone than when alone!" And up in the quiet of her secret chamber, with the serene blue above, the green earth and the whispering trees below, and all her little treasures about her: the books, the pictures, the pretty hangings, and little ornaments for flowers; things she had indulged in by degrees since her mother's death had left her with the money in her hands which she had made to discharge Dan's debt--up there at her ease in that peaceful shrine, secure from intrusion, "There is no joy but calm!" was her constant ejaculation. Then again, too, she felt to perfection the fine wonder, the fine glow of a great inspiration, and realised anew that therein all the pleasures of the senses added together are contained; that inspiration in its higher manifestations is like love--that it is love, in fact--love without the lover; there being all the joy of love in it, but none of the trouble.

But, like most young writers when they set up a high ideal for themselves, and are striving conscientiously to arrive at it, because the thing came easily she fancied she had not done her best, and was dissatisfied. She talked to herself about fatal facility, without reflecting that in time ease comes by practice; nor did she discriminate between the flow of cheap ideas pumped up from any source for the occasion, which satisfies the conceit of shallow workers, and the deep stream that bubbles up of itself when it is once released, and flows freely from the convictions, the observations, and the knowledge of an earnest thinker. Diffidence is a help to some, but to Beth it was a hindrance, a source of weakness. There was no fear of her taking herself for a heaven-born genius. Her trouble had always been her doubt of the merit of anything she did. She should have been encouraged, but instead she had always been repressed. Accordingly, when she had finished her little masterpiece, she put it away with the idea of rewriting it, and making something of it when she should be able; and then she began a much more pretentious work, and thought it must be better because of the trouble it gave her.

Gradually, from now, she gave up all her time to reading and writing, and she overdid it. Work in excess is as much a vice as idleness, and it was particularly bad for Beth, whose constitution had begun to be undermined by dutiful submission. The consulting rooms of specialists are full of such cases. There are marriages which for the ignorant girl preached into dutiful submission, whose "innocence" has been carefully preserved for the purpose, mean prostitution as absolute, as repugnant, as cruel, and as contrary to nature as that of the streets. Beth's marriage was one of those. Until she went to Ilverthorpe, she had never heard that there was a duty she owed to herself as well as to her husband; and, as Sir George Galbraith had said, her brain was too delicately poised for the life she had been leading. Work had been her opiate; but unfortunately she did not understand the symptoms which should have warned her that she was overdoing it, and her nerves became exceedingly irritable. Noises which she had never noticed in her life before began to worry her to death. Very often, when she was spoken to, she could hardly answer civilly. At meals everything that was handed to her was just the very thing she did not want. She quarrelled with all her food, drank quantities of strong coffee for the sake of the momentary exhilaration, and even tried wine; but as it only made her feel worse, she gave that up. Writing became a rage with her, and the more she had to force herself, the longer she sat at it. She would spend hours over one sentence, turning it and twisting it, and never be satisfied; and when she was at last obliged to stop and go downstairs lest she should be missed, she went with her brain congested, and her complexion, which was naturally pale and transparent, all flushed or blotched with streaks of crimson.

"What's the matter with your face?" Dan said to her one day, apt, as usual, to comment offensively on anything wrong.

"I should like you to tell me," Beth answered.

"You'd better take some citrate of iron and quinine."

"You've prescribed citrate of iron and quinine for everything I've ever had since I knew you," said Beth. "If I have any more of it, I shall be like the man in the quack advertisement, who felt he could conscientiously recommend a tonic because he had taken it for fourteen years. I should like something that would act a little quicker."

Dan left the room and banged the door.

That afternoon Beth, up in her shrine at work, suddenly began to wonder what he was doing. As a rule, she did not trouble herself about his pursuits, but now all at once she became anxious. The thought of all the unholy places that he might be at (and the unfortunate girl knew all about all of them, for there was no horror of life with which her husband had not made her acquainted), filled her with dread--with a sensation entirely new to her, and absolutely foreign to her normal nature. Her feeling for Dan and Bertha, when she discovered their treachery, had been one of contempt. Their disloyalty, and the petty mean deceits which it entailed, made it difficult to tolerate their presence, and she was always glad to get rid of them, wherever they might go. Now, however, she was seized upon with a kind of rage at the recollection of their intrigue, of the scene in the garden, the glances she had intercepted, their stolen interviews, clandestine correspondence, and impudent security. It was all retrospective this feeling, but the torment of it was none the less acute for that. She recalled the scene in the garden, and her heart throbbed with anger. She regretted her own temperate conduct, and imagined herself stealing out upon them, standing before them, and pouring forth floods of invective till they cowered. She wished she had refused to let Bertha enter the house again, and had threatened to expose Dan if he did not meekly submit to her dictation. She ought to have exposed him too. She should have gone to Bertha's mother. But where was Dan at that moment? She jumped up, rushed down to her room, put on her outdoor things in hot haste, and ran downstairs determined to go and see; but as she entered the hall at one end of it, Dan himself came in by the hall-door at the other. The relief was extraordinary.

"Hallo! where are you off to?" he said.

"Just going for a little walk," she answered, speaking ungraciously and without looking at him. Now that she saw him, her ordinary feeling for him returned; but instead of being quiet and indifferent as usual, she found herself showing in her manner something of the contempt she felt, and it pleased her to do it. She was glad to go out, and be in the open air away from him; but she had not gone far before the torment in her mind began again. Why had he come in so unusually early? Was there anything going on in the house? He was always very familiar with the servants.

She stopped short at this, turned back, and went in as hurriedly as she had gone out. In the hall she stood a moment listening. The house seemed unusually quiet. A green baize door separated the kitchen and offices from the hall. She opened it, and saw Minna in the butler's pantry, cleaning the plate. Minna was parlour-maid now, a housemaid having been added to the establishment when Miss Petterick came, so that that young lady might be well waited on.

"I think we should give the girl full value for her money, you know, even if we do without something ourselves," Dan had said, in the generous thoughtful way that had so often imposed upon Beth.

Beth asked Minna where Drew, the housemaid, was.

"It's her afternoon out, ma'am," Minna answered.

"So it is," said Beth. "I had forgotten."

"Do you want anything, ma'am?" Minna asked. "You're looking poorly. Would you like a cup o' tea?"

"No, thank you," Beth rejoined, then changed her mind. "Yes, I should, though. Get me one while I'm taking my things off, and bring it to me in the dining-room. Where is your master?"

"I don't know, ma'am. I've not heard if he's come in; but it's full early for him yet," Minna replied, as she took off her working apron.

While she was talking to the girl, the worry in Beth's head stopped, and she felt as usual. Going quietly upstairs, she fancied she heard some one moving in her bedroom, and, entering it by way of the dressing-room, she discovered Dan on his knees on the floor, prying into one of the boxes she had had with her at Ilverthorpe, and kept locked until she should feel inclined to unpack it. He seemed to have had all the contents out, and was just deftly repacking it. As he replaced the dresses, he felt in the pocket of each, and in one he found an old letter which he read.

Beth withdrew on tiptoe, and went downstairs again, wondering at the man. She took off her hat and jacket, and ensconced herself with the newspaper in an easy-chair. Minna came presently with fragrant tea and hot buttered toast, and talked cheerfully about some of her own interests. Beth treated her servants like human beings, and rarely had any trouble with them. She had learnt the art from Harriet, who had awakened her sympathies, and taught her practically, when she was a child, what servants have to suffer; and "well loved and well served" exactly described what Beth was as a mistress. When Minna withdrew, and Beth had had her tea and toast, she felt quite right again, and read the paper with interest. The shock of the real trouble had ousted the imaginary one for the moment.

The next morning, however, as she toiled with flushed face and weary brain, stultifying her work with painful elaboration, she was seized with another fit of jealous rage, just as she had been the day before. Her mind in a moment, like a calm sea caught by a sudden tempest, seethed with horrible suspicions of her husband. His gross ideas, expressed in coarse language, had hitherto been banished from her mind by her natural refinement; but now, like the works of a disordered machine, whirling with irresponsible force, thoughts suggested by him came crowding in the language he habitually used, and she found herself accusing him with conviction of all she had ever heard others accused of by him. For a little she pursued this turn of thought, then all at once she jumped up and rushed downstairs, goaded again to act--to avenge herself--to dog him down to one of his haunts, and there confront him, revile him, expose him.

It was a tranquil grey day in early autumn, the kind of day, full of quiet charm, which had always been grateful to Beth; but now, as she stood on the doorstep, with wrinkled forehead, dilated eyes, and compressed lips, putting her gloves on in feverish haste, she felt no tranquillising charm, and saw no beauty in the tangled hedgerows bright with briony berries, the tinted beeches, the Canadian poplars whispering mysteriously by the watercourse at the end of the meadow, the glossy iridescent plumes of the rooks that passed in little parties silhouetted darkly bright against the empty sky; it was all without significance to her; her further faculty was suspended, and even the recollection of anything she had been wont to feel had lapsed, and she perceived no more in the scene surrounding, in the colours and forms of things, the sounds and motions, than those perceive whose eyes have never been opened to anything beyond what appears to the grazing cattle. In many a heavy hour she had found delight in nature; but now, again, she had lost that solace; the glory had departed, and she had sunk to one of the lowest depths of human pain.

Not understanding the frightful affliction that had come upon her, she made no attempt to control her disordered fancy, but hurried off into the town, and hovered about the places which Dan had pointed out as being of special evil interest, and searched the streets for him, acting upon the impulse without a doubt of the propriety of what she was doing. Had the obsession taken another form, had it seemed right to her to murder him, the necessity would have been as imperative, and she would have murdered him, not only without compunction, but with a sense of satisfaction in the deed.

She pursued her search for hours, but did not find him; then went home, and there he was, standing on the doorstep, looking out for her.

"Where on earth have you been?" he said.

"Where on earth have you been yourself?" she rejoined.

"Minding my own business," he answered.

"So have I," she retorted, pushing past him into the hall.

He had never seen her like that before, and he stood looking after her in perplexity.

She went upstairs and threw herself on her bed. The worry in her head was awful. Turn and toss as she would, the one idea pursued her, until at last she groaned aloud, "O God! release me from this dreadful man!"

After a time, being thoroughly exhausted, she dropped into a troubled sleep.

When she awoke, Dan was standing looking at her.

"Aren't you well, Beth?" he said. "You've been moaning and muttering and carrying on in your sleep as if you'd got fever."

"I don't think I am well," she answered in her natural manner, the pressure on her brain being easier at the moment of awakening.

He felt her pulse. "You'd better get into bed," he said, "and I'll fetch you a sedative draught. You'll be all right in the morning."

Beth was only too thankful to get into bed. When he returned with the draught, she asked him if he were going out again.

"No, not unless I'm sent for," he said. "Where the devil should I be going to? It's close on dinner-time."

Beth shut her eyes. "If he is sent for and goes," she reflected, "I shall know it is a ruse to deceive me; and I shall get up and follow him."

He left her to sleep and went downstairs. But Beth could not sleep. The draught quieted her mind for a little; then the worry began again as bad as ever, and she found herself straining her attention to discover to whom he was talking, for she fancied she heard him whispering with some one out in the passage. She bore the suspicion awhile, then jumped out of bed impetuously and opened the door. The gas was burning low in the passage, but she could see that there was no one about. Surely, though, there were voices downstairs? Barefooted, and only in her night-dress, she went to see. Yes, there were voices in the dining-room--now! She flung the door wide open. Dan and another man, a crony of his, who had dropped in casually, were sitting smoking and chatting over their whiskeys-and-sodas.

Beth, becoming conscious of her night-dress the moment she saw them, turned and fled back to her bed; greatly relieved in her mind by the shock of her own indiscretion.

"What a mad thing to do!" she thought. "I hope to goodness they didn't see me."

A mad thing to do!

The words, when they recurred to her, were a revelation. What had she been doing all day? Mad things! What was this sudden haunting horror that had seized upon her? Why, madness! Dan was just as he had always been. The change was in herself, and only madness could account for such a change. There was madness in the family. She remembered her father and the "moon-faced Bessie"--the familiarities with servants, too; surely her mother had suffered, and doubtless this misery which had come upon her had been communicated to her before her birth. Jealous-mad she was; that was what it meant, the one idea goading her on to do what would otherwise have been impossible, possessing her in spite of herself, and not to be banished by any effort of will.

"Heaven help me!" she groaned. "What will become of me?"

Then, as if in reply, there rose to her lips involuntarily the assurance which recurred to her now for her help and comfort in every hard moment of her life like a refrain: "I shall succeed."

And she set herself bravely to conceal her trouble, whatever it cost her, and to conquer it.

But it was a hard battle. For months the awful worry in her head continued, the same thoughts haunted her, the same jealous rage possessed her, and she knew no ease except when Dan was at hand. The trouble always passed when she had him under observation. She could not read, she could not write, she was too restless to sit and sew for more than a few moments at a time. Up and down stairs she went, out of the house and in again, fancying always, when in one place, that she would be better in another, but finding no peace anywhere, no brightness in the sunshine, no beauty in nature, no interest in life. Through the long solitary hours of the long solitary days she fought her affliction with her mouth set hard in determination to conquer it. She met the promptings of her disordered fancy with answers from her other self. "He and Bertha Petterick are together, that is why he is so late," the fiend would asseverate. "Very likely," her temperate self would reply. "But they may have been together any day this two years, and I knew it, and pitied and despised them, but felt no pain; why should I suffer now? Because my mind is disordered. But I shall recover! I shall succeed!"

She would look at the clock, however, every five minutes in an agony of suspense until Dan came in. Then she had to fight against the impulse to question him, which beset her as strongly as the impulse to follow him, and that was always upon her except when his presence arrested it. Never once through it all, however, did she think of death as a relief; it was life she looked to for help, more life and fuller. She could interest herself in nothing, care for nothing; all feeling of affection for any one had gone, and was replaced by suspicion and rage. In her torment her cry was, "Oh, if some one would only care for me! for me as I am with all my faults! If they would only forgive me my misery and help me to care again--help me also to the luxury of loving!"

Forgive her her misery! The world will forgive anything but that; it tramples on the wretched as the herd turns on a wounded beast, not to put it out of its pain, but because the sight of suffering is an offence to it. If we cannot enliven our acquaintances, they will do little to enliven us. Sad faces are shunned; and signs of suffering excite less sympathy than repulsion. The spirit of Christ the Consoler has been driven out from among us.

Beth poured herself out in letters at this time rather more than was her habit; it was an effort to get into touch with the rest of the world again. In one to Jim, speaking of her hopes of success, she said she should get on better with her work if she had more sympathy shown her; to which he replied by jeering at her. What did she mean by such nonsense? But that was the way with women; they were all sickly sentimental. Sympathy indeed! She should think herself devilish lucky to have a good husband and a home of her own. Many a girl would envy her. He wrote also to other members of the family on the subject, as if it were a rare joke worth spreading that Beth wanted more sympathy; and Beth received several letters in which the writers told her what their opinion was of her and her complaints as compared to that good husband of hers, who was always so bright and cheery. All their concern was for the worthy man who had done so much for Beth. They had no patience with her, could scarcely conceal their amusement with this last absurdity, but thought she should be laughed out of her fads and fancies. That was the only time Beth sought sympathy from any of her relations. Afterwards she took to writing them bitter letters in which she told them what she thought of them as freely as they told her. "What is the use," she said to Jim, "what is the use of sisters and wives being refined and virtuous if their fathers, brothers, husbands, are bar-loafers, men of corrupt imagination and depraved conversation? Surely, if we must live with such as these, all that is best in us adds to our misery rather than helps us. If we did not love the higher life ourselves, it would not hurt us to be brought into contact with the lower."

On receiving this letter, Jim wrote kindly to Dan, and said many things about what women were coming to with their ridiculous notions. But men were men and women were women, and that was all about it,--a lucid conclusion that appealed to Dan, who quoted it to Beth in discussions on the subject ever afterwards.

Beth broke down and despaired many times during the weary struggle with her mental affliction. She felt herself woefully changed; and not only had the light gone out of her life, but it seemed as if it never would return. When she awoke in the morning, she usually felt better for awhile, but the terrible torment in her mind returned inevitably, and rest and peace were banished for the day. It was then she learnt what is meant by the inner calm, and how greatly to be desired it is--desired above everything. The power to pray left her entirely during this phase. She could repeat prayers and extemporise them as of old, but there was no more satisfaction in the effort than in asking a favour of an empty room. Sometimes, and especially during the hideous nights, when she slept but little, and only in short snatches, she felt tempted to take something, stimulant or sedative; but this temptation she resisted bravely, and, the whole time, an extra cup of tea or coffee for the sake of the momentary relief was the only excess she committed. If she had not exercised her will in this, her case would have been hopeless; but, as it was, her self-denial, and the effort it entailed, kept up her mental strength, and helped more than anything to save her.

To beguile the long hours, she often stood in the dining-room window looking out. The window was rather above the road, so that she looked down on the people who passed, and she could also see over the hedge on the opposite side of the road into the meadow beyond. Small things distracted her sometimes, though nothing pleased her. If two rooks flew by together, she hoped for a better day; if one came first, she would not accept the omen, but waited, watching for two. By a curious coincidence, they generally passed, first one for sorrow, then two for mirth, then three for a wedding; and she would say to herself, first, bad luck, then good luck, then a marriage; and wonder how it would come about, but anyhow--"I shall succeed!" would flash from her and stimulate her.

One day, as she stood there watching, she saw a horseman come slowly down the road.

"A bowshot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley sheaves, The sun came dazzling through the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Launcelot."

Beth's attention sharpened to sudden interest. As he came abreast of the window, the rider looked up, and Beth's heart bounded at the sight of his face, which was the face of a man from out of the long ago, virile, knightly, high-bred, refined; the face of one that lives for others, and lives openly. He had glanced up indifferently, but, on seeing Beth, a look of interest came into his eyes. It was as if he had recognised her; and she felt herself as if she had seen him before, but when or where, in what picture, in what dream, she could not tell.

With the first flush of healthy interest she had experienced for a long time, she watched him till he was all but out of sight, then shut her eyes that she might not see him vanish, for fear of bad luck; a superstition she had not practised since she was a child. When he had gone, she found herself with a happy impression of him in her mind, an impression of quiet dignity, and of strength in repose. "A man to be trusted," she thought; "true and tender, a perfect knight." The flash of interest or recognition that came into his countenance when he saw her haunted her; she recalled the colour of his blue eyes, noted the contrast they were to his dark hair and clear dark skin, and was pleased. In the afternoon she sat and sewed, and smiled to herself over her work with an easy mind. Her restlessness had subsided; Dan scarcely cost her a thought; the tension was released and a reaction had set in; but, at the time, she herself was quite unaware of it. All she felt was a good appetite for her tea.

"Minna," she said to the parlour-maid, "bring me a big cup of tea and a good plate of buttered toast. I'm famishing."

"That's good news, ma'am," Minna answered, for it was long since Beth had had any appetite at all.

The next day Beth stood at the window again, but without intention. She was thinking of her knight of the noble mien, however, and at about the same hour as on the day before, he came again, riding slowly down the road; and again he looked at Beth with a flash of interest in his face, to which she involuntarily responded. When he was out of sight she opened the window, and perceived to her glad surprise that the air was balmy, and on all things the sun shone, shedding joy.

The horrid spell was broken.

Chapter XLVI

"A bowshot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves."

The words made music in Beth's heart as she dressed next morning, and, instead of the torment of mind from which she had suffered for so long, there was a great glad glow. Dan went and came as usual, but neither his presence nor absence disturbed her. She had recovered her self-possession, her own point of view, and he and his habits resumed their accustomed place in her estimation. During that dreadful phase she had seen with Dan's suspicious eyes, and seen evil only, but had not acquired his interest and pleasure in it; on the contrary, her own tendency to be grieved by it had been intensified. Now, however, she had recovered herself, her sense of proportion had been restored, and she balanced the good against the evil once more, and rejoiced to find that the weight of good was even greater than she had hitherto supposed.

But although the spell had been broken in a moment, her right mind was not permanently restored all at once. It was only gradually, as the tide goes out after a tempest, and leaves the storm-beaten coast in peace, that the worry in her head subsided. She had lapse after lapse. She would lie awake at night, a prey to horrible thoughts, or start up in the early morning with her mind all turgid with suspicions which goaded her to rush out and act, act--see for herself--do something. But the great difference now was that, although she was still seized upon by the evil, it no longer had the same power to grieve her. She had valiantly resisted it from the moment she recognised its nature, but now she not only resisted it, she conquered it, and found relief. When her imagination insisted on pursuing Dan to his haunts, she deliberately and successfully turned her attention to other things. She turned her attention to the friends she loved and trusted, she dwelt on the kindness they had shown her, she forced herself to sit down and write to them, and she would rise from this happy task with her reason restored, the mere expression of affection having sufficed to exorcise the devils of rage and hate.

But it was the strange exalted sentiment which her knight had inspired that began, continued, and completed her cure. Day after day he came riding down the road, riding into her life for a moment, then passing on and leaving her, not desolate, but greatly elated. She had known no feeling like this feeling, no hope or faith like the hope and faith inspired by that man's mien. She did not know his name, she had never heard his voice; their greeting--which was hardly a greeting, so restrained was the glance and the brightening of the countenance which was all the recognition that passed between them--was merely momentary, yet, in that moment, Beth was imbued with joy which lasted longer and longer each time, until at last it stayed with her for good, restored the charm of life to her, re-aroused her dormant further faculty, and quickened the vision and the dream anew. She prayed again in those days fervently, and in full faith, as of old; for when we pray with love in our hearts our prayers are granted, and her heart was full of love--a holy, impersonal love, such as we feel for some great genius, adored at a distance, for the grace of goodness he has imparted to us. And her heart being full of love, her brain teemed with ideas; the love she lived on, the ideas she held in reserve, for she had been so weakened by all she had suffered that the slightest exertion in the way of work exhausted her. In any case, however, great ideas must simmer long in the mind before they come to the boil, and the time was not lost.

In those days fewer people than ever came to the house. For weeks together Beth never spoke to a soul except the servants and her husband, and through the long hours when her head troubled her and she could not work, she felt her isolation extremely. Mrs. Kilroy and her other new friends sent her pamphlets and papers and hurried notes to keep her heart up and inform her of their progress, and Beth, knowing what the hurry of their lives was, and not expecting any attention, was grateful for all they paid her. She had no fear of losing touch with such friends after they had once received her into their circle as one of themselves, however seldom she might see them, and it was well for her mental health that she had them to rely on during that time of trial, for without them she would have had no sense of security in any relation in life.

She was gradually growing to be on much more formal terms with Dan than she had been, thanks to her own strength of character. She found she was able to reduce the daily jar, and even to keep his coarseness in check, by extreme politeness. In any difference, his habit had been to try and shout her down; but the contrast of her own quiet dignified demeanour checked him in that. Beth had the magnetic quality which, when steadily directed, acts on people and forces them into any attitude desired; and Dan accommodated his manner and conversation to her taste more now than he had ever done before; but he felt the restraint, and was with her as little as possible, which, as she began to recover, was also a relief--for his blatant self-absorption, the everlasting I, I, I, of his conversation, and his low views of life, rasped her irritable nerves beyond endurance.

One day, coming into the drawing-room about tea-time, with muddy boots and his hat on, he found her lying on the sofa, prostrated with nervous headache. The days closed in early then, and she had had the fire lighted and the curtains drawn, but could not bear the gaslight because of her head.

"Well, this isn't brilliant," he began, at the top of his voice. "A little more light would suit me." He struck a match and turned the gas full on. "That's better," he said; "and some tea would be refreshing after my walk. I've done the whole trudge on foot this afternoon, and I consider that's a credit to me. You won't find many rising young men economising in the matter of horseflesh as I do, or in anything else. I'll undertake to say I spend less on myself than any other man in the diocese." He went to the door instead of ringing the bell, and shouted down the passage to Minna to bring him some tea.

Beth shut her eyes and groaned inwardly.

When the tea came, Dan poured some out for himself, remarking, "I suppose you've had yours." Beth had not, but she was beyond making any effort to help herself at the moment. Dan, who always ate at a greedy rate, left off talking for a little; and during the interval, Beth was startled by something cold touching her hand. She opened her eyes, and found a dainty little black-and-tan terrier standing up, with its forepaws on the couch, looking at her.

"You're a pretty thing," she said. "Where have you come from?"

"Oh, is that the dog?" said Dan, looking round to see to whom she was talking. "He followed me in. I don't know who he belongs to; but as I happen to want a little dog, he's welcome."

"But he's very well-bred, isn't he," said Beth, "and valuable? Look at his pencilled paws, and thin tail, and sharp ears pricked to attention. He's listening to what we are saying with the greatest intelligence. I'm sure he's a pet, and his owners will want him back."

"Let them come and fetch him, then," said Dan.

Then it occurred to Beth that Dan had probably bought him to present to somebody, but chose to lie about it for reasons of his own, so she said no more.

The next night, about ten o'clock, Dan was called out, and did not return. Beth, being very wideawake, sat up late, playing patience first of all, and then reading a shilling shocker of Dan's, which she had taken up casually and become interested in. The story was of an extremely sensational kind, and she found herself being wrought up by it to a high pitch of nervous excitement. At the slightest noise she jumped; and then she became oppressed by the silence, and found herself peering into the dark corners of the room, and hesitating to glance over her shoulder, as if she feared to see something. She supposed the servants had not yet gone to bed, for she heard at intervals what seemed to be a human voice. After a time, however, it struck her that there was something unusual in the regularity of the sound, and, although she continued to read, she found herself waiting involuntarily, with strained attention, for it to be repeated. When it occurred again, she thought it sounded suspiciously like a cry of pain; and the next time it came she was sure of it. Instantly forgetting herself and her nervous tremors, she threw down her book and went to see what was the matter. She stood a moment in the hall, where the gas had been left burning, and listened; but all was still. Then she opened the door of communication into the kitchen regions, and found that that part of the house was all in darkness. The servants had gone to bed. Holding the door open, she stood a little, and listened again; but, as she heard nothing, she began to think her fancy had played her a trick, when, just beside her, as it seemed, some one shrieked. Beth, gasping with terror, ran back into the hall, and struck a match to light one of the bed-candles that stood on a table, her impulse being to go to the rescue in spite of her deadly fright. It seemed an age before she could get the candle lit with her trembling hands, and, in the interval, the horrible cry recurred, and this time she thought it came from the surgery. Could any sick person have been left there locked up? Dan always kept the room locked up, and Beth had hardly ever been in it. She went to the door now, bent on breaking it open, but she found that for once the key had been left in the lock. She turned it and entered boldly; but her candle flickered as she opened the door, so that, at first, she could see nothing distinctly. She held it high above her head, however, and as the flame became steady she looked about her. There was no one to be seen. The room was large and bare. All that it contained was a bookcase, some shelves with books on them, a writing-table and chair, an arm-chair, a couch, and another table of common deal, like a kitchen table, on which was a variety of things--bottles, books, and instruments apparently--all covered up with a calico sheet.

Beth, checked again in her search, was considering what to do next, when the horrid cry was once more repeated. It seemed to come from under the calico sheet. Beth lighted the gas, put down her candle, and going to the table, took the sheet off deliberately, and saw a sight too sickening for description. The little black-and-tan terrier, the bonny wee thing which had been so blithe and greeted her so confidently only the evening before, lay there, fastened into a sort of frame in a position which alone must have been agonising. But that was not all.

Beth had heard of these horrors before, but little suspected that they were carried on under that very roof. She had turned sick at the sight, a low cry escaped her, and her great compassionate heart swelled with rage; but she acted without hesitation.

Snatching up her candle, she went to the shelves where the bottles were, looked along the row of red labels, found what she wanted, went back to the table, and poured some drops down the poor little tortured creature's throat.

In a moment its sufferings ceased.

Then Beth covered the table with the calico sheet mechanically, put the bottle back in its place, turned out the gas, and left the room, locking the door after her. Her eyes were haggard and her teeth were clenched, but she felt the stronger for a brave determination, and more herself than she had done for many months.

Maclure only came in to bathe and breakfast next morning, and she scarcely exchanged a word with him before he went out again; but in the afternoon he came into the drawing-room, where she was writing a letter, and began to talk as if he meant to be sociable. He had his usual air of having lavished much attention on his personal adornment--too much for manliness; and, in spite of the night work, his hair shone as glossy black, his complexion was as bright and clear, and his general appearance as fresh and healthy, as care of himself and complete indifference to other people, except in so far as his own well-being might be affected by them, could make it. Beth watched him surveying himself in the glass from different points of view with a complacent smile, and felt that his physical advantages, and the superabundant vitality which made the business of living such an easy enjoyable farce to him, made his inhuman callousness all the more repulsive.

"I should go out if I were you," he said, peering close into the glass at the corner of his eye, where he fancied he had detected the faint criss-cross of coming crows' feet "I'd never stay mugging up in the house, withering. Look at me! I go out in all weathers, and I'll undertake to say I'm a pretty good specimen both of health and spirits."

It was so unusual for Dan to recommend Beth to do anything for her own good that she began to wonder what he wanted; she had observed that he always felt kindly disposed towards people when he was asking a favour of them.

"And, by-the-bye," he pursued, turning his back to the mirror and craning his neck to see the set of his coat-tails, "you might do something for me when you are out. Wilberforce is worrying for his money. It's damned cheek. I sent him a large order for whisky the other day to keep him quiet, but it hasn't answered. I wish you would go and see him--go with a long face, like a good girl, and tell him I'm only waiting till I get my own accounts in. Have a little chat with him, you know, and all that sort of thing--lay yourself out to please him, in fact. He's a gentlemanly fellow for a wine-merchant, and has a weakness for pretty women. If you go, I'll take my dick he'll not trouble us with a bill for the next six months."

"It seems to me," said Beth in her quietest way, "that when a husband asks his wife to make use of her personal appearance or charm of manner to obtain a favour for him from another man, he is requiring something of her which is not at all consistent with her self-respect."

Dan stopped short with his hand up to his moustache to twist it, his bonhomie cast aside in a moment. "Oh, damn your self-respect!" he said brutally. "Your cursed book-talk is enough to drive a man to the devil. Anybody but you, with your 'views' and 'opinions' and fads and fancies generally, would be only too glad to oblige a good husband in such a small matter. And surely to God I know what is consistent with your self-respect! I should be the last person in the world to allow you to compromise it! But your eyes will be opened, and the cursed conceit taken out of you some day, madam, I can tell you! You'll live to regret the way you've treated me, I promise you!"

"My eyes have been pretty well opened as it is," Beth answered. "You left the key in the surgery door last night."

"And you went in there spying on me, did you? That was honourable!" he exclaimed in a voice of scorn.

"I heard the wretched creature you had been vivisecting crying in its agony, and I thought it was a human being, and went to see," Beth answered, speaking in the even, dispassionate way which she had found such an effectual check on Dan's vulgar bluster.

"You killed that dog, then!" he exclaimed, turning on her savagely. "How dare you?"

Beth rose from the writing-table, and went and stretched herself out on the sofa, deliberately facing him.

"How dare you?" she inquired.

"How dare I, indeed, in my own house!" he bawled. "Now, look here, madam, I'm not going to have any of your damned interference, and so I tell you."

"Please, I am not deaf," she remonstrated gently. "And now, look here, sir, I am not going to have any of your damnable cruelties going on under the same roof with me. I have endured your sensuality and your corrupt conversation weakly, partly because I knew no better, and partly because I was the only sufferer, as it seemed to me, in the narrow outlook I had on life until lately; but I know better now. I know that every woman who submits in such matters is not only a party to her own degradation, but connives at the degradation of her whole sex. Our marriage never can be a true marriage, the spiritual, intellectual, physical union of a man and a woman for the purpose of perfect companionship. We have none of the higher aspirations in common, we should be none the happier for tender experiences of parenthood, none the holier for any joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure, that might come to us to strengthen and ennoble us if rightly enjoyed or endured. And this, I think, is not altogether my fault. But however that may be, it is out of my power to remedy it now. All I can do is to prevent unedifying scenes between us by showing you such courtesy and consideration as is possible. On this occasion I will show you courtesy, but the consideration is due to me. A woman does not marry to have her heart wrung, her health destroyed, her life made wretched by anything that is preventable, and I intend to put a stop to this last discovered hellish practice of yours. I will not allow it, and if you dare to attempt it again, I will call in the townsfolk to see you at your brutal work."

She spoke with decision, in the tone of one who has determined on her plan of action and will fearlessly pursue it. A great gravity settled on Daniel Maclure. He stood still a little reflecting, then came to the fire, beside which Beth, who had risen restlessly as she spoke, was now sitting in an arm-chair. He drew up another chair, and sat down also, having resolved, in face of the gravity of the situation, to try some of his old tactics, and some new ones as well. His first pose was to gaze into the fire ruefully for awhile, and then his fine eyes slowly filled with tears.

"It must have been a brutal sight," he said at last, "and I can't tell you how sorry I am you saw it. I don't wonder you're shaken, poor little girl, and it's natural that the shock should have made you unreasonable and uncharitable--unlike yourself, in fact, for I never knew a more reasonable woman when you are in your right mind, or a more charitable. I'm not so bad, however, as you think me. I never intended to inflict suffering on the creature. I didn't know he'd recover. I had given him a dose of curare."

"The drug that paralyses without deadening the sense of pain," Beth interposed. "I have heard of the tender mercies of the vivisector. He saves himself as much as he can in the matter of distracting noises."

Dan had mentioned curare to give a persuasive touch of scientific accuracy to his explanation, not suspecting that she knew the properties of the drug, and he was taken aback for a moment; but he craftily abandoned that point and took up another.

"These experiments must be made, in the interests of suffering humanity, more's the pity," he said, sighing.

"In the interests of cruel and ambitious scientific men, struggling to outstrip each other, and make money, and win fame for themselves regardless of the cost. They were ready enough in old days to vivisect human beings when it was allowed, and they would do it again if they dared."

"Now look here, Beth; don't be rabid," said Dan temperately. "Just think of the sufferings medical men are able to relieve nowadays in consequence of these researches."

"Good authorities say that nothing useful has been discovered by vivisection that could not have been discovered without it," Beth rejoined. "And even if it had been the means of saving human life, that would not justify your employment of it. There never could be a human life worth saving at such an expense of suffering to other creatures. It isn't as if you made an experiment and had done with it either. One generation after another of you repeats the same experiments to verify them, to see for yourselves, for practice; and so countless helpless creatures are being tortured continually by numbers of men who are degraded and brutalised themselves by their experiments. Had I known you were a vivisector, I should not only have refused to marry you, I should have declined to associate with you. To conceal such a thing from the woman you were about to marry was a cruel injustice--a fraud."

"I concealed nothing from you that you were old enough to understand and take a right view of," Dan protested.

"According to custom," said Beth. "Anything that might prevent a woman accepting a man is carefully concealed from her. That kind of cant is wearisome. You did not think me too young to put at the head of a house, or to run the risk of becoming a mother, although I have heard you dilate yourself on the horrors of premature motherhood. But that is the way with men. For anything that suits their own convenience they are ingenious in finding excuses. As a rule, they see but one side of a social question, and that is their own. I cannot understand any but unsexed women associating with vivisectors. Don't pretend you pursue such experiments reluctantly--you delight in them. But, whatever the excuse for them, I am sure that the time is coming when the vivisector will be treated like the people who prepared the dead for embalming in ancient Egypt. You will be called in when there is no help for it; but, your task accomplished, you will be driven out of all decent society, to consort with the hangman--if even he will associate with you."

"Well, well!" Dan ejaculated, gazing into the fire sorrowfully. "But I suppose this is what we should expect. It's the way of the world. A scientific man who devotes all his time and talents to relieving his fellow-creatures must expect to be misunderstood and reviled by way of reward. You send for us when you want us--there's nobody like the doctor then; but you'll grudge every penny you've got to give us, and you'd not pay at all if you could help it. I should know."

"I was not speaking of doctors," Beth rejoined. "I was speaking of vivisectors. But after all, what is the great outcome of your extraordinary science? What do you do with it? Keep multitudes alive and suffering who would be happily dead and at rest but for you! If you practised with the honest intention of doing as much good as you could, you would not be content merely to treat effects as you do for the most part; you would strike at causes also; and we should hear more of prevention and less of wonderful cures. You dazzle the blockhead public with a showy operation, and no one thinks of asking why it is that the necessity for this same operation recurs so often. You know, probably, but you disclaim responsibility in the matter. It is not your place to teach the public, you modestly protest."

"I don't know how you can say that in the face of the effort we have made to stamp out disease. Why, look at zymotic diseases alone!"

"Exactly!" Beth answered. "Zymotic diseases alone! But why draw the line there? And what are you doing to improve the race, to strengthen its power to resist disease? You talk about Nature when it suits you; but it is the cant of the subject you employ, for you are at variance with Nature. Your whole endeavour is to thwart her. Nature decrees the survival of the fittest; you exercise your skill to preserve the unfittest, and stop there--at the beginning of your responsibilities, as it seems to me. Let the unfit who are with us live, and save them from suffering when you can, by all means; but take pains to prevent the appearance of any more of them. By the reproduction of the unfit, the strength, the beauty, the morality of the race is undermined, and with them its best chances of happiness. Yes, you certainly do your best to stamp out measles, smallpox, scarlet fever, and all that group--diseases that do not necessarily leave any permanent mark on the constitution; but at the same time you connive at the spread of the worst disease to which we are liable. About that you preserve the strictest professional secrecy. Only to-day, in the Times, there is the report of a discussion on the subject at a meeting of the International Congress of Legal Medicine--where is it?" She took up the paper and read:--"'There was an important debate on the spread of an infamous disease by wet nurses. This question is all the more urgent because, though the greatest dangers and complications are involved, it is very generally neglected.... When a doctor knows that the parents of a child are tainted, should he so far disregard the professional secrecy to which he is bound as to warn the nurse of her danger in suckling the child?' Apparently not! The poor woman must take her chance, as the child's unfortunate mother had to do when she married."

"Ah, now you see for yourself, and will become reasonable, it is to be hoped," he interrupted, rubbing his hands complacently; "for it is precisely in order to check that particular disease that appointments like mine are made."

"It is precisely in order to make vice safe for men that such appointments are made," she answered. "Medical etiquette would not stop where it does, at the degradation of those unfortunate women, if you were honestly attempting to put a stop to that disease. You would have it reported, irrespective of the sex of the sufferer, like any other disease that is dangerous to the health of the community. It is not contrary to etiquette to break your peculiar professional secrecy in the case of a woman, but it would be in the case of a man; so you punish the women, and let the men go free to spread the evil from one generation to another as they like. O justice! O consistency! I don't wonder we have been shunned since we came to Slane. A man in your position is a mere pander, and right glad am I of what I have suffered from the scorn and contempt of the people who would not associate with us. It shows that the right spirit is abroad in the community."

"Pander!" Dan ejaculated. "I am sorry to hear you use such a word, Beth."

"It is the right word, unfortunately," she answered.

"You oughtn't to know anything about these things," the chaste Daniel observed, with an air of offended delicacy. "Women can't know enough to see the matter from the right point of view, and so they make mischief."

"Ah, you don't appreciate that women have grown out of their intellectual infancy," Beth said, "and have opinions and a point of view of their own in social matters, especially where their own sex is concerned. You are still in the days of old Chavasse, who expatiates in his 'Advice to a Wife' on the dangers of men marrying unhealthy women, but says not a word of warning to women on the risk of marrying unhealthy men. You would keep us blindfolded as we were in his day, and abandon us to our fate in like manner; but it can't be done any more, my friend. You can hide nothing from sensible women now that concerns the good of the community. We know there is no protection for women against this infamous disease, and no punishment for the men who spread it; and we consider the fact a disgrace to every medical man alive."

"You have a nice opinion of the men of your husband's profession!" Dan observed sarcastically.

"I have the highest opinion of medical men--such medical men as Sir George Galbraith," she replied. "I have seen something of their high-mindedness, their courage, their devotion, and their genuine disinterestedness; and I feel sure that in time their efforts will leaven the whole mass of callousness and cruelty against which they have to contend in their profession. The hope of humanity is in the doctors, and they will not fail us. Like Christ, they will teach as well as heal."

"Rubbish!" said Dan. "As I've told you before, it isn't our business to mind the morals of the people. It's for the parsons to fight the devil."

"But," said Beth, "as I answered you before, you cannot attend to the health of the community properly without also minding its morals. The real old devil is disease."

Dan left his seat and walked to the window, where he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out for awhile.

"Well, this is enough jawbation for one day, I hope," he said at last, turning round. "Marrying a woman like you is enough to drive a man to the devil. I've a jolly good mind to go and get drunk. I declare to God if I could get drunk overnight and feel all right again in the morning, I'd be drunk every night. But it can't be done," he added regretfully. "There are drawbacks to everything."

Beth looked at him imperturbably while he was speaking, then turned her attention to the fire.

"You know my views now on the subject of vivisection," she said at last. "If there is any more of it here, I shall leave the house, and publish the reason. And you also know what I consider I owe myself in the way of self-respect. You must beguile your creditors by other means than my personal appearance."

She had spoken all through in the most temperate tone, and now, when she had finished, she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands with a sigh, as of one who had finished a hard task and would rest.

Dan looked at her with evident distaste, and considered a little, searching for something more to say that might move her, some argument that should persuade or convince; but, as nothing occurred to him, he left the room, banging the door after him in his ill-conditioned way, because he knew that the noise would be a racking offence to her overwrought nerves.

But from that time forward everything he did was an offence to Beth, a source of irritation. In spite of herself, she detected all the insincerity of his professions, the mean motives of his acts. Up to this time she had been more kindly disposed towards him than she herself knew. All she had wanted was to be able to care for him, to find some consistency in him, something to respect, and to which she could pin her faith; but now she knew him for what he was exactly--shallow, pretentious, plausible, vulgar-minded, without principle; a man of false pretensions and vain professions; utterly untrustworthy; saying what would suit himself at the moment, or just what occurred to him, not what he thought, but what he imagined he was expected to say. Beth had never heard him condemn a vice or habit which she did not afterwards find him practising himself. She used to wonder if he deceived himself, or was only intent on deceiving her; but from close observation of him at this period, she became convinced that, for the time being, he entered into whatever part he was playing, and hence his extreme plausibility. Beth found herself studying him continually with a curious sort of impersonal interest; he was a subject that repelled her, but from which, nevertheless, she could not tear herself away. His hands in particular, his handsome white hands, had a horrid sort of fascination for her. She had admired them while she thought of them as the healing hands of the physician, bringing hope and health; but now she knew them to be the cruel hands of the vivisector, associated with torture, from which humanity instinctively shrinks; and when he touched her, her delicate skin crisped with a shudder. She used to wonder how he could eat with hands so polluted, and once, at dessert, when he handed her a piece of orange in his fingers, she was obliged to leave it on her plate, she could not swallow it.

After that last scene the days dragged more intolerably than ever; but happily for Beth there were not many more of them without a break, for just as it seemed that endurance must end in some desperate act, Mrs. Kilroy sent her a pressing invitation to go and pay her a long visit in London; and Beth accepted it, and went with such a sense of relief as an invalid feels who, after long suffering, finds herself well, and out in the free fresh air once more.

Chapter XLVII

When Beth went to stay with the Kilroys in London, it was a question whether she might not end by joining the valiant army of those who are in opposition to everything; but before she had been there a week, she had practically recovered her balance, and began to look out upon life once more with dispassionate attention. Her depression when she first arrived was evident, and the Kilroys were concerned to see her looking so thin and ill; but, by degrees, she expanded in that genial atmosphere, and although she said little as a rule, she had begun to listen and to observe again with her usual vivid interest. She could not have been better situated for the purpose, for people of all kinds came to the Kilroys; and in moving among them merely as an onlooker, she was bound to see and hear enough to take her out of herself. Her own personality was too distinct, however, for her to remain for long an onlooker merely. That mesmeric quality in her which, whether it fascinates or displeases, attracts or repels, marks a distinct personality which is not to be overlooked, made people ask at once who she was, in the hope that her acquaintance might be worth cultivating. For there was a certain air of distinction about her which made her look like a person with some sort of prestige, whom it might be useful to know--don't you know.

One afternoon soon after Beth's arrival, Mrs. Kilroy being at home to visitors, and the rooms already pretty full, Beth noticed among the callers an old-looking young man whose face seemed familiar to her. He wore a pointed beard upon his chin, and a small moustache cut away from his upper lip, and waxed and turned up at the ends. His face was thin and narrow, his forehead high and bald; what hair he had grew in a fringe at the back of his head, and was curly, and of a nondescript brown colour. Had he worn the dress of the Elizabethan period, he might have passed for a bad attempt to look like Shakespeare; and Beth thought that that perhaps might be the resemblance which puzzled her. While she was looking at him a lady was announced, a most demure-looking little person in a grey costume, and a small, close-fitting princess bonnet, tied under her chin, and trimmed with a big Alsatian bow in front. She entered smiling slightly, and she continued to smile, as if she had set the smile on her lips as she put the bonnet on her head, to complete her costume. After she had shaken hands with Angelica, she looked round as if in search of some one else, and seemed satisfied when she discovered the old-looking young man of Shakesperian aspect. He was watching her, and their eyes met with a momentary significance, but they took no further notice of each other. Most people would have perceived no more in the glance than showed on the surface:--a lady and gentleman who looked at each other and then looked away, like indifferent acquaintances or casual strangers; but Beth's infallible intuition revealed to her an elaborate precaution in this seeming unconcern. It was clear to her that the two had expected to meet each other there, and their apparent insensibility to each other's presence was a pose, which, however, betrayed to her the intimacy it was affected to conceal. She hated herself for seeing so much, and burned with blame of Dan for opening her eyes to behold the inward wickedness beneath the conventional propriety of the outward demeanour; but therein she was unjust to Dan. He had opened her eyes sooner than they should have been opened, but in any case she must have seen for herself eventually. Nothing in life can be concealed from such a mind. What books could not teach her, she discovered from people by sympathy, by insight, by intuition; but she did not come into full possession of her faculties all at once. The conditions of her life had tended rather to retard than to develop the best that was in her, and the wonder was that her vision had not been permanently distorted, so that she could see nothing but evil in all things--see it, too, till her eyes were accustomed and her soul corrupted, so that she not only ceased to resent it, but finally accepted it as the inevitable order to which it is best to accommodate oneself if one is to get any good out of life. This is the fate of most young wives situated as Beth had been, the fate she had only narrowly escaped by help of the strength that came of the brave self-contained habits she had cultivated in her life of seclusion and thought. It was the result of this training, and her constancy in pursuing it, that her further faculty, hitherto so fitful, at last shot up a bright and steady light which made manifest to her the thoughts of others that they were not all evil, and helped her by the grace in her own heart to perceive hidden processes of love at work in other hearts, all tending to purification, and by the goodness of her own soul to search out the goodness in other souls as the elements find their constituent parts in the atmosphere.

Beth was looking her best that afternoon, although she had taken no pains with herself. She seemed well dressed by dint of looking well in her clothes; but she had not chosen to make herself look well. In the exasperated phase of revolt through which she was passing, she could not have been persuaded to dress so as to heighten the effect of her appearance, and so make of herself a trap to catch admiring glances. To be neat and fresh was all her care; but that was enough. The young man with the pointed beard, who had been looking about the room uneasily, seemed to have found what he wanted when he noticed her. He asked an elderly man standing near him who the young lady of distinguished appearance might be. "A friend of Mrs. Kilroy's, I believe," the gentleman answered, and moved off as if he resented the question.

But Pointed Beard was persistent. He asked two or three other people, strangers, who did not know either, and then he made his way to Mrs. Kilroy, but she was so surrounded he could not get near her. At last he bethought him of the servants who were handing tea about, and learnt Beth's name from one of them.

When Beth next noticed him, he was making his way towards her with a cup of tea in one hand and a plate of cakes in the other.

"I have ventured to bring you some tea," he said, "but I do not know if it is as you like it. I can easily get you some more, however, if it is not."

"Thank you; I do not want any," Beth answered somewhat coldly.

"I'll put it here, then, on this console," he rejoined. "If I move away I shall not be able to get near you again in this crowd. I wonder why Mrs. Kilroy has so many people. Now, I like just a few, eight or ten for a dinner, you know, and twenty or so on these sort of occasions. And they must all be interesting people, worth talking to. I am exceedingly fastidious about the kind of people I know. Even as a boy I was fastidious."

As he uttered that last sentence, Beth was again aware of something familiar in his appearance, and she felt sure she had heard him make that same remark more than once before--but when? but where?

"That is Lord Fitzkillingham," he continued, "that tall man who has just come in--see, there!--shaking hands with Mrs. Kilroy. He looks like a duke, don't you know. I admire people of distinguished appearance much more than good-looking people--people who are merely good-looking, I mean, of course. I saw you directly I came into the room, and was determined to find out who you were; and I asked I can't tell you how many people, whether I knew them or not. What do you think of that for perseverance?"

"You certainly seem to be persistent," Beth answered with a smile.

"Oh, I'm nothing if not persistent," he rejoined complacently. "I'll undertake to find out anything I want to know. Do you see that lady there in black? I wanted to know her age, so I went to Somerset House and looked it up."

"What did you do that for?" Beth asked.

"I wanted to know."

"But did she want you to know?"

"Well, naturally not, or she would have told me. But it is no use trying to conceal things from me. I am not to be deceived."

"You must be quite a loss to Scotland Yard," Beth ventured. "You would have been admirably fitted for that--er--delicate kind of work."

"Well, I think I should," he rejoined. "You see I found you out, and it was not so easy, for--er--no one seemed to know you. However, that does not matter. We'll soon introduce you."

Beth smiled. "Thank you," she said drily, "that will be very nice."

"I'll bring Fitzkillingham presently; he'll do anything for me. He was one of our set at the 'Varsity. That's the best of going to the 'Varsity. You meet the right kind of people there, people who can help you, you know, if you can get in with them as I did. You'll like Fitzkillingham. He's a very good fellow."

"Indeed!" said Beth. "What has he done?"

"Done!" he echoed. "Oh, nothing that I know of. Consider his position! The Earl of Fitzkillingham, with a rent-roll of fifty thousand a year, has no need to do; he has only to be. There, he's caught my eye. I'll go and fetch him."

"Pray do nothing of the kind," said Beth emphatically. "I have no wish to know him."

The young man, disconcerted, turned and looked her full in the face. "Why not?" he gasped.

"First of all, because you were going to present him without asking my permission," Beth said, "which is a liberty I should have had to resent in any case by refusing to know him; and secondly, because a man worth fifty thousand a year who has done no good in the world is not worth knowing. I don't think he should be allowed to be unless he can be made to do. Pray excuse me if I shock your prejudices," she added, smiling. "You do not know, perhaps, that in our set, knowing people for position rather than for character is quite out of date?"

The young man smiled superciliously. "That is rather a bourgeois sentiment, is it not?" he said.

"On the contrary," said Beth, "it is the other that is the huckster spirit. What is called knowing the right people is only the commercial principle of seeking some advantage. Certain people make a man's acquaintance, and pay him flattering attentions, not because their hearts are good and they wish to give him pleasure, but because there is some percentage of advantage to be gained by knowing him. That is to be bourgeois in the vulgar sense, if you like! And that is the trade-mark stamped upon most of us--selfishness! snobbishness! One sees it in the conventional society manners, which are superficially veneered, fundamentally bad; the outcome of self-interest, not of good feeling; one knows exactly how, where, and when they will break down."

"What are you holding forth about, Beth?" said Mrs. Kilroy, coming up behind her.

"The best people," Beth answered, smiling.

"You mean the people who call themselves the best people--Society, that is to say," said Mrs. Kilroy cheerfully. "Society is the scum that comes to the surface because of its lightness, and does not count, except in sets where ladies' papers circulate."

"I am surprised to hear you talk so, Mrs. Kilroy," said Pointed Beard in an offended tone, as if society had been insulted in his person.

"I am sorry if I disappoint you," said Mrs. Kilroy. "And I confess I like my own set and their pretty manners; but I know their weaknesses. There is no snob so snobbish as a snob of good birth. The upper classes will be the last to learn that it is sterling qualities which are wanted to rule the world,--head and heart."

"This gentleman will tell you that all that is bourgeois," said Beth.

"I believe that at heart the bourgeois are sound," said Angelica. "Bourgeois signifies good, sound, self-respecting qualities to me, and steady principles."

"But scarcely 'pretty manners,' I should suppose," said Pointed Beard superciliously.

"Why not?" said Angelica. "Sincerity and refinement make good manners, and principle is the parent of both."

"Don't you think that for the most part Englishwomen are singularly lacking in charms of manner?" he asked precisely.

"Just as Englishmen are, and for the same reason," said Angelica; "because they only try to be agreeable when it suits themselves. A good manner is a decoration that must be kept on always if it is to be worn with ease. Good manners are rare because good feeling is rare, for good manners are the outcome of good feeling. Manners are not the mere society show of politeness, but the inward kindly sympathy of which politeness is the natural outward manifestation; given these, grace and charm of manner come of themselves."

She moved off as she spoke to attend to other guests.

"Mrs. Kilroy is obvious," said Pointed Beard, in a tone that suggested sympathy with Beth for being bored. "I wonder she did not give us 'For manners are not idle,' et cetera, or something equally banal--the kind of thing we are taught in our infancy----"

"And fail to apply ever after," said Beth.

"I see you are ready," he observed fatuously, striking the personal note again, which she resented.

"I dislike that cant of the obvious which there is so much of here in town," she rejoined. "It savours of preciosity. All that is finest in thought is obvious. A great truth, well put, when heard for the first time, is so crystal clear to the mind, one seems to have known it always. No one fears to be obvious who has anything good to say."

He stroked his beard in silence for some seconds. "I suppose you go in for politics, and all that sort of thing," he said at last.

"Why?" Beth asked in her disconcerting way.

"Oh, judging by your friends."

"Not a safe guide," she assured him. "My friends have the most varied interests; and even if they had not, it would be somewhat monotonous for them to associate exclusively with people of the same pursuits."

"Then you do not take an interest in politics?" he jerked out, almost irritably, as if he had a right to know.

For a moment Beth had a mind to baffle him for his tasteless persistency, but her natural directness saved her from such small-mindedness. "If I must answer your catechism," she said, smiling, "social subjects interest me more. I find generalisations bald and misleading, and politics are a generalisation of events. I rarely read a political speech through, and remember very little of what it is all about when I do. Details, individuals, and actions fascinate me, but the circumstances of a people as a state rarely interest me much."

"Ah, I fear that is--er--a feminine point of view, rather--is it not?" he rejoined patronisingly.

"Yes," she said, "and a scientific method. We go from the particular to the general, and only draw broad conclusions when we have collected our facts in detail. But excuse me, I see a friend," she broke off hastily, seizing the chance to escape.

A little later Beth saw that the demure-looking little person in the princess bonnet was taking her leave. She passed down the room with her set little smile on her lips, looking about her, but apparently without seeing any one in particular till she got to the door, when her eye lighted on the young man of Shakesperian mien, and her smile flickered a moment, and went out. The young man turned and looked at a picture with an elaborately casual air, then sauntered across the room to Mrs. Kilroy, shook hands with her, spoke to one or two other people, and finally reached the door and opened it with the same solemn affectation of not being in a hurry, and disappeared. Beth wondered if he kept his caution up before the footmen in the hall, or if he made an undignified bolt of it the moment he was out of sight of society.

At dinner that evening she asked Mrs. Kilroy who and what that thin-nosed man, that sort of reminiscence of Shakespeare, was.

"He is by way of being a literary man, I believe," Angelica answered. "He is not a friend of ours, and I cannot think why he comes here. I never ask him. He got himself introduced to me somehow, and then came and called, which I thought an impertinence. Did you notice that woman with an Alsatian bow in her bonnet, that made her look like a horse with its ears laid back? Her pose is to improve young men. She improves them away from their wives, and I object to the method; and I do not ask her here either. Yet she comes. His wife I have much sympathy with; but he keeps her in the country, out of the way, so I see very little of her."

"What is his name?" Beth asked.

"Alfred Cayley Pounce."

"Why!" Beth exclaimed. "He must be a youth I knew long ago, when I was a child. I was sure I had seen him before. But what a falling off! I wondered if he were an old young man, or a young old man when I first saw him. He was refined as a boy and had artistic leanings; I should have thought he might have developed something less banal in the time than a bald forehead."

"That kind of man spends most of his time in cultivating acquaintances," said Mr. Kilroy. "When he hasn't birth, his pose is usually brains. But Pounce took a fair degree at the University. And he's not such a bad fellow, really. He's precious, of course, and by way of being literary--that is to say, he is literary to the extent of having written some little things of no consequence, upon which he assumes the right to give his opinion, with appalling assurance, of the works of other people, which are of consequence. There is a perfect epidemic of that kind of assurance among the clever young men of the day, and it's wrecking half of them. A man who begins by having no doubt of the worth of his own opinion gets no further for want of room to move in."

Next day Beth was alone in a sunny sitting-room at the back of the house, looking out into grounds common to the whole square. It was about tea-time. The windows were wide open, the sunblinds were drawn down outside, and the warm air, fragrant with mignonette, streamed in over the window boxes. Angelica had given this room up to Beth, and here she worked or rested; read, wrote, or reflected, as she felt inclined; soothed rather than disturbed by the far-off sounds of the city, and eased in mind by the grace and beauty of her surroundings. For the room was a work of art in itself, an Adams room, with carved white panels, framing spaces of rich brocade, delicately tinted, on the walls; with furniture chosen for comfort as well as elegance, and no more of it than was absolutely necessary, no crowding of chairs and tables, no congestion of useless ornaments, no plethora of pictures, putting each other out--only two, in fact, one a summer seascape, with tiny waves bursting on shining sands; the other a corner of a beautiful old garden, shady with trees, glowing with flowers, whence two young lovers, sitting on an old stone seat, looked out with dreamy eyes on a bright glimpse, framed in foliage, of the peaceful country beyond. Angelica had thought that room out carefully for Beth, every detail being considered, so that the whole should make for rest and refreshment, and she had succeeded perfectly. Nothing could have eased Beth's mind of the effect of her late experiences, or strengthened it again more certainly, than the harmony, the quiet, and the convenience of everything about her--books on the shelves, needlework on the work-table, writing materials in abundance on the bureau, exquisite forms of flowers, and prevailing tints of apple-blossom, white, and pink, and green; music when she chose to play; comfort of couch and chairs when she wished to repose; and, above all, freedom from intrusion, the right to do as she liked gladly conceded, the respect which adds to the dignity of self-respect, and altogether the kind of independence that makes most for pleasure and peace. Before she had been there three weeks she was happily released from herself by the recovery of her power to work. She began to revise the book she had thought so little of when it was first written. She had brought it to town because it was not very bulky, rather than because she had any hope of it; but when she took it out and read it here alone in peace, it seized upon her with power, and, in her surprise, like Galileo, she exclaimed: "But it does turn round!" The book was already "radiant with inborn genius," but it still lacked the "acquired art," and feeling this, she sat down to it regularly, and rewrote it from beginning to end, greatly enriching it. She had no amateur impatience to appear in print and become known; the thought of production induced her to delay and do her utmost rather than to make indiscreet haste; her delight was in the doing essentially; she was not one to glory in public successes, however great, or find anything but a tepid satisfaction therein compared to the warm delight that came when her thoughts flowed, and the material world melted out of mind.

She had been busy with her book that afternoon, and very happy, until tea came. Then, being somewhat tired, she got up from the bureau at which she worked, and went to the tea-table, leaving her papers all scattered about; and she was in the act of pouring herself out a cup of tea, when the door opened, and the footman announced, "Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce."

Very much surprised, she put the teapot down deliberately and looked at him. He held his hat to his breast, and bowed with exaggerated deference, in an affected, foreign way.

"I insisted on seeing you," he began, as if that were something to boast of. "Perhaps I ought to apologise."

Beth, not knowing what to say, asked him to sit down. Then there was a little pause. He looked at the tea-table.

"I see that you do take tea," he observed. "Why did you refuse it when I offered you some yesterday?"

"I am afraid I am not prepared to give you a reason," Beth answered stiffly.

"Would it be out of place if I were to ask for some tea?" he said.

Beth silently poured him out a cup, and he got up, took what he wanted in the way of sugar and cream and cake, and sat down again, making himself very much at home.

"Do take some yourself," he pleaded. "You are making me feel such an outsider."

"I beg your pardon," said Beth, helping herself.

She did not know whether to be annoyed or amused by his assurance. Had she not known who he was she would certainly have been annoyed; but the recollection of their days together, when the world was young and life was all pure poetry, came upon her suddenly as she found something of the boy in the face and voice of the man before her, making it impossible for her to treat him as a stranger, and melting her into a smile.

"Confess that you were surprised to see me," he said.

"I was," she answered.

"And not glad, perhaps," he pursued.

"Surprised means neither glad nor sorry," she observed.

"D'you know, the moment I saw you----" he began sentimentally; "but never mind that now," he broke off. "Let me give you my reason for coming, which is also my excuse. I hope you will accept it."

Beth waited quietly.

"I told you I could always find out anything I wanted to know about anybody," he pursued, "and last night I happened to sit next a lady at a dinner-party who turned out to be a great friend of yours. I always talk to strange ladies about what I've been doing; that kind of thing interests them, you know; and I described the party here yesterday afternoon, and said I only met one lady in the whole assembly worth looking at and worth speaking to, and that was Mrs. Maclure, who was staying in the house. 'Oh, I know her quite well,' the lady said. 'She's a neighbour of mine at Slane. Her husband is a doctor, but I hear she is connected with some of the best county people in the north. She's very clever, I believe, and by way of being literary and all that sort of thing, don't you know. But I don't think she has any one to advise her.'"

"Oh," said Beth, enlightened, "I know who my great friend is then--Mrs. Carne!"

"Yes," said Mr. Pounce, "and when I heard you were literary, I felt a further affinity, for, as I daresay you have heard, I am a literary man myself."

"Yes; I heard you were 'by way of being literary,' too," Beth rejoined.

"Who told you so?" he demanded quickly, his whole thought instantly concentrated on the interesting subject when it concerned himself.

"I do not feel at liberty to tell you," she replied.

"Was it Mrs. Kilroy?"

Beth made no sign.

"Was it Mr. Kilroy?" he persisted.

"I have already said that I shall not tell you, Mr. Pounce," she answered frigidly.

He sat in silence for a little, looking extremely annoyed. Beth, to relieve the tension, offered him some more tea, which he refused curtly; but as she only smiled at the discourtesy and helped herself, he saw fit to change his mind, and then resumed the conversation.

"When Mrs. Carne heard that I was a literary man," he said with importance, "she begged me to do what I could to help you. She said it would be a great kindness; so I promised I would, and here I am."

"So it seems," said Beth.

He stared at her. "I mean it," he said.

"I don't doubt it," Beth answered. "You and Mrs. Carne are extremely kind."

"Oh, not at all!" he assured her blandly. "To me, at all events, it will be a great pleasure to help and advise you."

"How do you propose to do it?" Beth asked, relaxing. Such obtuseness was not to be taken seriously.

He glanced over his shoulder at the bureau where her papers were spread. "I shall get you to let me see some of your work," he said, "and then I can judge of its worth."

"What have you done yourself?" she asked.

"I--well, I write regularly for the Patriarch," he said, with the complacency of one who thinks that he need say no more. "The editor himself came to stay with us last week, and that means something. Just now, however, I am contemplating a work of fiction, an important work, if I may venture to say so myself. It has been on my mind for years."

"Indeed," said Beth. "What is its purpose?"

"Purpose!" he ejaculated. "Had you said pur-port instead of pur-pose, it would have been a sensible question. It is hardly likely I shall write a novel with a purpose. I leave that to the ladies."

"I have read somewhere that Milton said the poet's mission was 'to allay the perturbation of the mind and set the affections in right tune,'--is not that a purpose?" Beth asked. "And one in our own day has talked of 'that great social duty to impart what we believe and what we think we have learned. Among the few things of which we can pronounce ourselves certain is the obligation of inquirers after truth to communicate what they obtain.'"

"But not in the form of fiction," Alfred Cayley Pounce put in dogmatically.

"Yet there is always purpose in the best work of the great writers of fiction," Beth maintained.

Not being able to deny this, he supposed sarcastically that she had read all the works to which she alluded.

"I see you suspect that I have not," she answered, smiling.

"I suspect you did not find that passage you quoted just now from Milton in his works," he rejoined.

"I said as much," she reminded him.

"Well, but you ought to know better than to quote an author you have not read," he informed her.

"Do you mean that I should read all a man's works before I presume to quote a single passage?"

"I do," he replied. "Women never understand thoroughness," he observed, largely.

"Some of us see a difference between thoroughness and niggling," Beth answered. "I should say, beware of endless preparation! We have heard of Mr. Casaubon and The Key to all Mythologies."

"I understand now what your friend Mrs. Carne meant about the manner in which you take advice," Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce informed her, in a slightly offended tone.

Beth, wondering inwardly why so many people assume they are competent to advise, prayed that she herself might always be modest enough to wait at least until her advice was asked.

"I hope I have not discussed your opinion impolitely," she said. "Pray excuse me if you think I have."

Mollified, he turned his attention once more to the littered bureau.

"You have a goodly pile of manuscript there," he remarked; "may I ask what it is?"

"It is a little book into which I am putting all my ignorance," she said.

"I hope you are not going to be diffident about letting me see it?" he answered encouragingly. "I could certainly give you some useful hints."

"You are too kind," she said; and he accepted the assertion without a suspicion of sarcasm. She rose when she had spoken, drew the lid of the bureau down over her papers, and locked it deliberately; but the precaution rather flattered him than otherwise.

"You need not be afraid," he said. "I promise to be lenient. And if we are as fast friends when the book appears as I trust we shall be, the Patriarch itself shall proclaim its merits; if not----"

"I suppose it will discover my faults," Beth put in demurely. "I wonder, by the way," she added, "who told you you are so much cleverer than I am?"

But fortunately Mrs. Kilroy came in and interrupted them before he had had time to grasp the remark, for which Beth, from whom it had slipped unawares, was devoutly thankful.

When he had gone, she sat and wondered if she had really understood him aright with regard to the Patriarch. Certainly he had seemed to threaten her, but it was hard to believe that he had sunk so low as to be capable of criticising her work, not on its own merits, but with regard to the terms he should be on with its author. She was too upright herself, however, to think such dishonest meanness possible, so she put the suspicion far from her, and tried to find some charitable explanation of the several signs of paltriness she had already detected, and to think of him as he had seemed to her in the old days, when she had endowed him with all the qualities she herself had brought into their acquaintance to make it pleasant and of good effect.

Beth had taken to rambling about alone in the quiet streets and squares for exercise; and as she returned a few days later from one of these rambles, she encountered Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce coming out of a florist's with a large bouquet of orchids in his hand.

"You see I do not forget you," he said, holding the bouquet out to her. "Every lady has her flower. These delicate orchids are for you."

But Beth ignored the offering. "You are still fond of flowers then?" slipped from her.

"We do not leave a taste for flowers behind us with our toys," he rejoined. "If we like flowers as children, we love them as men. The taste develops like a talent when we cultivate it. To love flowers with true appreciation of their affinities in regard to certain persons, is an endowment, a grace of nature which bespeaks the most absolute refinement of mind. And what would life be without refinement of mind!"

Beth had walked on, and he was walking beside her.

"And how does the book progress?" he inquired.

"It is finished," she answered.

"What! already?" he exclaimed. "Why, it takes me a week to write five hundred words. But then, of course, my work is highly concentrated. I have sent home for some of it to show you. You see I am pertinacious. I said I would help you, and I will. I hope you will live to be glad that we have met. But you must not write at such a rate. You can only produce poor thin stuff in that way."

Beth shrugged her shoulders, and let him assume what he liked on the subject.

They walked on a little way in silence, then he began again about the flowers. "Flowers," he informed her, "were the great solace of my boyhood--the sole solace, I may say, for I had no friends, no companions, except a poor little chap, a cripple, on whom I took pity. My people did not think me strong enough for a public school, so they sent me to a private tutor, a man of excellent family, Rector of a large seaside parish in the north. He only took me as a favour; he had no other pupils. But it was very lonely in that great empty house. And the seashore, although it filled my mind with poetry, was desolate, desolate!"

Beth, as she listened to these meanderings of his fancy, and recalled old Vicar Richardson and the house full of children, thought of Mr. Pounce's remarks about feminine accuracy.

"But had you no girl-friend?" she asked.

"Only the lady of my dreams," he answered. "There was no other lady I should have looked at in the place. I was always refined. I met the lady of my dreams eventually. It was among the mountains of the Tyrol. Imagine a lordly castle, with drawbridge and moat, portcullis and pleasaunce, and sauntering in the pleasaunce, among the flowers, a lady--dressed in white----"

"Samite?" Beth ventured, controlling her countenance.

"I cannot recall the texture," he said seriously. "How could one think of textures at such a moment! That would have been too commercial! All I noted was the lily whiteness--and her eyes, dark eyes! All the poetry and passion of her race shone in them. And on the spot I vowed to win her. I went back to the 'Varsity, and worked myself into the best set. Lord Fitzkillingham became, as you know, my most intimate friend. He was my best man at the wedding."

"Then you married your ideal," said Beth. "You should be very happy."

He sighed. "I would not say a word against her for the world," he asserted. "When I compare her with other women, I see what a lucky man I must be thought. But," he sighed again, "I was very young, and youth has its illusions. As we grow older, mere beauty does not satisfy, mere cleverness and accomplishments do not satisfy, nor wealth, nor rank. A man may have all that, and yet may yearn for a certain something which is not there--and that something is the one thing needful."

They were opposite to the house by this time, and he looked up at the windows sentimentally. "Which is yours?" he asked. "I pass by daily and look up."

They had stopped at the door. "I cannot ask you in," Beth said hastily. "Please excuse me. This is my time for work."

"Ah, the time and the mood!" he ejaculated. "I know it all so well! Inspiration! Inspiration comes of congenial conversation, as I hope you will find. You will take my flowers. I cannot claim to have culled them for you, but at least I chose them."

As the door had been opened, and the footman in the hall stood looking on, Beth thought it better to take the flowers in a casual way as if they belonged to her. A card tied to the bouquet by a purple ribbon fell out from among the flowers as she took them. On it was written: "Mrs. Merton Merivale." Beth held the flowers out to Mr. Pounce, with the card dangling, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively.

"Ah, yes," he began slowly, detaching the card as he spoke to gain time, and changing countenance somewhat. "I confess some one else had had the good taste to choose these orchids before I saw them; but I always insist on having just what I want, so I took them, and suggested that another bouquet might be made for the lady. I overlooked the card."

Beth bowed and left him without further ceremony.

She tossed the flowers under the table in the hall on her way upstairs, and never knew what became of them. Later in the day she described her morning's adventure to Angelica, and asked her if she knew who Mrs. Merton Merivale was.

"Oh, that woman in the princess bonnet with the big Alsatian bow, you know," Angelica said. "Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce's sometime intellectual affinity."

"Poor Alfred! he is too crude!" Beth ejaculated. "How I have outgrown him!"

* * * * *

Ideala called next day, and found Angelica alone. "I hear that Beth is with you?" she said. "What is she doing?"

"Writing a book."

"What kind of a book?"

"Not a book for babes, I should say," said Angelica. "She does not pretend to consider the young person in the least. It is for parents and guardians, she says, not for authors, to see to it that the books the young person reads are suitable to her age. She thinks it very desirable for her only to read such as are; but personally she does not see the sense of writing down to her, or of being at all cramped on her account. She means to address mature men and women."

"That is brave and good," said Ideala. "What is the subject?"

"I don't know," said Angelica; "but she is certain to put some of herself into it."

"If by that you mean some of her personal experiences, I should think you are wrong," said Ideala. "Genius experiences too acutely to make use of its own past in that way; it would suffer too much in the reproduction. And besides, it can make better use and more telling of what it intuitively knows than of what it has actually seen."

"I do not think you believe that Beth will succeed," said Angelica.

"On the contrary," Ideala rejoined, "I expect her success will be unique; only I don't know if it will be a literary success. Genius is versatile. But we shall see."

Having finished her book, Beth collected her friends and read it aloud to them. "I don't know what to think of it," she said. "Advise me. Is it worth publishing, or had I better put it aside and try again?"

"Publish it, by all means," was the unanimous verdict; and Mr. Kilroy took the manuscript himself to a publisher of his acquaintance, who read it and accepted it.

"Oh," Beth exclaimed, when she heard the reader's report, "I do know now what is meant by all in good time! If I had been able to publish the first things I wrote, how I should have regretted it now! And I did think so much of myself at that time, too! You should have heard how I dogmatised to Sir George Galbraith; and he was so good and kind--he never snubbed me. But I believe I am out of the amateur stage now, and far advanced enough to begin all over again humbly and learn my profession. But I find my point of view unchanged. Manner has always been less to me than matter. When I think of all the preventable sin and misery there is in the world, I pray God give us books of good intention--never mind the style! Polished periods put neither heart nor hope in us; theirs is the polish of steel which we admire for the labour bestowed upon it, but by which we do not benefit. The inevitable ills of life strengthen and refine when they are heroically borne; it is the preventable ones that act on our evil passions, and fill us with rage and bitterness; and what we want from the written word that reaches all of us is help and advice, comfort and encouragement. If art interferes with that, then art had better go. It would not be missed by the wretched--the happy we need not consider. I am speaking of art for art's sake, of course."

"We need not trouble about that," said Ideala. "The works of art for art's sake, and style for style's sake, end on the shelf much respected, while their authors end in the asylum, the prison, and the premature grave. I had a lesson on that subject long ago, which enlarged my mind. I got among the people who talk of style incessantly, as if style were everything, till at last I verily believed it was. I began to lose all I had to express for worry of the way to express it! Then one day a wise old friend of mine took me into a public library; and we spent a long time among the books, looking especially at the ones that had been greatly read, and at the queer marks in them, the emphatic strokes of approval, the notes of admiration, the ohs! of enthusiasm, the ahs! of agreement. At the end of one volume some one had written: 'This book has done me good.' It was all very touching to me, very human, very instructive. I never quite realised before what books might be to people, how they might help them, comfort them, brighten the time for them, and fill them with brave and happy thoughts. But we came at last in our wanderings to one neat shelf of beautiful books, and I began to look at them. There were no marks in them, no signs of wear and tear. The shelf was evidently not popular, yet it contained the books that had been specially recommended to me as best worth reading by my stylist friends. 'There is style for you!' said my friend. 'Style lasts, you see. Style is engraved upon stone. All the other books about us wear out and perish, but here are your stylists still, as fresh as the day they were bought.' 'Because nobody reads them!' I exclaimed. 'Precisely,' he said. 'There is no comfort in life in them. They are the mere mechanics of literature, and nobody cares about them except the mechanicians.' After that I prayed for notable matter to indite, and tried only for the most appropriate words in which to express it; and then I arrived. If you have the matter, the manner will come, as handwriting comes to each of us; and it will be as good, too, as you are conscientious, and as beautiful as you are good."

Chapter XLVIII

Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce called on Beth continually. He was announced one day when she was sitting at lunch with the Kilroys.

"Really I do not think I ought to let you be bored by that man," Mr. Kilroy exclaimed. "I once had ten minutes of the academic platitudes of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce, and that was enough to last me my life. You are too good-natured to see him so often. It is a weakness of yours, I believe, to suffer yourself rather than hurt other people's feelings, however much they may deserve it. But really you must snub him. There is nothing else for it. Send out and say you are engaged."

"If I do, he will wait until I am disengaged, or call again, or write in an offended tone to ask when I can be so good as to make it convenient to see him!" Beth answered in comical despair.

"I don't believe he bores her a bit at present," Angelica observed. "He is merely an intellectual exercise for Beth. She watches the workings of his mind quite dispassionately, draws him out with little airs and graces, and then adjusts him under the microscope. It interests her to dissect the creature. When she has studied him thoroughly, she will cast him out, as a worthless specimen."

"Oh, I hope that isn't true," said Beth, with a twinge of conscience. "I own it has interested me to see what he has developed into; but surely that isn't unfair?" She looked at Mr. Kilroy deprecatingly.

"It is vivisection," said Angelica.

"But under such agreeable anaesthetics that I should think he enjoys it," said Mr. Kilroy. "I should have no objection myself."

"Daddy, be careful!" Angelica cried. "A rare specimen like you is never safe when unscrupulous naturalists are about."

"But no microscope is needed to demonstrate Mr. Kilroy's position in the scale of being," Beth put in. "It is writ large all over him."

"Good and true, Beth!" said Angelica, smiling. "You can go and gloat over your worthless specimen as a reward, if you like. But the scientific mind is a mystery to me, and I shall never understand how you have the patience to do it."

Beth found Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce pacing about her sitting-room, biting his nails in an irritable manner.

"You were at lunch, I think," he said. "I wonder why I was not asked in?"

Beth said nothing.

"I consider it a slight on Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy's part," he pursued huffily. "Why should I be singled out for this kind of thing?"

"Aren't you just a little touchy?" Beth suggested.

"I confess I am sensitive, if that is what you mean," he replied.

"Well, yes, if you like," she said, "hyper-sensitive. But I thought you asked for me."

"It is true I came to see you; but that is no reason why I should be slighted by your friends--especially when I came because I think I have something to show you that will interest you." He took a little packet from the breast-pocket of his coat as he spoke, and began to undo it. "I took the trouble to go all the way home to get them to show you. My mother was the only person who had them. They are photographs of myself when I was a boy."

"I wonder your mother parted with them," Beth said.

"I persuaded her with difficulty," he rejoined complacently. "I have often tried before, but nothing would induce her to part with them, until this time, when a bright idea occurred to me. I told her they were to be published among portraits of celebrated people when my new book comes out, and naturally she liked the idea. Her only son, you know!"

"And are they to be published?" Beth asked.

"Oh--well--of course I hope so--some day," he answered, smiling and hesitating. "But the truth is I got them for you."

Beth did not thank him, but he was too engrossed with his own portraits to notice the omission. She was interested in them, too, when at last he let her look at them.

"What do you think of that?" he asked, showing her a good likeness of himself as she remembered him. "I was a pretty boy then, I think, with my curls! Burning the midnight oil had not bared my forehead in those days, and my beard had not grown. Life was all poetry then!" he sighed affectedly. What had once been spontaneous feeling in him had become a mere recollection, only to be called up by an effort.

"Later it became all excesses, I suppose," said Beth.

"Ah!" he ejaculated in a tone of pleased regret. "I had to live like other men of my standing, you know, and I had to pay for it. The boy was lost, but the man developed. You may think the change a falling off----"

He waited for Beth to express an opinion; but as it was impossible for her to say what she thought of the difference between the conceited, dissipated-looking, hysterical man of many meannesses, and the diffident unspoilt promising boy, she held her peace.

When she had seen the photographs, and he had looked at them himself to his heart's content, he did them up again, and then formally presented her with the packet. "Will you keep them?" he said solemnly.

"Oh no!" she answered with decision. "I am not the proper person to keep them. If they did not belong to your mother, they would be for your wife and children."

"Ah, my wife!" he ejaculated bitterly. "I haven't a word to say against my wife, remember that! Only--you are the one to whom I would confide them."

"I decline the responsibility," Beth said, keeping her countenance with difficulty.

He returned the packet to the breast-pocket of his coat. "I shall carry them here, then," he said, tapping his chest with the points of his fingers, "until you ask for them."

As usual, he stayed a preposterous time that day, and when at last he went, even Beth's kindly forbearance was exhausted, and she determined to see no more of him. He was not the man to take a hint, however, and it was no easy matter to get rid of him. He sent her flowers, for which she did not thank him, books which she did not read; wrote her long letters of the clever kind, discussing topics of the day or remarks she herself had made, which she left unanswered; called, but never found her at home, yet still persisted, until she was fain to exclaim: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"

"It is your own fault," said Angelica. "I warned you that good-nature is wasted on that sort of man."

"But surely he must see that I wish to avoid him," Beth exclaimed.

"Of course he sees it," Angelica rejoined, "but you may be sure that he interprets your reluctance in some way very flattering to himself."

"I shall really be rude to him," Beth said desperately. "He is a most exasperating person, the kind of man to drive a woman mad, and then blame her for it. I pity his wife!"

* * * * *

Beth stayed with the Kilroys until the end of June, when the season was all but over and everybody was leaving town; and it was the busiest and happiest time she had ever known. She had enjoyed the work, the play, the society, the solitude, and had blossomed forth in that congenial atmosphere both mentally and physically, and become a braver and a better woman.

The Kilroys were to go abroad the day that Beth returned to Slane. The evening before, she went with Angelica to a theatre. But Angelica, being much occupied at the moment with arrangements that had to be made for the carrying on of her special work during her absence, was not able to stay for the whole performance, so she left Beth alone at the theatre, and sent the carriage back to take her home.

Beth, sitting in the corner of a box, had eyes for nothing the whole time but the play, which, being one of those that stimulate the mind, had appealed to her so powerfully that even after it was over she remained where she was a little, deep in thought. On leaving the theatre, she found the footman on the steps looking out for her, and he remained, standing a little behind her, till the carriage came up. While she waited, she was annoyed to see Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce making his way towards her officiously. "You are alone!" he exclaimed, with a note of critical disapproval in his voice, as if the circumstance reflected on somebody.

"Hardly!" Beth said, glancing up at her escort. "But even if I were, Mr. Pounce, I am in London, not in the dark ages, and as sure of respect here, at the doors of a theatre, as I am in my own drawing-room. I believe, by the way," she added lightly, not liking to hurt him by too blunt a snub, "I believe this is the only big city in Europe of which so much can be said; and English women may thank themselves for it. We demand not protection, but respect. Here is the carriage. Good night!" She stepped in as she spoke, and took her seat.

"Oh pray, you really must allow me to see you safe home," he exclaimed, following her into the carriage and taking the seat beside her before she could remonstrate. The servant shut the door, and they drove away. Beth boiled with indignation, but she thought it more dignified not to show it, and she dreaded to have a scene before the servants. Her demeanour was somewhat frigid, and she left him to open the conversation; but when he spoke she answered him in her usual tone. He, on the contrary, was extremely formal. He stroked his pointed beard, looked out of the window, and made remarks about the weather and the people in the streets, not avoiding the obvious, which was a relief.

The hall-door was opened as soon as the carriage stopped, and they got out.

"Thank you for your escort, and good night," Beth said, holding out her hand to him, but he ignored it.

"I feel faint," he said, and he looked it. "Will you let me come in and sit down a minute, and give me a glass of water?"

"Why, of course," Beth said. "But have something stronger than water. Come this way, into the library. Roberts, bring Mr. Pounce something to revive him."

"What will you have, sir?" the butler asked.

"A glass of water, nothing but a glass of water," Mr. Pounce said, most preciously, sinking into an easy-chair as he spoke.

The butler brought the water, and told Beth that Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy had not come in. She ordered some tea for herself.

Mr. Pounce sipped the water and appeared to revive.

"I have suffered terribly during the last three weeks," he said at last.

"Have you really?" Beth rejoined with concern. "What was the matter?"

"Need you ask!" he ejaculated. "Why, why have you treated me so?"

"Really, Mr. Pounce, I do not see that you have any claim on my special consideration," Beth answered coldly.

"I have the claim of one who is entirely devoted to you," he said.

"I have never accepted your devotion, and I will not have it forced upon me," Beth answered decidedly. "I should like you better, to tell the truth, if you were a little more devoted to your duty."

"You allude to my wife," he said. "Oh, how can I make you understand! But you have said it yourself--duty! What is duty? The conscientious performance of uncongenial tasks. But if a man does his duty, then he deserves his reward. I do my duty with what heart I have for it. No fault can be found with me either as a husband or a citizen. Therefore, as a man, I consider myself entitled to claim my reward."

"I am afraid you are not well," Beth said. "Don't you think you had better go home and rest?"

"Not until we come to an understanding," he answered tragically.

Beth shrugged her shoulders resignedly, folded her hands, and waited, more interested in him as a human specimen in spite of herself than disturbed by anything his attitude foreboded.

There was a bright wood fire burning on the hearth. Mrs. Kilroy liked to have one to welcome her when they had been out late, not for warmth so much as for cheerfulness. The summer midnight was chilly enough, however, for the gentle heat to be grateful; and Beth turned to the blaze and gazed into it tranquilly. The clock on the mantelpiece struck one. Roberts brought in a tray with refreshments on it, and set it down on a small table beside Beth. Before she helped herself she asked Mr. Pounce what he would have, but he curtly declined to take anything. She shrugged her shoulders, and fell-to herself with a healthy appetite.

"How can you--how can you?" he ejaculated several times.

"I'm hungry," she said, laughing, "and I really don't see why I shouldn't eat."

"You have no feeling for me," he complained.

"I have a sort of feeling that you are posing," she answered bluntly; "and I wish you wouldn't. You'd better have some sandwiches."

"How terribly complex life is!" he muttered.

"Life is pretty much what we make of it by the way we live it," she rejoined, taking another sandwich. "We are what we allow ourselves to be. The complexities come of wrong thinking and wrong doing. Right and wrong are quite distinct; there is no mistaking one for the other. In any dilemma we have only to think what is right to be done, and to do it, and there is an end of all perplexities and complexities. Principle simplifies everything."

"I see you have never loved," he declared, "or you would not think the application of principle such a simple thing."

"It is principle that makes love last," Beth answered, "and introduces something permanent into this weary world of change. There is nothing in life so well worth living for as principle; the most exquisite form of pleasure is to be found in the pain of sacrificing one's inclinations in order to live up to one's principles--so much so that in time, when principle and inclination become identical, and we cease to feel tempted, something of joy is lost, some gladness that was wont to mingle with the trouble."

"But principles themselves are mutable," he maintained. "They get out of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and exceptional circumstances to which common principles are inapplicable, or for which they are inadequate."

"That is the hypocrisy of the vicious," Beth said, with her eyes fixed meditatively on the fire, "the people who lay down excellent principles, and publicly profess them for the sake of standing well with society, but privately make exceptions for themselves in any arrangement that may suit their own convenience. Your people of 'exceptional temperament' settle moral difficulties by not allowing any moral consideration to clash with their inclinations, and misery comes of it. The plea of exceptional character, exceptional circumstances, exceptional temperament, and what not, is merely another way of expressing exceptional selfishness and excusing exceptional self-indulgence."

"Surely you are not content to be a mere slave to social convention!" he exclaimed.

"I am talking of fundamental principles, not of social conventions," she replied; "please to discriminate. Self-control is not slavery, but emancipation; to control our passions makes us lords of ourselves and free of our most galling bonds--the bonds of the flesh."

"What a drawback the want of--er--a proper philosophic training is," he observed. "Culture does a great deal. It makes us more modest, for one thing. I don't suppose you know, for instance, that you are setting up an opinion of your own in opposition to such men as Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer maintained that as the man of genius gave his whole life for the profit of humanity, he had a license of conduct which was not accorded to the rest of mankind."

"If culture leaves us liable to be taken in by a false postulate of any man's, however well turned the postulate or able the man, then I have no respect for culture. The fact that Schopenhauer said such a thing does not prove it true. An assertion like that is a mere matter of opinion. Half the worry in the world is caused by differences of opinion. Let us have the facts and form our own opinions. Have the men of genius who allowed themselves license of conduct been any the better for it? the happier? the greater? Schopenhauer himself, for instance!" She smiled at him with honest eyes when she had spoken, and took another sandwich. "But don't let us talk sophistry and silliness," she proceeded, "nor the kind of abstract that serves as a cover for unrighteousness. Those tricks don't carry conviction to my uncultivated mind. I know how they're done."

"You are lowering yourself in my estimation," he said severely.

"And what comes after that?" she asked.

He shook his head and gazed at her reproachfully. "How can you be so trivial," he said, "in a moment like this?--you who are situated even as I am. If we were to die now, in six months it would be as though we had never been. No one would remember us."

"But what have we done for any one," Beth asked, in her equable way, "that we should be specially remembered?"

He made no reply, and Beth went on with the sandwiches.

"I thought," he began at last, "I did think that you at least would understand and feel for me."

Beth stopped eating and considered a moment.

"Are you in any real trouble?" she asked at last.

He rose and began to pace up and down. "I will tell you," he said, "and leave you to judge for yourself."

Beth looked somewhat ruefully at the tray, and wished that the conversation had been more suited to the satisfaction of an honest appetite.

"I have made it plain to you what my marriage is without blaming anybody," he proceeded. "It is the rock upon which all my hopes were wrecked. I found my ideal. I won her like a man. I haven't a word to say against her. She is a woman who might have made any ordinary man happy; but she has been no help to me. It is not her fault. She has done her best. And it is not my fault."

"Then whose fault is it?" said Beth; "it must be somebody's. I think of marriage as I think of life; it is pretty much what people choose to make it. It does not fail when husband and wife have good principles, and live up to them; and good manners in private as well as in public--not to mention high ideals. When we are not happy in the intimate relations of life, it is generally for some trivial reason--as often as not because we don't take the trouble to make ourselves agreeable, as because we fail in other duties. I consider it a duty to be agreeable. In married life happiness depends on loyalty, to begin with, the loyalty that will not even let its thoughts stray. All that we want in everyday intercourse is truth and affection, kindness, consideration, and unvarying politeness. If people practised these as a duty from the first, sympathy would eventually come of the effort. Marriage is the state that develops the noblest qualities, and that is why happily married people are the best worth knowing, the most delightful to live amongst. You have no fault to find with your wife, therefore the fault must be in yourself if you are not happy. Do your duty like a man, and cure yourself of it."

"It surprises me to hear you talk in that way," he exclaimed, "you who have suffered so much yourself!"

"I make no pretence of having suffered," she answered. "I have no patience with people who do. We have our destiny in our own hands to make or mar, most of us. If we fail in one thing we shall succeed in another. Life is a fertile garden, full of plants that bud and blossom and bear fruit not once but every season while it lasts. If the crop of happiness fails one year, we should set to work bravely, and cultivate it all the more diligently for the next."

"All this is beside the mark," he responded peevishly. "You are offering me the generalisations that only apply to ordinary people. Allowance must be made for exceptional natures. Look at me! I tell you if I had met the right woman, I should have been at the top of the tree by this time. I have the greatest respect for woman. I believe that her part in life is to fertilise the mind of man; and if the able man does not find the right woman for this purpose, he must remain sterile, and the world will be the loser. I never knew such a woman till I met you; but in you I have discovered one rich in all womanly attributes, mental, moral, and physical; and, beyond these, dowered also with genius, the divine gift--the very woman to help a man to do his best."

"And what is the man going to do for me?" Beth inquired with a twinkle in her eyes.

"He would surround you with every comfort, every luxury--jewels----"

"Like a ballet-girl!" she interjected. "I am really afraid you are old-fashioned. You begin by offering me gewgaws--the paltry price women set on themselves in the days of their intellectual infancy. We know our value better now."

"You should have all that an ideal woman ought to have," he put in. "What more can a woman require?"

"She would like to know what all she ought to have consists of," Beth replied. "As a rule, a man's ideal woman is some one who will make him comfortable; and he thinks he has done all that is necessary for her when he allows her to contribute to his happiness."

"Ah, be serious!" he ejaculated. "You should be above playing in that cruel way with a man who is in earnest. Hear what I have to say. Remember we are the people who make history. You talk about knowing your own value! You do not know it. Without me you never will know it. You do not know what is being said already about your unpublished work. Those who have read it tell me you promise to be to England what Georges Sand was to France when she appeared, a new light on the literary horizon. But where would Georges Sand have been without De Musset? They owe half their prestige to each other. While they were alive every one talked of them, and now that they are dead reams are written about them. Let us also go down to posterity together. All I want is you; what you want is me. Will you--will you let me be to you--De Musset?"

"What you really do want," said Beth, "is a sense of humour."

"For God's sake, do not be trivial!" he exclaimed. "You cannot think what this means to me--how I have set my heart on it--how I already seem to hear the men at the clubs mention my name and yours when I pass. Night after night I have paced up and down outside this house, looking up at your window, thinking it all out."

Beth flushed angrily. "I consider that a most improper proceeding," she said, "and I do not know how you can excuse it to yourself."

"I--much may be excused when a man feels as strongly as I do," he protested.

"And how about your wife?" said Beth, "where do you place her in your plans? Has she no feelings to be considered?"

"I shall not hurt her feelings, I assure you, I never do," he answered. "I keep her in a quiet country place so that she may hear no gossip, and I excuse my long absences from home on the plea of work. She understands that my interests would suffer if I were not on the spot."

"In other words, you lie to your wife," said Beth, aghast at the shabby deceit.

"That is scarcely polite language," he rejoined in an offended tone.

"It is correct language," she retorted. "We shall understand what we are talking about much better if we call things by their right names. But are you never afraid of what your wife may be driven to in the dulness of the country, while you are here in town, dancing attendance on other men's wives?"

"Never in the least," he answered complacently. "She is entirely devoted to me and to her duty. Her faith in me is absolute."

"And so you deceive her."

"I am not bound to tell her all my doings," he protested.

"You are in honour bound not to deceive her," Beth said; "and if you deceive her it is none the less low because she does not suspect you. On the contrary. It seems to me that one of the worst things that can happen to a man is to have docile women to deal with."

"I am grieved to hear you talk like that," he said. "I am really grieved. It shows a want of refinement that surprises and shocks me. I maintain that I do her no injury. These things can always be arranged so that no one is injured; that is all that is necessary."

"These things can never be arranged so that no one is injured," Beth replied. "We injure ourselves, if no one else. We are bound to deteriorate when we live deceitfully. How can you be honest and manly and lead a double life? The false husband in whom his wife believes must be a sneak; and for the man who rewards a good faithful wife by deceiving her, I have no term of contempt sufficiently strong."

"I am disappointed in you," he said. "I should never have suspected that you were so narrow and conventional."

"Are you prepared to defy public opinion?" Beth asked.

"No, that would be gross," he said. "Outwardly we must conform. Only the elite understand these things, and only the elite need know of them. You are of the elite yourself; you must know, you must feel the power, the privilege conferred by a great passion."

"Pray do not class me with the elite if passion is what they respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best--honourable passion--is but the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift and sure to decay."

"Passion is more than that, the passion of which I speak. It is a great mental stimulant," he declared.

"Yes," said Beth, "passion is a great mental stimulant--passion resisted."

"Georges Sand, whom I would have you follow, always declared that she only wrote her best under the influence of a strong passion," he assured her.

"But how do we know that she might not have written better than that best under some holier influence?" Beth rejoined. "George Eliot's serener spirit appeals to me more. I believe it is only those who renounce the ruinous riot of the senses, and find their strength and inspiration in contemplation, who reach the full fruition of their powers. Ages have not talked for nothing of the pains of passion and the pleasures of love. Love is a great ethical force; but passion, which is compact of every element of doubt and deceit, is cosmic and brutal, a tyrant if we yield to it, but if we master it, an obedient servant willing to work. I would rather die of passion myself, as I might of any other disease, than live to be bound by it."

Pounce, who had been pacing about the room restlessly until now, sat down by the fire, and gazed into it for a little, discomfited. He had come primed with the old platitudes, the old sophistries, the old flatteries, come to treat amicably, and found himself met with armed resistance, his flatteries and platitudes ridiculed, his sophistries exposed, and his position attacked with the confidence and courage of those who are sure of themselves.

"Have you no feeling for me?" he said at last, after a long pause, speaking somewhat hoarsely.

"I feel sorry for you," was the unexpected answer.

"Pity is akin to love," he said.

"Pity is also akin to contempt," she rejoined. "And how can a woman feel anything else for a man who is false to the most sacred obligations? who makes vows and breaks them according to his inclination? If we make a law of our own inclinations, what assurance can we give to any one that we shall ever be true?"

"I have found at last what I have yearned for all my life long," he protested. "I know I shall never waver in my devotion to you."

"That may be," she answered. "But what guarantee could you give me that I should not waver? What comfort would your fidelity be if I tired of you in a month?"

Again he was discomfited, and there was another pause.

"If you did change," he said at last, "I should be the only sufferer."

Beth sat silent for a little, then she said slowly, "What you have ventured to propose to me to-night, Mr. Cayley Pounce, is no more credit to your intelligence than it is to your principles. You come here and find me living openly, in an assured position, with powerful friends, whose affection and respect for me rest on their confidence in me, and with brilliant prospects besides, as you say, which, however, depend to a great extent upon my answering to the expectations I have raised. You allow that I have some ability, some sense, and yet you offer me in exchange for all these----"

"I offer you love!" he exclaimed fervently.

"Love!" she ejaculated with contempt, "you offer me yourself for a lover, and you seek to inspire confidence in me by deceiving your wife. You would have me sacrifice a position of safety for a position of danger--one that might be changed into an invidious position by the least indiscretion--and all for what?"

"For love of you," he pleaded, "that I may help you to develop the best that is in you."

"All for the prestige of having your name associated with mine by men about town in the event of mine becoming distinguished," she interrupted.

He winced.

"I only ask you to do what George Eliot did greatly to her advantage," he answered reproachfully.

"You asked me to do what Georges Sand did greatly to her detriment," Beth said. "George Eliot is an after-thought. And you certainly have no intention of asking me to do what she did, for she acted openly, she deceived no one, and injured no one."

"And you do not blame her?" he exclaimed with a flash of hope.

Beth answered indirectly: "When I think about that, I ask myself have Church and State arranged the relations of the sexes successfully enough to convince us that they cannot be better arranged? Are marriages holier now than they were in the days when there were no churches to bless them? or happier here than in other countries where they are simple private contracts? And it seems to me that we have no historical proof that the legal bond is necessarily the holiest between man and woman, or that there is never justification for a more irregular compact. I know that 'holy matrimony' is often a state of absolute degradation, especially for the woman; and I believe that two honourable people can live together honourably without the conventional bond, so long as no one else is injured, no previous compact broken. But all the same I think the legal bond is best. It is a safeguard to the family and a restraint on the unprincipled. And, at any rate, all my experience, all my thought, all my hope argue for the dignity of permanence in human relations. Anything else is bad for the individual, for the family, for the state. As civilisation, as evolution advances from lower to higher, we find it makes more and more for monogamy. Our highest types of men and women are monogamous. Those whose contracts are lightly made and lightly broken are trivial people. That useful Oneida Creek experiment proved that the instinct, if not the ideal, of modern humanity is monogamous."

"What was that?" he asked.

"A number of people formed a community at Oneida Creek to live together in a kind of ordered promiscuity, but the experiment failed because it was found eventually that the members were living together secretly in pairs. No. The more I know of life the less I like the idea of allowing any laxity in the marriage relation. In certain cases of course there is good and sufficient reason for two people to separate. But I believe that right-minded people can generally, and almost always do, make their marriages answer. Marriage is compact of every little incident in life, it is not merely made up of one strong feeling, otherwise men and women would be as the animals who pair and part casually; therefore, if two people are disappointed in each other in some things, they must have other things in common to fall back upon. My ideal of life is love in marriage and loyal friends."

"It is interesting to hear you express these views," he said bitterly, "considering what your experience has been."

"I don't see that my petty personal experience has anything to do with the truth of the matter," said Beth, bridling somewhat. "You really have a poor opinion of me if you think I shall allow my judgment to be warped by anything that may happen to myself. Because my own experience is not a happy one, you would have me declare that family life is a mistake! Doubtless many an outcry is raised for no better reason. But do you not see yourself that the tranquil home-life is the most beautiful, the most conducive to the development of all that is best in us--that there is nothing like the delight of being a member of a large and united family. Can you come into a house like this and not see it?"

"This house was not always a model of domestic felicity," he sneered.

"That proves my point," she rejoined. "The difficulties can be lived down if people are right-minded."

"Your argument does not alter the fact that I am a miserable man," he said dejectedly.

"You were not born to be a miserable man," she answered gently, "and 'we always may be what we might have been.' But you have lost much ground, Alfred Cayley Pounce, since the days when you roamed about the cliffs and sandy reaches of Rainharbour with Beth Caldwell, making plans. You had your ideals then, and lived up to them. You cultivated your flowers for delight in their beauty, and went to your modelling for love of the work. You gave your flowers to your friends with an honest intention to please; you modelled with honest ambition to do good work. In those days you were above caring to cultivate the acquaintance of the best people. You had touched the higher life at that time; you had felt such rapture in it as has never come to you since--even among the best people--I am sure; yet you fell away; you deserted Beth--not basely, perhaps, but weakly; and you have been deteriorating ever since."

He had started straight in his chair when she mentioned Beth Caldwell, and was staring at her now with puzzled intentness.

"What do you know about Beth?" he said quickly. "Have you ever met her?"

She smiled. "I can honestly say I never have," she answered. But she looked away from him into the fire as she spoke, and he recognised the set of her head on her shoulders as she turned it; he had noted it often.

"God!" he exclaimed, "what a blind idiot I have been--Beth! Beth!" He threw himself down on his knees beside her chair, caught her hand, and covered it with kisses.

Beth snatched her hand away, and he returned embarrassed to his seat and sat gazing at her for a little, then took out his handkerchief and suddenly burst into tears.

"What a mess I have made of my life!" he exclaimed. "Everything that would have been best for me has been within reach at some time or other, but I invariably took the wrong thing and let the right one go. But, Beth, I was only a boy then, and I suffered when they separated us."

This reflection seemed to ease his mind on the subject. That she might also have suffered did not occur to him; as usual his whole concern was for himself.

"Yes, you are right, Beth," he proceeded. "I have deteriorated; but 'we always may be what we might have been'--and you have been sent to me again as a sign that it is not too late for me. You were my first love, my earliest ideal, and I have not changed, you see, I have been true to you; for, although I never suspected you were Beth, I recognised my rightful mate in you the moment we met. Yes, I was on the right road when we were boy and girl together, but the promise of that time has not been fulfilled. All the poetry in me has lain dormant since the days when you drew it forth. I gave up modelling when I went to the 'Varsity because they didn't care for that kind of thing in my set, you know. They were all men of position, who wouldn't associate with artists unless they were at the top of the tree; clever fellows, and good themselves at squibs and epigrams. If you'd ever been to the 'Varsity you'd know that a man must adapt himself to his environment if he means to get on. My dream had been to make my visions of beauty visible, as you used to suggest; but I had to give that up, there was nothing else for it. Still, I was not content to do nothing, to be nobody; therefore, when I abandoned the clay, I took to the pen; I gave up the marble for the manuscript. Many men of position have written, you know, and so long as you didn't mug, fellows didn't mind. In fact, they thought you smart if they fancied you could dash things off without an effort. You understand now why I am a literary man instead of a sculptor."

"Perfectly," Beth said drily. "It was in those days, I suppose, that you were bitten by French literature, and began to idealise mean intrigues, and to delight in foul matter if the manner of its presentation were an admirable specimen of style."

"Ah," he said solemnly, "style is everything."

"It is all work of word-turning and little play of fancy with those who make style everything," said Beth, glad to get away from love, "and that makes your Jack-of-style a dull boy and morbid in spite of his polish. Less style and more humour would be the saving of some of you, the making of others."

"Flaubert wrote 'Madame Bovary' six times," he assured her impressively.

"I wonder how much it lost each time," said Beth. "But you know what Flaubert himself said about style before he had done--just what I am saying!"

"I cannot understand your being insensible to the charms of style," he said, evading the thrust.

"I am not. I only say it is not of the most vital importance. Thackeray was a Titan--well, look at his slipshod style in places, his careless grammar, his constant tautology. He knew better, and he could have done better, and it would have been well if he had, I don't deny it; but his work would not have been a scrap more vital, nor he himself the greater. I have seen numbers of people here in town studying art. They go to the schools to learn to draw, not because they have ideas to express, apparently, but in the hope that ideas will come when they know how to express them. And I think it is the same in literature. One school talks of style as if it were the end and not the means. They form a style, but have nothing to express that is worth expressing. It would be better to pray the gods to send them the matter; if the matter is there in the mind it will out, and the manner will form itself in the effort to produce it--so said the great."

There was a pause, during which Alfred Cayley Pounce sighed heavily and Beth looked at the clock.

"You were stimulating as a child, Beth," he said at last, "and you are stimulating still. Think what it would be to me to have you always by my side! I cannot--I cannot let you go again now that I have found you! We were boy and girl together."

"That does not alter anything in our present position," Beth answered; "nor does it affect my principles in any way. But even if I had been inclined--if I had had no principles, I should have been just clever enough to know better than to run any risk of the kind you suggest. You do not know perhaps that you have injured your own standing already--that there are houses in which you are not welcome because you are suspected of intrigue."

"Me--suspected of intrigue!" he exclaimed. "It isn't possible!"

Beth laughed. "If it is so disagreeable to be suspected," she said, "what would it be to be found out! And what have you gained by it? What says the Dhammapada? 'There is bad reputation, and the evil way (to hell); there is the short pleasure of the frightened in the arms of the frightened, and the king imposes heavy punishment; therefore let no man think of his neighbour's wife.'"

"It is evident that you don't trust me," he said in an injured tone. "Ah, Beth! does the fact that we were boy and girl together not weigh with you?"

"Well, it would," Beth said soberly, "even if worldly wisdom were my only guide in life. I should think of the time that we got into that scrape, and you wriggled out of it, leaving me to shift for myself as best I could; and I should remember the boy is father to the man. But I have been trying to show you that worldly wisdom is not my only guide in life. I have professed the most positive puritan principles of conduct, and given you the reasons upon which they are based, yet you persist; you ignore what I say as if you had not heard me or did not believe me, and pursue the subject as if you were trying to weary me into agreement. And you have wearied me, but not into agreement; so, if you please, we will not discuss it any longer."

"You will be sorry, I think, some day for the way you have treated me," he exclaimed, showing temper; "and what you expect to gain by it I cannot imagine."

"Oh, please," Beth protested, "I am not imbued with the commercial spirit of the churches. I do not expect a percentage in the way of reward on every simple duty I do."

"Virtue is its own reward," he sneered.

"It has been said that 'the pleasure of virtue is one which can only be obtained on the express condition of its not being the object sought,'" she rejoined good-naturedly. "Try it, Alfred, and see if you do not become a happier man insensibly. Order your thoughts to other and nobler ends, for thoughts are things, and we are branded or beautified by them. An American scientist has been making experiments to test the effect of thought on the body, and has found that a continuous train of evil thought injures the health and spoils the personal appearance, but high and holy thoughts have a beautifying effect. Be a man and embrace a manly creed. Live for others, live openly. Deceit is treachery, and treachery is cowardice of the most despicable kind. Life has to be lived. It might as well be lived earnestly. Life is better lived when it is held earnestly. Personally I detest all flippancy and cynicism, all cheapening of serious subjects by lack of reverence. Irreverence portends defects of character and poverty of intellect. All serious subjects are sacred subjects, and to treat them with levity or insincerity is to prove yourself a person to be avoided."

Alfred Cayley Pounce was stooping forward with his elbows on his knees and his face between his hands, gazing blankly into the fire. The light shone on his bald forehead and accentuated the lines which wounded vanity, petty purposes thwarted, and an ignoble life had written prematurely on his face, and his attitude emphasised the attenuation of his body. He looked a poor, peevish, neurotic specimen; and although he had only himself to thank for it, Beth, remembering the promise of his youth, felt a qualm of pity.

"What a mistake my marriage has been!" he ejaculated at last. "But I doubt if I should ever have found a woman who would have understood me enough to be all in all to me. For a man of my temperament there is nothing but celibacy."

"I don't believe in celibacy at all," Beth said cheerfully. "Celibacy is an attempt to curb a healthy instinct with a morbid idea. He is the best man and the truest gentleman who honourably fulfils every function of life. And I don't believe your marriage was of necessity a mistake either. But if you must be miserable, be loyal as well. You will find that the best in the end. If, being miserable, we are also disloyal, then we are insensibly degraded--so insensibly, perhaps, that we are not conscious of any part of the process, and only become aware of what has been going on when we have to face a crisis, and find ourselves prepared to act ignobly, and to justify the act with specious excuses." She glanced up at the mantelpiece. "Come," she said, "it is four o'clock, and I am sleepy. I must go to bed."

He started to his feet. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "you can talk of being sleepy when I----"

"Never mind about that now," said Beth, yawning frankly. "Everybody has gone to bed and forgotten us, I suppose. I shall have to let you out."

She gathered the evening cloak she had come back in from the theatre about her as she spoke, and led the way. He let her open the hall-door for him. It was grey daylight in the street. At the foot of the steps a policeman was standing on the pavement making a note in a little book.

"Is it any use whistling for a hansom at this hour?" Beth asked.

The policeman looked up at her. "I'll try, miss, if you like," he said.

He whistled several times, but there was no response, and Alfred Cayley Pounce at last crammed his hat down on his head with a peevish show of impatience, and walked off down the street, without a word of leave-taking. The fact that Beth was sleepy had wounded his vanity more than any word she had said. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders as she watched him depart, then went down on to the pavement and strolled about, enjoying the freshness. The policeman kept watch and ward, meanwhile, at the open door, and, before she went in, Beth stood and talked to him a little in her pretty kindly way. She found his tone and manner in their simple directness strengthening and refreshing to the mind after the tortuous posings of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce.

Chapter XLIX

At breakfast next morning Beth described the way in which Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce had forced his attentions upon her the night before. Mr. Kilroy was exceedingly angry. "He shall not come into any house of mine again," he declared, and gave the old butler Roberts, who happened to be the only servant in the room at the moment, orders to that effect. "Do you mean to say," he asked Beth, "that the fellow had the assurance to tell you he had actually been hanging about the house?"

"He seemed rather proud of that, as of something poetical and romantic," Beth answered.

"I suppose the illness was all an excuse," Angelica observed.

"I don't know," Beth said. "He certainly looked ill, but he's a poor neurotic creature now, and might easily work himself up into a state of hysterical collapse, I should think. What was your impression, Roberts?"

"He looked real bad, ma'am; and well he might, the way he's been goin' on, 'anging about 'alf the night We've all seen im," Roberts rejoined imperturbably.

"Why didn't you report it to me?" Mr. Kilroy wanted to know.

"Well, sir, I couldn't be sure it was this 'ouse, sir, in partic'lar. You see there's a good many in the square, sir. I was just waitin' to make sure. He come after you'd gone last night, and said he 'ad to meet the ladies, but he'd forgotten where they were goin' to, and James, suspectin' nothin', told 'im."

"Well, I don't think he will trouble me again," Beth said cheerfully, concerned to see Mr. Kilroy so seriously annoyed. "I told him what I thought of him in such unmistakable terms that he walked out of the house without any form of farewell."

Angelica looked grave. "I am afraid you've made a spiteful enemy, Beth," she observed. "That kind of cat-man is capable of any meanness if his vanity is wounded; if he can injure you, he will."

"Oh, as to that, I don't see what he can do," said Mr. Kilroy.

"He can supply the press with odious personal paragraphs, spread calumnies at the clubs, and write scratch-cat criticisms on the book when it appears," Angelica said. "There are plenty of people who will listen to that kind of man, and take their opinions from him."

"But what does it matter," said Beth in her tolerant way. "All you whom I love and respect will judge me and my work for yourselves. If you are pleased, I shall rejoice; if you find fault, I shall be grateful and profit. But I should be a poor shallow thing, like society itself, if I allowed myself to be disturbed or influenced by the Alfred Cayley Pounces of the press. And as to society!" Beth laughed. "At first, when I went anywhere, I used to ask myself all the time when would the pleasure begin! But now I am younger, thanks to you; and I enjoy everything. I look on and laugh. But for the rest, I must be indifferent. It would be an insult to one's intellect to set any store on such tinsel as that of which the verdicts of society are made."

* * * * *

Beth had been thinking a good deal about Dan lately, and had come to the conclusion that, with all his faults, he was very much to be preferred to the Alfred Cayley Pounce kind of creature. She had more hope of him, somehow; and she went back determined that it should not be her fault if they did not arrive at a better understanding. He gave her a good opportunity on the evening of her arrival. They were sitting out in the garden after dinner, on that comfortable seat by the privet hedge which Beth overlooked from her secret chamber. Behind them the hedge was thick, and in front a border of flowers surrounded a little green lawn, which was shut in beyond by a belt of old trees in full foliage. It was an exquisite evening, warm and still; and Dan, having dined well, and begun a good cigar, was in a genial mood. As he grew older he attached a more enormous importance than ever to meals. If the potatoes were boiled when he wanted them mashed or baked, it made a serious difference to him, and he would grow red in the face and shout at the servants if his eggs for breakfast were done a moment more or less than he liked. He was a ridiculous spectacle in his impatience if dinner were late, and a sad one in his sensual satisfaction if it answered to his expectations. Beth watched him at such times with sensations that passed through various degrees of irritation from positive contempt to the kindly tolerance one feels for the greed of a hungry child. Dan had been "doing himself well," as he called it, during her absence, and was looking somewhat bloated and blotched. His wonderful complexion was no longer so clear and bright as it had been; the red was redder and the white opaque. A few more years and his character would be seen distinctly in the shape and colour of his face; and Beth, who had marked the first signs of deterioration slowly set in, was saddened by the progress it had made. Alfred Cayley Pounce would succumb to his nerves, Daniel Maclure to his tissues; the one was earning atrophy for himself, the other fatty degeneration. Beth was right. The real old devil is disease, and our evil appetites are his ministers.

"You seem solemn this evening," Daniel said to her. "I suppose you're regretting your friends."

"Yes," said Beth; "but I have been away long enough, and I am glad to be back. I saw some things in the great wicked city that made me think--Dan," she broke off abruptly, "I wish you and I were better friends. So very little would bring us to a right understanding, and I am sure we should both be the better and the happier."

"Speak for yourself," said Dan complacently. "Personally, I feel good enough and happy enough. We have our differences, like other people, I suppose; but whose fault is that, I should like to know?"

"Partly mine," Beth acknowledged. "I don't think I should have been so defiant. But if you had been different, I should have been different."

"If I had been different!" he ejaculated, knocking the ash from the end of his cigar. "Well, I'd like to know what fault you have to find with me? Different indeed!"

"That is the principal one," Beth answered, smiling. "Your great fault is that you don't believe you have any faults."

"Oh, well," he conceded, "of course I know I've my faults. Who hasn't? But I'll undertake to say that they're a man's faults. Now, come!"

This reflection seemed to deepen his self-satisfaction, as if it must be allowed that he was all the better for the faults to which he alluded. As he spoke, Beth seemed to see him at her wardrobe with his hand in the pocket of one of her dresses, hunting for treasonable matter to satisfy his evil suspicions, and she sighed. She would not acknowledge to herself that she was fighting for the impossible, yet even at the outset she half despaired of ever making him understand. It is pitiful to think of her, with her tender human nature, seeking a true mate where human law required that she should find one, only to be repulsed and baffled and bedraggled herself in the end if she persevered. A good man might have failed to comprehend Beth, but a good man would have felt the force of goodness in her, and would have reverenced her. Maclure recognised no force in her and felt no reverence; all that was not animal in her was as obscure to him as to the horse in his stable that whinnied a welcome to her when she came because he expected sugar. It is pleasant to give pleasure; but there must be more in marriage for it to be satisfactory than free scope to exercise the power to please.

"Well, look here, Dan," Beth pursued. "I'll make a bargain with you. If you will do your best to correct your faults--what I think your faults--I'll do my best to correct all you find in me. Only let us discuss them temperately, and try conscientiously to live up to some ideals of thought and conduct."

Dan smoked on silently for a little, then he said, with some show of irritation tempering his self-satisfaction, "Well, all I can say is, I cannot for the life of me see what you have to complain of."

"I have to complain of your conduct with Bertha Petterick, for one thing," Beth answered desperately. "Let us be frank with each other. I know that you have not been loyal to me. I saw you together here on this seat the day you gave her the bracelet. I saw you put it on her arm and kiss her; and that decided me to go to Ilverthorpe."

Dan looked round about him with an altered countenance, but nothing that he knew to be a window overlooked the spot, neither was it possible to see through the thickness of the privet hedge, nor from any other point, without being seen.

"You must have imagined it!" he exclaimed.

"I did not imagine that bracelet," Beth replied.

"Well, even if I did give her the bracelet," he said, "you're not going to be nasty-minded enough to insinuate that there was anything in that!"

"There was deceit in it," Beth answered, "and in your whole attitude towards that girl while she was under this roof. If we act so that we cannot be open and honest about our dealings with people, then there must be something wrong. Life would be intolerable if it had to be lived among people any one of whom, while professing friendship for us, was deceiving us in some vital particular. From the moment that we act on our own inclinations rather than up to what the noblest of our friends expect of us, we have gone wrong. But you and I are both young enough, Dan, to put the past behind us, and forget it. Let us start together afresh in another place, where there will be no evil associations, nothing to vex us by reminding us of unhappy days; and let us be loyal to each other, and honest and open in every act, making due allowance for each other, and doing our best to help and please each other. We shall be happy, I am sure. You will see we shall be very happy."

Dan took his cigar out of his mouth, and flicked the ash from the end of it with his little finger: "You'd have me give up my appointment here, I suppose, and the half of my income with it?"

"Most of all I would have you give up your appointment here," she answered earnestly. "No honest woman can endure to have her husband pandering to vice. It would not be so much of a sacrifice either," she added, "for the next session will end this iniquity."

"Thanks to the influence of you cursed women," he exclaimed.

"Thanks to our influence, yes," she answered dispassionately, "and to some sense of justice in men."

"If you knew how men talk about women who meddle in these matters," he said, "you would keep out of them, I think."

"Oh, I know the kind of thing they say," she answered, smiling; "but the people you mean have no influence nowadays. The blatant protest of the debauched against our demand for a higher standard of life is not the voice of the community. It is the cry of those who feel their existence threatened, who only live upon lies, and must be extinguished when the inevitable day of reckoning comes which shall expose them. Even now the kind of man who catches at every straw of opinion which shall secure to him his sacred carnal rights, at no matter what cost of degradation and disease to women, is out of date, and we pay no attention to him."

"Oh, women!" Dan jeered. "That is all very fine! But who the devil cares what women think?"

"Now don't be old-fashioned, Dan," Beth answered, laughing. "When women only did what they were told, men used to vow at their feet that there was nothing they couldn't accomplish, their influence was so great. But now that women have proved that what they choose to do they can do, men sneer at their pretensions to power, and try to depreciate them by comparing the average woman with men in the front rank of their professions. Really, men are disheartening."

The evening calm had deepened about them, a big bright star was shining above the belt of trees, and waves of perfume from the flowers made the air a delight to inhale.

"What a heavenly night!" Beth pursued. "Who would live in London when they might be here?"

"Well, that's consistent!" he exclaimed, "after entreating me to leave the place!"

"This is not the only peaceful spot in the world," she said with a little sigh; "and I would rather live in London even than have you here in an invidious position. Dan, give it up, there's a good fellow! and learn to look on life from this newer, wider point of view. You will find interests and pleasures in it you have never even suspected, I assure you, and you will never regret it."

"For the life of me," he said again, throwing the end of his cigar into the bushes with an irritated jerk of his arm,--"for the life of me, I cannot see what you have to complain of; and I shall certainly not give up any bird in the hand for two such birds in the bush as you promise me." He rose as he spoke, and shook out first one leg and then the other to straighten his trousers. "I'm going out," he added. "I've a patient to see. Ta! ta! Take care of yourself."

* * * * *

Some little time after Beth's return, they were sitting at lunch together, and Maclure was reading a daily paper.

"Matters look bad for that fellow, Cayley Pounce," he observed.

"Why, what has he been doing?" Beth asked.

"Poking a fellow's eye out with his umbrella," Dan answered. "He was talking to a girl in the street one night, and got into a row with some roughs, and jabbed one in the eye with his umbrella, and the fellow died. The inquiry is now going on, and it's likely the coroner's jury will bring in a verdict of manslaughter against Mr. Cayley Pounce. His defence is that he wasn't anywhere near that part of London on that particular night, and it's a case of mistaken identity; but as he refuses to say where he was, and produces no evidence by way of an alibi, that story won't avail him much."

"What night was it?" said Beth.

"On the 30th, just after midnight," Dan read out of the paper.

"Why, that was the night he insisted on escorting me home from the theatre," Beth exclaimed. "He did not leave the Kilroys' until four o'clock in the morning."

"Then why on earth doesn't he say so?" Dan asked.

"I can't imagine," Beth said. "I let him out myself; everybody else had gone to bed. And I'm sure of the time, because I thought he was never going away, and I was tired; and I looked at the clock and said, 'It's four o'clock, and I must go to bed.'"

Dan's face had darkened. "Do you mean to say you were sitting up with him alone?" he demanded.

"Yes, for my sins!" Beth answered in a tone of disgust. "The Kilroys were out when I returned from the theatre, and did not come in till very late; and they went straight upstairs, supposing I had gone to bed. As a rule they come into the library first. So Mr. Cayley Pounce was left on my hands."

"Then," said Dan, pushing his plate away from him with a clatter, "it is obvious why he is holding his tongue. He is determined not to compromise you."

"Thank you!" said Beth, bridling. "I should think I am not so easily compromised."

"Gad!" Dan ejaculated, "I don't know what you call easily compromised! A man takes you home from a theatre, and stays with you alone till four o'clock in the morning; if that isn't compromising I don't know what is. No jury in the world would acquit you, and the fellow knows that perfectly well, and is holding his tongue to screen you."

"I should think it's a great deal more likely he's holding his tongue in order to get the credit of it," Beth observed drily. "It is a mere pose. He knows I shall have to come forward to clear him if he doesn't explain himself. I suppose I must go at once and stop the case; but if it were not for his wife I declare I should hesitate. What is the form of procedure? You will come with me, of course?"

"I go with you!" Dan exclaimed brutally, "and see you make a public exhibition of yourself, and bring disgrace on my name in a court of justice! I'm damned if I do! And what's more, if you go, you don't return to this house. I've too much self-respect for that. You hadn't much of a reputation when I married you, and if you lose the little you've got, you can go and I shall divorce you. My wife must be above suspicion."

Beth folded her serviette slowly while he was speaking, and, when he stopped, she rose from the table.

"It is unfortunate for me," she said, "that the Kilroys have gone abroad. They know the man and the facts of the case, and would have advised me. In their absence I must do what seems right without advice. I cannot see that I have any choice in the matter. You could make it perfectly easy for me by supporting me; if you do not support me I must go alone. I shall pack up and go to town at once in order to appear in court to-morrow morning, and I shall telegraph to Roberts, the Kilroys' butler, to meet me there, and confirm my story. There are the coachman and footman too, and the police constable--witnesses enough, in all conscience."

"You are determined to go?" Dan demanded angrily.

"I must go," she rejoined.

"It is going to the devil, then," said Dan deliberately; "and I always said you would. Remember, you don't return to this house!"

* * * * *

When Beth arrived in town, she found that there would be no need to appear in the case at all, for the Kilroys' old butler Roberts had seen the name of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce in the papers, and had unwittingly frustrated his manoeuvre by going to the coroner's court himself and volunteering to give evidence. He was accompanied by the footman who had been out with the carriage on the night in question, and the two together had no difficulty in proving an alibi. Thus, in an ordinary commonplace manner, what had promised to be the triumph of his life, the moment when he should stand confessed to the world a chivalrous gentleman, sacrificing himself to save a lady of prepossessing appearance, was converted into another of the many failures of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce. This ended the case so far as he and Beth were concerned; but with regard to Dan, Beth recognised that her position remained the same. There was no return for her from the step she had taken, and she would have to begin her life anew.