Humbug

XIX

"I'm very sorry you're going, very sorry indeed," said Nicholas.

He was purposely speaking with restraint of manner.

"I couldn't stay after a row like that," said Doris candidly. "I couldn't possibly."

The word vexed him.

"I hope there are no such things as 'rows' in my house," he said, deliberately repressive.

"Of course, I wasn't going to say anything upstairs with Mrs. Aubray still weak as she is, but if I don't say anything, it isn't because I don't feel. Miss Stellenthorpe was most insulting."

They stared at one another.

"I'm very sorry," said Nicholas uncomfortably.

"Please don't think that I think it's anything to do with you," said Doris, with some formality. "You and—and Mrs. Aubray, of course—have always been very kind, and of course, I have done my best, and I can't help knowing I'm a good nurse." She paused.

"Of course you are. It's made all the difference having you here."

Nicholas spoke eagerly, both from sincere conviction and from the desire to gratify her.

"Miss Stellenthorpe didn't seem to think so. I don't know what she knows about nursing, I'm sure, but from the way she spoke you'd thing she was matron-in-chief and all."

Nicholas wished that Miss Dickenson had contrived to pass through her hospital training without incorporating into her being quite so many slightly common turns of speech. The matter of Aunt Clo's accusations, whatever the manner of them, might not have been altogether without justification.

"She's very artistic and highly strung, you know," he urged in extenuation of Aunt Clotilde. "She—she really is a very splendid person, you know. I'm sorry you and she haven't hit it off."

"I'd better go upstairs and pack, I suppose," said Doris.

"Don't be in a hurry, please don't. Anyhow, one of the maids will see to all that for you, if it's really necessary. Won't you have a talk with Lily first?"

"I don't want to worry her. Besides, she could have stopped Miss Stellenthorpe saying all she did, if she'd wanted to. I don't know what I shall do now, I'm sure."

Nicholas began to walk up and down, very much perturbed, and Doris dropped into a chair.

"I oughtn't to be bothering you, I suppose," she said presently. "My rotten affairs don't really matter to anybody but myself."

"Please don't say that—please don't. I simply hate to hear you say a thing like that. I thought it was agreed that you were to look on us as real pals."

His kind-heartedness seriously perturbed, he stopped in front of her.

"Don't you remember the agreement?"

"Did you really mean it? I'd be awfully glad to have you for a pal. You always strike me as being so awfully dependable and—and strong."

Nicholas, unconsciously accepting her transition from the first person plural to the third person singular, threw out his chest with the old, satisfied gesture.

"It's very nice of you to feel that. I think I am to be depended on, Miss Dickenson, where my friends are concerned, and I'm very glad you feel that. Very glad. As for strength—well, I'm certainly not a weak man."

He laughed a little, very much pleased, as is a man who meets with reassurance upon a point about which he is sometimes secretly dubious.

"My shoulders are quite broad enough to bear your troubles as well as my own, I think, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. Rather. But it seems a shame——"

"Why? You know I'm interested in anything that concerns you. Of course I am."

His candid, solicitous eyes were fixed upon her opaque, unrevealing gaze.

"Thank you, awfully," said Miss Dickenson slowly. "I get a sort of devastating feeling, sometimes, you know."

"Tell me what you mean," Nicholas sympathetically invited her.

"Oh well, things are a bit difficult all round, you know. I can't live at home, I simply can't. It's too devastating. That's what really made me take up nursing—to get away from home."

"But your father is so proud of you—you should have heard him speaking of you, as I did the other day. I can assure you he quite appreciates your pluck and—and spirit."

"Oh, I daresay. It really isn't so much Father as my aunts and people, and my married sister, and even the two girls. They're always sort of talking at me."

Her voice grew angry.

"I can't have a friend, or go anywhere, or do anything, without them interfering. My aunts are always hinting that I don't know how to take care of myself."

"But I'm sure you do," Nicholas said gently.

"Of course! It's all old-fashioned, devastating nonsense, that's what it is. Because men like talking to me. There isn't anything in it—I'm not even pretty."

She scarcely made a pause, but it was not in Nicholas to refrain from a meditative interpolation: "I don't know so much about that!"

"It's quite true I've got a lot of men friends, or at least I had. I've given up men now, since the one I was engaged to treated me so badly. You know, I told you about him.... When that happened I said, Thank you, that's enough for me, I said. I know what men are now, and I shan't have anything more to do with them."

"But it's not like you to be bitter," Nicholas said, in a gentle, puzzled way.

His ear and his trained mind alike noted the futility of her speech, but his masculinity was all the while increasingly aware of that in her which, for want of a better word, he could only describe as animal magnetism.

In her, it was extraordinarily powerful.

"Sometimes," declared Doris inconsistently, "I just think I'll marry the next man that asks me."

The suggestion, for reasons that he did not attempt to analyze, somehow affected Nicholas disagreeably.

"Oh, I don't think I should do that if I were you," he gravely objected.

"Why not? Men are all rotten, anyway—it doesn't make much odds which of them one takes in the end."

Her cheap cynicism made Nicholas vaguely uncomfortable. He looked at her without speaking.

As though Doris, by means of some odd intuition of her own, had guessed his disapproval, she changed her tone suddenly.

"Of course I don't really mean half I say—you mustn't think I mean it all, really you mustn't. I've known some awfully nice men—men who really were nice, I mean. Most of my pals have been men—not flirting, I don't mean, or anything like that. Just friends."

"I hope you're going to add another to their number," said Nicholas, smiling suddenly.

"Really?"

Her blue-green eyes, neither large nor lustrous, fixed themselves upon his face with a sudden intensity that was somehow alluring.

"Of course, really," Nicholas declared readily.

She sketched a movement that yet was not actually one, and Nicholas found himself ratifying his avowal of friendship with a handclasp.

"I don't want you to feel that all this makes a bit of difference," he said earnestly. "If you ever want a friend—well, here I am, very much at your service. And don't you go and do anything impetuous with your life. I should be very, very sorry to see you make a mistake."

"Thank you," said Doris.

She added after a moment, in the low, half-sullen tone that she sometimes adopted:

"I must say, it's nice to know that somebody cares."

"Of course I care," Nicholas vigorously replied.

He released her hand with a final hearty pressure. "Now supposing I have a little chat with Miss Stellenthorpe, don't you think we could put this right? I can't bear you to go away from our house like this."

"Oh, it's all right. Mrs. Aubray really is awfully much better now. I don't think she needs me any longer. Her maid can quite well give her all the help she needs now and—I expect I've been here long enough, anyway."

From this attitude Nicholas could not move her, and indeed he had no very urgent desire to do so. It did not need Aunt Clotilde's eloquence to inform him that Lily shared Miss Dickenson's own estimate of her visit, and thought that she had been there long enough.

"You ought to have told me, my dear child, if you found that she was getting on your nerves," said Nicholas frowningly to Lily.

He was vexed that Lily had not told him, vexed that he had not perceived it for himself, vexed, indefinably, that Miss Dickenson should have been found wanting, and vexed that she should leave the house under the weight of a grievance.

"I'm sorry you and Miss Dickenson didn't quite hit it off together," he said to Miss Stellenthorpe, with a hint of rebuke in his voice.

Aunt Clo was quite impenitent.

"The day will come," she remarked with an air of detached omniscience, "the day will come, when the little Dickenson will remember my words with gratitude. But at present she has a skin like a rhinoceros hide. I assure you, cher ami, that it was necessary for me to put dots upon my i's with her."

"That you certainly did," said Nicholas, with a certain grimness.

"Et alors?" said Miss Stellenthorpe coldly.

Nicholas had a perfectly genuine admiration for her, and would not pursue the point.

He bade Doris Dickenson farewell with renewed assurances of friendship, and on the day she left, his lantern-jawed face unconsciously grew lengthier than ever, and his voice very grave. If, subconsciously, Nicholas waited to receive comment upon these phenomena, he was destined to disappointment.

Miss Stellenthorpe's concern was wholly for her niece.

"The little one requires distraction," she authoritatively informed Nicholas. "She is regaining strength just now, and we do not want her to brood. Encourage her to go out, to see her friends, de se distraire, enfin!"

Nicholas begged Lily to follow Aunt Clo's advice, and was delighted when Aunt Clo herself, with her usual ceremoniousness, enquired whether he would permit the Marchese della Torre to call upon them.

"But of course! Splendid fellow, della Torre! He'll remind us of our courting days, eh, Lily? What on earth does he want to ask permission for? Why doesn't the fellow drop in one day? I didn't even know he was in England."

"Nor I," admitted Aunt Clotilde. "We met by chance, entirely."

"'We met 'twas in a crowd,' eh?" said Nicholas. "Well, Lily, will you write and ask him to dinner? I should like to do something for him."

In the weeks that followed, it might have been said with truth that Nicholas did a good deal for the Marchese della Torre. Always hospitable, he was whole-heartedly grateful to the young man who had rendered his long-ago stay in Rome agreeable, and he had conceived one of those innocent admirations for the Italian's range of erudition that made up part of his child-like singleness of vision.

The Marchese, more exquisitely dressed than ever, was as full of urbanity, as well informed and as imperturbable as of old, and only one change was to be remarked in him. A true Italian, the merely perfunctory admiration accorded by him to Lily Stellenthorpe as a young and pretty English girl, and a Protestant, became lively and acute directly he met her as the wife of another man.

He kept his dark eyes reverently fixed upon her face, and did not venture upon personalities until he had many times seen both Lily and her husband. Then one evening at the theatre he said to her, "You have changed a great deal, in these few years. Although your face is as young as ever, the soul that looks out of your eyes is that of a woman—no longer that of a child."

Lily was startled, but she was too young and too disconsolate to reject the subtle flattery.

"I feel very old, sometimes."

She felt afraid for a moment that he might laugh at her, kindly, as Nicholas would have done, from the height of the years that separated them. But della Torre said quickly:

"I know. People laugh a little, sometimes, when one says that, but it is only because they themselves have either never grown up at all, or have done so insensibly. They do not know anything about the short cut to knowledge that is traversed by some of us."

"What is that short cut?" said Lily.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I am afraid, generally—suffering. But why do you ask? You know it as well as I do—perhaps better. You are a woman, and highly strung."

"Sometimes I've wondered whether I mind things more than other people do," said Lily, divided between the yearning for self-expression and the old, inculcated idea that only impersonal channels can be altogether safe ones in conversation between a man and a woman.

The Italian raised his eyebrows.

"Of course! How can you wonder? Your capacity for emotion of every kind is written on your face. Not for all to read, certainly: but for those who know, to recognize. You are not happy."

"Yes, I am," said Lily quickly.

"Forgive me. You say that because you think I have no right to speak so—and perhaps I deserve it. I am sorry."

The humility in his voice caused her a moment of compunction.

"Don't be sorry," she said, smiling. "I suppose no one is exactly happy, once the happiness of childhood has been left behind."

"Childhood!" exclaimed the Italian scornfully. "The happiness of childhood! What does childhood know beyond the happiness of eating too many sweets, the happiness of a little animal? It is only men and women who experience real happiness, and real suffering. You—you have never yet been happy, and you are beginning to realize it. Is that true?"

"Yes," said Lily very low.

He betrayed no least quiver of triumph at having won the admission from her.

"You are eternally seeking something—perhaps you hardly know what ... desires and vague wishes within yourself frighten and disturb you sometimes—then you think that you are ungrateful and discontented, and you blame yourself. Non é vero?"

"Yes, it's true," said Lily. She felt a thrill of wonder that anyone should understand so well. The lights in the theatre were lowered again and the orchestra playing the opening bars of the Intermezzo of Cavalleria Rusticana, with its eternal appeal.

All the emotionalism in Lily responded to the age-old lure of the music.

She turned her head and looked at the Italian. His dark eyes were bent upon her, with a look so tender, so concerned for her sadness, that her own eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Poverina!" he said with great simplicity. "And you English women have no religion! In Italy the sad ones go to the church, they burn little candles and think that their wishes will come true, or they find comfort in their own virtues and resignation to the will of God. But you? What have you?"

He answered his own question with an eloquent gesture of negation, and Lily said nothing.

But later in the evening she turned to him again, and although she was still silent, she knew that it needed only that slight movement to tell his acute perceptions of her mute, half-ashamed desire for sympathy.

"You are like me. Music—poetry—but especially music," he said, watching her face; "they speak too much of the unattainable, beautiful, intimate things—the Blue Rose one dreams about."

"Is it always unattainable?" she asked wistfully.

"There is only one Blue Rose," said della Torre, and shrugged his shoulders, smiling. Then he added: "There are other roses, though. Beautiful, dark-red ones, and flame-coloured ones. I have found many roses, even if never the Blue one."

The next day he sent her roses, and wrote upon the card which accompanied them: "They are only make-believe, but I cannot find the One that I want you to have."

Thus was established between them the language of allusion.

The Marchese made no secret to Lily of the fact that women interested him supremely. She thought that he was not making love to her when he told her frankly that he had loved often.

"Love is the only thing that matters," della Torre remarked. "It has often been said before, it remains none the less true. A man is young just as long as he retains his capacity for falling in love. What does it matter if he loves successfully or unsuccessfully? It is the hope, the fears, the despairs, that count—the meetings and partings, the misunderstandings, the beautiful pretence that the most ephemeral of emotions will endure for ever."

"You don't think that love is lasting?"

Lily was smiling a little, but there was disappointment in her heart.

"The Blue Rose is the only one that never fades," said Giulio della Torre.

Lily found herself wondering very often just how much she liked him.

His intuition seemed to her to be very wonderful, and his tact unfailing. He never jarred upon her varying moods, and she knew, with inward compunction, that they varied often. She could hardly herself tell when it first become a thing of accepted implication between them, that he loved her. Divided between the conventionality that told her she should be shocked, the common-sense conviction that his passion would be as brief as it was likely to be fruitless, and the unavowed gratification that she derived from it, Lily, as usual, refused to envisage the direct question.

She continued passive.

Nicholas liked the Marchese, and meaning merely a mild facetiousness, referred to him when he was not present as "our friend Spaghetti."

Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe returned to Italy, and mysteriously expressed her parting counsel to Lily.

"Aha, bambina! You will have courage, will you not? There is much to be done, much to be suffered, by those who steer slender craft down the rapids."

Lily did not seek to interpret her aunt's metaphor. It seemed to her, indeed, that she sought nothing, did nothing, said nothing. Everything within herself was negative, torpid and unresisting.

"You are asleep," said Giulio della Torre half wistfully, half reproachfully.

"Perhaps."

"Do you never mean to wake up, Princess?"

"I can't," said Lily.

She was unable to resist the temptation of interpreting herself to so sympathetic an observer. "When I was a little girl, I cared about things so dreadfully. I had a younger sister whom I loved ... in those days everything seemed to matter so much. Now, I hardly feel anything at all. I seem to have grown indifferent."

"Because there is nothing for you to care about." He looked at her boldly.

"I think one might break through the thorn-hedge, Princess, and waken you."

"No," said Lily sharply.

She thought of Nicholas.

"You forget I'm married," she said, with a childish mixture of dignity and simplicity.

The Marchese shrugged his shoulders.

"Not at all. He is very good, very kind, the husband—but so much older! And you were never in love with him—of that I am very certain."

"I thought I was—everyone told me I was——" she began, and added belatedly, "I can't discuss it with you. You must see that. Please don't say any more."

But he said a great deal more, and Lily, with a certain sense of fascination, felt quite unable to help listening to him.

"It was never an Englishman that you needed at all—you do not belong to the Northern races, whatever your birth may be. In temperament you are of the South. You need infinitely more than anyone here will ever give you. To the English, sentiment is ridiculous—poetry is for the inside of the poetry books only—passion is improper—and love means merely the domestic affections. But you—what you need, what you must have, if you are ever to express yourself, fulfil yourself—it is romance."

He spoke with so much simplicity that Lily, answering nothing, merely looked up at him with amazed recognition of the truth in his words. He understood, as Nicholas would never understand, but she knew that she did not want him to make love to her. When the things that he said to her made her heart beat faster she wondered why she was all the time so certain that she did not love him.

He made love openly to her, with a suddenness and a fervour that totally disconcerted her.

"But may I not tell you that I adore you?" he asked piteously. "You have never been loved as you should be loved, most Beautiful. Let me show you."

Lily's sense of her own invulnerability was strong, even if it was also unconsciously wistful. She let Giulio della Torre "show her" in the words that came to him so readily and so eloquently, but when he took her hand, or rather, snatched at it with his own slender, olive fingers, she had a sudden and purely instinctive movement of recoil.

"Oh, don't!"

He flushed angrily. "What is the matter? Why may I not touch your hand?"

"I don't like it," said Lily simply.

He stared at her for a moment, amazement and mortified vanity struggling together in his face. Suddenly, a true Latin, he burst into a rueful laugh at his own discomfiture.

"I believe you mean it! But then you really are as cold—as white—as your own name-flower! You don't know what it is—to care?"

"But," said Lily, herself confused, "you always said that I didn't—that I never——"

"One says these things! But I did not know it was so literally true——"

"Forgive me," he added very gently. "You are still only a child, after all."

Lily justified his words better than she realized, by flushing deeply with vexation. She had thought that he understood her, but his understanding had been only the first move in the game, and she realized, with something nearly allied to disappointment, that the Italian was not the man to rouse her to any appreciation of subsequent moves.

"It's just—not," she thought, and involuntarily the words added themselves—"like Nicholas. He's—just not."

She was slightly relieved, upon the whole, when della Torre bade her a whimsical farewell.

"I still think that I could have taught you something, had you been willing to learn—but you are afraid. You will learn not to be afraid of life, some day, and then——"

He made an expressive gesture.

"Am I afraid of life?" she said, rather surprised. "Yes, I think perhaps I am. I think I have always been taught to be afraid of it."

"And I, I wanted to teach you to forget everything that you have been taught! But it is never the teaching that matters—only the teacher. You know what they say?"

He paused a moment dramatically, looking at her and smiling.

"C'est le ton qui fait la musique."

Lily remembered the words very often, after Giulio della Torre had gone.

"Did you give our friend Spaghetti his marching orders?" Nicholas made enquiry of her, his eyebrows raised in a significantly humorous expression.

"I don't know that I did, exactly. He gave them to himself, I think."

"I thought he seemed a bit infatuated," said Nicholas complacently.

"Would you be angry if I told you that I—I did encourage him a little bit?"

Nicholas roared with laughter.

His mirth was so spontaneous and so ludicrously inapposite to Lily's own half-formed intention of making as sensational a confession as the mildness of the facts allowed, that she could not help laughing with him.

"But, Nicholas, I really am ashamed."

"Why, darling?"

He put his arm round her waist.

"Because one evening he—he told me I wasn't happy and I said it was true."

It was that which had weighed upon her, with its implication of her husband's inadequacy. The fact that she had allowed the Marchese to tell her that he loved her, appeared to her to be relatively of no importance.

"You shouldn't tell fibs," said Nicholas serenely.

Lily was silent from sheer disconcertment.

"What are you downcast about?" he asked affectionately. "I've been so disgustingly busy lately, I haven't had any talks with my little wife. That fellow didn't worry you, did he?"

"Not in himself," Lily said confusedly, making an effort to give her real thoughts to her husband.

She was not surprised when he failed to follow her bungling attempt.

"Not in himself, eh? Well, he's a splendid fellow, della Torre, full of brains, and I don't blame him if he got a little bit above his boots, eh?"

She had scarcely ever heard Nicholas say a word in condemnation of anyone, and although the thought touched her, she was also impatient of his lack of discrimination.

"Nicholas, it was partly my own fault, that the Marchese thought that I should like him to make love to me a little bit."

"Was it, by Jove!" Nicholas refused to take the matter at all seriously.

"You know, you're a very fascinating little person, my dear. You mustn't be surprised if inflammable young foreigners lose their heads from time to time. And you mustn't let it distress you, either. I can't have you looking worried."

It was so evident that his whole solicitude was for herself alone, that Lily felt a sudden rush of passionate gratitude and affection towards him.

"Oh, Nicholas, how good you are to me!"

She raised her lips to his.

The disappointment that marriage had brought to her receded at such moments.

She ceased to try to wrench from her relation with Nicholas a supreme meaning which it could never hold.

She was content to feel his love for her, momentarily forgetting to rebel at the poverty of the response that it awakened in herself, content to know that he was content, and curiously relieved because she could sincerely assure herself that she loved her husband.

XX

No dramatic crisis came to break down the endless monotony of Lily's dissatisfaction as time went on. But she envisaged the possibility of one.

"Supposing I meet the man I could have loved—supposing I do love him?"

The specious echo of words that might have been spoken by her father, by Miss Melody, by any of those who had stood for wisdom to her childhood, followed on the thought.

"Why meet trouble halfway?... How weak to torture oneself about something which may never happen ... crossing bridges before one comes to them...."

Something in the last phrase awoke a long-dormant memory.

They had said that to her, long ago—the new metaphor leaving a little picture on her plastic, childish mind—in the old days when she had been afraid, because the east wind would give Vonnie earache.

They had said that it was naughty and ungrateful to run and meet trouble halfway. Of course Vonnie wouldn't get earache. And Vonnie had gone out into the east wind, and had got earache. The agony of those nights of silent strain was upon Lily once more as she remembered.

Illumination came to her.

They had bluffed her into accepting those old catchwords then, but was she of her own free-will to be bound by them now?

"Don't put things into words—don't let imagination run away with you. Beware of imagination. It's morbid to dwell upon what may never happen."

Shove it all out of sight! Bury it without looking at it! Embark upon adventure by the line of least resistance!

And then, when that which was buried rises to confront you, in stark, unescapable reality, then, realize that your defences are not ready, that an emergency is upon you with which you have deliberately unfitted yourself to cope, that Truth, your only weapon, you have long ago cast from you at the bidding of those who read its name Morbidity.

But she was dimly aware that, as submission had blinded her once, so bitterness obscured her vision now.

The old, inculcated instinct for seeking advice beset her often, but she decided it in the realization that no glib outside verdict could now carry weight with her.

Half enviously, half mockingly, she thought of the old literary convention that, in a time of mental crisis, some chance encounter, some wisdom met almost at random, should provide the unforgettable word holding the key of solution.

"She never saw the lame cobbler again, but his words had made all life look different henceforward...."

There were no such fortuitous sign-posts in real life, Lily decided.

More than one adviser, nevertheless, sought her unasked.

"All is not well with you, my Lily."

Aunt Clo's penetrating gaze had underlined her words.

"Shall I tell you, little one, that I foresaw this some time ago? Moi aussi, j'ai passé par là. There comes a day, is it not so?"

"What?" asked Lily, mildly bewildered.

"Jeunesse, jeunesse!" said Aunt Clo, quite in her old way. "Youth calls to youth, my Lily, as well I know. And watching you, I have re-lived my own past. You know something of the story of my past. Do not, I beseech you, little one—do not let me live to see tragedy repeat itself."

"Tell me what you mean, Aunt Clo."

"Lily, Lily! Fencing is unworthy of you—utterly unworthy of us both."

"I want to know what you think," said Lily wearily.

"Think!" repeated Aunt Clo solemnly. "What can I think?"

Her niece was utterly unable to find a reply to the portentous conundrum.

Miss Stellenthorpe put one hand upon Lily's shoulder and plunged a long, deep look into her eyes.

Then she sank into a seat and allowed the saddest of smiles to dawn upon her lips. She shook her head slowly from side to side. "Who am I, that you should turn to me, my dear? I, who made such a shipwreck of my youth? But O, little one! How lightly I should count the cost, if it is to save you from the same folly, from the same life-time of regret!"

Had Aunt Clotilde really some message to interpret?

Lily looked at her with a faint stirring of hope. Miss Stellenthorpe's fine eyes were glowing.

"Lose all, and you shall find all!" she declared. "The old Prophets knew much, my Lily. Listen, child. It will cost you, to break through the old traditions—who knows it better than I? But you must have courage. You must break free. Your soul asks it of you. And that other—your rightful mate—how can he fulfil himself without you?"

Lily was paralyzed. How difficult, how impossible to stop Aunt Clo in mid-career with the startling commonplace: "There is no other."

"But it's not—there's no one who——"

"Bambina—ah, how readily the old name comes! Leave subterfuges to smaller souls. Leave them, I say!"

Aunt Clo's voice rose in a crescendo of impassioned admonishment.

"I do not ask for names—for details. I may perhaps have hoped for a fuller, freer response from you—but I understand. Je comprends tout—je ne suis pas comme les autres, moi qui vous parle. But whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, you must find courage to disregard them. It is your soul that is at stake, my Lily. And after all—what are you risking? The good opinion of conventional moralists!"

Aunt Clo's middle finger met her thumb in a resonant snap of utter contempt for all conventional moralists.

"What do they know of such needs as ours? I say ours advisedly, my Lily. You know the outline of my life's story. There was only one man—though many have desired me—but only one man who supremely mattered. And he was bound, even as you are. And she to whom he was bound—she who had called herself my friend—she betrayed us both. She refused him his freedom."

Aunt Clo bowed her head, as though unwilling to face Lily's reception of such a climax.

"You ask me," said Miss Stellenthorpe, after a slight silence which neither had broken, "you ask me why, swept off our feet as we were, he and I did not take the law into our own hands. My reply to you is that I had to suffer the double bitterness of her betrayal, and of his. For he failed me—his courage was less than mine. Although I urged him to take the strong way, the high line, he did not do so. He was afraid. I cast pride to the winds, my Lily—I held back nothing. But that other—she tempted him with specious pleadings of her 'rights,' and he was weak. I do not seek to deny it now. He took the coward's refuge."

Miss Stellenthorpe gazed sombrely at her niece.

"Flight. With her."

There was a solemn silence.

"But it was not to speak of myself that I came, carina, but of you. Do not wreck your life, little one, for a scruple. You have courage, n'est-ce-pas? It needs but one mighty effort to shake off the old superstitions—and after that Love, Freedom, Self-expression! Are these not worth a sacrifice?"

"Yes—if——"

"Go to your lover!" said Aunt Clo with a clarion call. "I am not afraid to say it," and indeed she was not. "Go to your lover."

It was more than difficult to undeceive Aunt Clo. Nor, when she finally took her departure, did Lily feel certain that Miss Stellenthorpe had relinquished all hope of her niece's ultimate defiance of the seventh commandment.

It gave her a faint sense of ironical amusement to discover that her father's thoughts had taken the same direction as had Aunt Clo's, inspiring in him diametrically opposite emotions.

Lily went to stay with him, and was glad that she looked ill enough to justify her leaving London whilst Nicholas was obliged to remain there.

"I'm sorry Nicholas couldn't get away," said Philip rather nervously. "It's very good of him to spare you. You're not looking quite as well as you generally do, my child."

This was Philip's nearest approach to an uncomplimentary statement.

"I'm tired," Lily said.

"Come, come, come," said Philip.

The bracing admonition was marred by his uncertain tone, and the anxious glances that he kept casting towards his daughter.

At last he said to her:

"My little pet, you're not fretting about anything, are you? I'm sorry to see you so—so pale."

Something in the kind, familiar, anxious tone stirred Lily suddenly. She began to cry.

"Poor little child!" said Philip.

He seemed less surprised than Lily had expected him to be, at her sudden weakness, and stroked her hair with hands that trembled a little.

"Tell me all about it," he suggested.

Lily had never thought it possible that she should put her vague disappointment and weariness into words, least of all to her father. Nevertheless she found herself trying to do so.

"It isn't anything—that's the worst of it. Nothing definite. Only Nicholas—Nicholas and I—I wish I loved him more than I do—he's disappointed in me."

"No, no," protested Philip. "That great deprivation is worse for you than for him—besides, my poor dear child, you're still young——"

"It isn't that," said Lily. "He was kinder than I can ever say about that—after all, it isn't my fault, and besides, I might have a child, even yet—they didn't say it was impossible. It's just ourselves—Nicholas and me."

"My child!"

Philip Stellenthorpe looked thoroughly frightened. "I know there's a great disparity of years—but you were fully aware of that when you married him. You were in love with him, Lily."

She made no answer.

"And he with you," said her father hurriedly. "I was deeply touched, at the time, by the way in which he spoke of you. But, my little darling, you know that being in love, as people call it, isn't a thing that lasts for ever. Something better comes to take its place. And there are bound to be little frictions, in even the happiest marriages. You mustn't let yourself exaggerate. There's been no misunderstanding between you, has there?"

Lily knew that by the word "misunderstanding" he meant dispute, and she said that there had been none.

"There, then, you see! What is there to fret about? Nicholas is devoted to you."

"I know."

"And he's your husband, my dear child. You love him."

"I am very fond of him," said Lily slowly. Then she added, speaking more for the relief of words, than with any recollection of her hearer, "It's just because I'm fond of him that I'm so unhappy. I can't give him anything real—I've tried and tried to think that I could, and it's no use—I'm sorry because of him, and I'm sorry because of myself—I've missed the best there is, somehow, and I'm realizing it more and more as I go on, and now I just feel as though I couldn't go on any more. If I wasn't fond of Nicholas, I think I should leave him."

"Don't talk like that—don't say terrible things like that. You don't know what they mean," Philip exclaimed in great agitation. "Don't you know that it's a mortal sin?"

"What is?"

"To let your thoughts turn for a moment, after your solemn marriage vows, to—to any thought of—'for better for worse—till death us do part,' and cleaving to him only——"

"But I shan't go away. I am fond of Nicholas. It would be much easier for me if I weren't," said Lily.

"What do you mean?"

Lily did not seek to explain what she meant. It was scarcely clear even to herself, save that her affection for Nicholas was real of its kind, and therefore must debar her from the drastic and impetuous measures for which her whole undisciplined youth craved.

She remained away on one excuse after another.

Her old schoolmate, Dorothy, came home from India, and although Lily admired Dorothy's healthy, fair-headed, unbeautiful babies, and went almost daily to play with them, she would not admit that her own childlessness roused in her any regret.

Nor did it.

But she watched with sick envy Dorothy's eagerness for her Indian mail letters, and the tears that clouded her frank, unsentimental gaze, as she spoke of "poor Frank"—who would not be able to afford leave for a long while.

"You are lucky, Lily, to live in England with no dreadful complications about having to go up to the hills, for the sake of the babies, and leave your man, sweltering away in the awful heat. And now I've got to leave Dolly behind, and go back with only Aileen, and I shan't have her after our next leave at home, I don't suppose. Frank is so good he'd let me stay at home with them altogether, like some wives do—but of course I wouldn't."

"Do you think he needs you more than the children do?"

"Well, I do, but apart from that," said Dorothy, "I know I jolly well can't do without him!"

She laughed as she spoke, and Lily knew that she did so because she was so much in earnest.

"I've got to finish my mail letter," said Dorothy, who had always hated writing letters.

Lily watched her pull out the perennial block of thin ruled paper to which every day she added a fresh, scrawled contribution.

She herself wrote every few days to Nicholas, and in reply received short letters, indited upon Club notepaper, informing her that he was very busy, or that he had gone past their house, that the exterior painting seemed to be getting on well, that he hoped she was feeling stronger, and would not hurry back to town just yet, the more especially as workmen were still in the house. He was always her devoted husband.

Lily divined haste in the notes, as well as the affectionate feeling that was part of Nicholas. She wrote and told him that Kenneth was to come home in a week's time, and that she should like to await his arrival. Her husband's answer was one of cordial acquiescence, and then he wrote no more for several days.

Lily, as usual, found Kenneth everything that she herself had never dared to be.

He had spent most of his holidays with friends, about whom he vouchsafed the scantiest particulars to his family.

"A fellow I know," or "One of the chaps at the place where I've just been staying," said Kenneth, or, more non-committally still, "Somebody or other that one came across somewhere or other."

"I should like to hear something about this visit of yours, my boy," said Philip, in tones that unwittingly suggested a strong sense of suspiciousness.

"Oh, it was all right."

"So I suppose—so I suppose," Philip laughed rather nervously. "Had it not been 'all right,' as you express it, no doubt I should have been informed. But we've not been told very much about your amusements, or about your young friends themselves. Your school-fellow's father is—or rather was, a good many years ago—an acquaintance of mine, as you know. Besides, my dear boy, I like to know something about the sort of people with whom you're friendly."

Philip's voice had become rebukeful.

"Oh, they're all right," said Kenneth.

"How many brothers and sisters has Graham got?" enquired Lily hastily.

"There were two or three kids knocking about, and a girl with her hair up. She's the eldest."

"Oh, Jean Graham. I think I met her in the Park one day—rather pretty, with fair curly hair."

"Oh," said Kenneth indifferently. But the thought appeared to awaken some association. "I say, Lily, who do you know with carrotty hair?"

"I don't know. Heaps of people. Nobody in particular. What do you mean, exactly?"

"Somebody who's a friend of your old man's. At least——"

"That's not at all a nice way of talking, Kenneth," said his father gravely. "Apologize to your sister."

"No, never mind, Father," Lily interposed.

She remembered, with curious detachment, the two little girls, Vonnie and Lily—who had always been so gentle and respectful in their speech, knowing quite well that anything else would offend the susceptibilities of Father and Mother most terribly.

"It's most disloyal to speak in that rude, foolish way of a near relation—and one who has been so kind to you, too," Philip told the boy.

"Sorry."

Kenneth's tone was so cheerfully unconcerned that Lily hurriedly broke across the light-hearted echo of it that seemed to linger, inappropriately, in the atmosphere diffused by Philip's deep vexation.

"What were you going to tell us about? Somebody with red hair whom Nicholas knows?"

"M'm."

Philip raised his eyebrows at the unceremonious mutter, and sighed, but he uttered no spoken rebuke. Lily wondered whether he gauged the full imperviousness of Kenneth to those silent tokens of disapproval that had been so potent with Philip's elder children.

"A fattish girl, with red hair."

Philip looked up sharply.

"I don't know whether you mean Doris Dickenson," said Lily. "She has red hair. She's a hospital nurse."

"That's it. I knew I'd seen her before. She looked after you when you were ill."

"Yes, she did, but when——"

"I saw her, and old—I mean, Nicholas, too—the other day, when I was coming through London."

"Nonsense, my dear boy," said Philip curtly. "You must have made a mistake. Your brother-in-law would have told me if he'd seen you."

"He didn't see me."

"Then where were you?"

"Just going along down the street. It's all on the way to Victoria station."

"I never gave you leave to hang about London by yourself. I told you to come straight through, in a four-wheeled cab."

"I missed that train——"

"You never told me," exclaimed Philip in horrified tones. "Besides, what do you mean? I met you at the station here at seven o'clock myself. How can you have missed the train?"

"I missed that slow one you wrote about, but I found there was a much better one that got to the junction in time for the connection. At least, it really arrived five minutes after my train was supposed to start, but I knew it would be late, just as it always is. I had heaps of time."

"You had no business to alter the arrangements that Father had made for you, my boy."

"Sorry," said Kenneth in exactly the same cheerful, impersonal accents that he had used before.

"And besides, what would have happened supposing the train hadn't been late? You might have had to spend the night there."

Philip's tone was that of one who points out some terrible danger barely escaped.

Lily felt conscious of a spasm of sharp impatience. No wonder that Kenneth was reticent, even as she herself, as a child, had frequently been deceitful, in the endeavour to evade Philip's portentous anxieties and distrusts.

He was beginning now a serious exposition of the utter inability of "very young people" ever to judge what was best, and Lily felt that she must stop him before her own exasperation made itself felt.

"But what about Nicholas, Kenneth? Why didn't you speak to him?"

Kenneth turned to her, obviously rendered loquacious by his desire to follow her lead.

"Well, I'd really half thought of looking him up, only then I saw scaffolding and stuff outside, and I thought he wouldn't be there. But I looked up at the windows and saw him, as it happened, staring out. And I was just going to cross the street when a taxi drew up at the door, and the carrotty-haired one got out, and ran up the steps like blazes and let herself in. So then I bunked off."

"Let herself in," repeated Philip slowly, "How could she do that?"

"With a key," said Kenneth matter-of-factly. "I suppose old Nicholas didn't want the fag of going down to answer the door, and the servants were all away, or out, or something."

"Yes," said Lily, "the servants are all away; there's only a caretaker."

She spoke quite automatically, but her mind had instantly registered and accepted the new situation unconsciously disclosed by Kenneth, almost without surprise. She suddenly felt as though she had found a clue to some evasive conviction that had been eluding her.

"That's why he hasn't written to me lately," she reflected calmly.

Then she became aware of her father.

"Kenneth is talking nonsense, my little Lily," he said tremulously. "It's all quite—quite—quite unimportant, of course, but you mustn't let yourself——"

She recognized that he was torn between a terrified desire to reassure her, his own sense of shock and outrage, and the old, pathetic instinct to conceal, at all costs, from Kenneth any significance in what Kenneth had just said.

"It's all right," she said, smiling at him without any effort at all.

"What's up?" Kenneth demanded, glancing from one to the other.

"Nothing, my boy, nothing at all. Why should there be anything up, as you call it?" said Philip, grey-faced and shaking. "Only I don't like you to—to tell foolish stories like that."

"But why——"

"Don't argue, now, Kenneth. You know Father will never allow arguing. Now that will do, we needn't say any more about it."

Lily saw on Kenneth's young face exactly that slow awakening to an uncomfortable sense of mystery, that would presently give way to concealed surmisings and surreptitious attempts at trapping down the truth, that had made life a thing of perpetual furtiveness to her own childhood.

She felt so strong a nervous impulse to speak the rending, shattering truth aloud that it came as a sharp relief to see Kenneth, after a suspicious stare at his father, get up and leave the room.

Lily gave Philip no time for the evasions that he was obviously and piteously seeking in his own mind.

"It's all right." She strangely found the words of reassurance on her lips again.

"I know Nicholas. I think he probably has been—unfaithful—with this girl. But it's a sort of passing madness—you mustn't think he's like that really."

"Lily—Lily, my poor child. But we mustn't rush at conclusions, my poor darling. I can question Kenneth quietly, later on—without letting him realize anything, of course."

"No, no. I'm going partly on intuition, Father."

"But had you suspected before, then?"

"Oh no. I knew the girl was—well, a flirt, to put it mildly, and of course I knew that Nicholas admired her. But he's never even seen her since my illness, ages ago."

"How can you tell that, my poor child—what do you know of these things? This business must be tackled by a man. Shall I go up to town at once?"

"I don't think so."

Hard-won certainties, that Lily had scarcely known herself to possess, rallied round her. Her own inner convictions crystallised into decisive speech, gained strength every moment.

"No. It isn't a question for that sort of thing at all—I mean scenes and interviews and recriminations. I shall have to tell Nicholas that I know, and then—then I suppose we shall talk it all over, and see what ought to be done—if anything."

"You don't realize," groaned Philip. "My poor little inexperienced child, you must be guided by me. It may not be as bad as we think."

Lily thought for a moment and then found herself speaking with a decision that surprised herself.

"This is something that I must decide for myself. You can't help me. Nobody can, except Nicholas himself. I should like him to come down here, please."

"You would rather that than let me take you up to London? But are you sure that he will come?"

"Quite sure," said Lily.

In her own mind, she was thinking that very likely Nicholas would write and ask her to come home, before she had even time to send her summons to him. He wasn't deceiving her, "leading a double life," as the conventions of fiction and the drama.

It had all been a sort of accident, probably, Lily reflected. Almost certainly Nicholas, like all weak natures, would feel the instant need of salving his own sense of degradation by making a confession.

Philip was groaning.

"If you had only been more open with me the other day! I had no idea things had gone so far—I thought it was a vague, passing discontent, that meant nothing. But you must have realized even then that he was wronging you in some such terrible way. I could never have believed it, never. However, we mustn't meet trouble halfway, I suppose."

He sighed heavily.

"My poor child, there is at least a remedy open to you, if things are as we fear—though God forbid it should ever come to that."

"What?" asked Lily.

"You can claim your freedom," said her father very low. "There is one cause for which the marriage tie may be dissolved, in the eyes of God."

Lily realized with a shock of astonishment that here was an aspect of the case which actually had not presented itself to her mind.

Divorce.

A second chance! The words flashed through her mind, opening up an illimitable vista of freedom, a sudden, unlooked-for way of escape from that which had appeared unescapable. She had longed wildly and hopelessly for a miracle that would obliterate the years that had elapsed since her marriage to Nicholas Aubray.

Against her own sense of conventional decorum, against her father's shocked unhappiness, relief sprang to life within her at the thought that the miracle might yet take place, the writing of the years might be erased, the irrevocable revoked.

XXI

A certain grave, curt manner and lengthening of face had always been half unconsciously displayed by Nicholas when perturbed or out of temper.

Lily, latterly sharply critical, had interpreted such signs into a desire to be questioned. She half expected to see them now, and at the anticipation a most inappropriately trivial irritation possessed her.

Instead, Nicholas faced her with pitiful, tired eyes and a haggard face.

"Do you know, Lily, or have I got to tell you?" he asked her instantly.

And, also instantly, she replied:

"I know already."

"Thank God for that. I thought perhaps you did, when I got your telegram asking me to come."

"Should you have told me?"

"Yes. I couldn't have met you again and not told you. It was only a question of when." He looked at her piteously. "But, Lily, are you sure you understand? How do you know—what is it you've heard?"

"Kenneth saw her—Doris—let herself into the house, and he saw you at one of the windows. He told me almost by chance—without understanding. Father was there. But it wasn't so much what he said—that didn't amount to much. It was just that I knew it was true—I wasn't exactly surprised."

"But it all happened within the last week. Darling, I've been a hound, and God knows how I hate myself, but I've not been deceiving you. It's over, already—was over before your telegram ever reached me."

"It was a sort of passing madness, I suppose," Lily said, using the words that she had used to Philip.

Nicholas seized upon them eagerly.

"That's exactly what it was. And look here, Lily—at the cost of sounding like a cad, I'm going to tell you straight; it hasn't hurt Doris. You're not to think of her as a girl that I've betrayed. I've been a brute—but it's to you, not to her. Doris is—well, I wasn't the first—not by a long way."

"I didn't know—I didn't like her—but I didn't think she was that sort."

Nicholas shrugged his shoulders.

"Then you aren't in love with her?"

"Good God, no!"

He came and knelt beside her.

"Lily, it's you I love, my darling, my little wife. I don't know if a woman can understand how these things happen.... We haven't been happy together lately and I was lonely and down on my luck. I met her by chance, and she asked me to take her to tea somewhere, and she's attractive, you know, in her way. I took her to a theatre the same night—but I swear to you that I never thought of anything but having a cheery evening at a deadly dull time of year in London. But then—well, then I suppose I saw that she was for it, and I lost my head. I drove her home in a taxi, and when we got to her place she—she didn't want to get out. She said she'd see me to the Club, instead—I suppose I knew what she was up to, then. She's living at some Mansions or other, and she knew our place was more or less shut up. Anyway, we went there, and not to the Club. The old woman had left the drinks and things out, as she did every night before going off home, and the house was empty. It seemed safe enough, from the point of view of discovery. Heaven knows how she got the latch-key—I suppose she took it. She telephoned me next day at the Club that she was coming to bring it back to me—she hadn't the wit to know that I hated her like hell by that time and never wanted to go near her again. Though it was myself I ought to have hated—and did, too. Well, I thought if she was bent on coming, I'd let her come, and show her that it was all over, and that I knew I'd been a cad. I never thought of the little fool letting herself in like that with the wretched key—though I'd have laid a thousand to one against the chance of anyone spotting her who knew either of us. It was the most extraordinary chance——"

"You didn't see Kenneth?"

"No."

"What made you ask if I knew?"

"I'd a sort of feeling you must know. In fact, I rather felt as if everybody must know—sort of branded. I couldn't write to you, or do anything. I knew I should have to tell you. Lily, do you think you can ever forgive me?"

"Oh, yes," said Lily, surprised.

"You angel! You little saint!" With an exuberant gesture he put his arm round her, and she made an instinctive movement of recoil.

"But Nicholas, wait. I never thought of forgiving or not forgiving, because I don't feel angry, but you know, we—we could——"

He stared at her incredulously.

"Father said that I could divorce you, and I suppose it's true. It could be arranged somehow."

"Your father! But this is a matter that concerns only our two selves. Besides, Lily, you don't know what you're saying. Divorce is not a thing to be spoken of like that—lightly. It's a frightful thing to think of."

For a moment the old inclination to accept the values of another beset her. Then she spoke steadily.

"Divorce would set us free to begin again. You've given me adequate grounds, Nicholas, after all. Tell me honestly—would a divorce, undefended—I suppose you wouldn't defend the case?—would it hurt your career?"

Nicholas stood up again and looked down at her very grimly.

"It would do you quite as much harm as it would me, my dear. A woman who's been through the Divorce Court, even if she's perfectly innocent, is looked upon askance by many people. But I don't believe you know what you're talking about. It's an insane suggestion. It could be done, no doubt with a certain amount of collusion, but you've no idea of all that it would entail."

"Perhaps," Lily said slowly, "perhaps, Nicholas, I think that it would be worth while, if it would give us both a chance of beginning again."

Nicholas looked at her with eyes that, from incredulous, became slowly agonized.

"We can," he said, "I suppose it would be possible. But I—I thought you loved me."

Quite suddenly, he was crying like a child that is forced to realize the infliction of some bitter, almost incredible disappointment.

"Don't you care for me at all, Lily? Has it made you hate me? Don't you realize that I was mad and wicked and a fool; but it was you I cared for, all the time? I thought you understood."

"Nicholas!"

She was touched by him as she had never been before. "Don't—don't! I do understand, I think."

"You were away—and things between us haven't been very happy lately. I don't want to make excuses, Lily, but can't you see a little how it happened?"

"Yes. Oh, Nicholas, the way these things happen—the way everything happens—always out of something else——"

She stopped, unable to express the fullness of her crowding thoughts.

"This—in itself," she said at last timidly, "is only an episode. But all the things that have been leading up to it, Nicholas—the disappointment I've been to you——"

"Never, my darling."

Confronted by his loyally-meant denial of fact, Lily felt helpless.

"Nicholas," she said at last. "If I spoke just now of a desperate remedy, it's because I've been feeling desperate. I really mean it, quite literally. It's not just a word."

His mouth twitched a little.

"My dearest child, you've only known that there was anything to be desperate about for the last twenty-four hours. Heaven knows I don't want to minimize the unspeakable thing I've done, but still—desperation—when you say yourself that it's an episode, merely——"

"You don't understand, Nicholas. I've been in despair for longer than I can tell you. This affair is nothing—a sin of the body. If it's a wrong done to me, and I suppose in a way it is—then I forgive you—of course I do. Honestly, it doesn't seem to me to matter much—and as you said just now, I'd left you alone, and we hadn't been of much use to one another. I think it was partly my fault, that it happened at all."

"My darling child, you can talk generously and frankly like that, and yet you speak of divorce!"

There was the impatience in his voice that had so often led her hastily to disavow her own views.

"Don't you see how utterly illogical you're being?"

She shook her head.

"You haven't understood. You think I just used the word divorce as a sort of threat, to show that I knew what a serious wrong you'd done me—that I didn't mean it, or didn't understand what such a step really means. But Nicholas, I'll be honest with you—at last, I'll be honest. I've thought of divorce before—I've thought of death—of running away—of anything that would enable us to begin again. This thing that's happened may provide the means."

"But then you've hated me?"

His voice held utter bewilderment and incredulity.

"No!" cried Lily passionately.

She found that she was crying.

"I don't hate you, Nicholas. How could I? I'm fond of you, that's just it. I ought never to have married you—it wasn't fair. But oh, Nicholas, I am fond of you!"

The hard lucidity of utterance with which she had confronted him a moment earlier had deserted her. She was crying uncontrollably.

"Whichever way we turn, it all seems hopeless. I can't help making you unhappy—I am fond of you, Nicholas; oh, Nicholas—can't you understand?"

They clung together, and both were weeping.

"Forgive me, my poor darling," he reiterated helplessly.

"No, no—it's for you to forgive me, Nicholas. This thing—this little thing that's happened between you and Doris—it's nothing, I don't care what anybody says—it's not a real thing, and it doesn't matter. It's only pretence if I say it does."

"Lily, don't leave me. I can't do without you. Forgive me! Don't—don't fail me!"

Her pity and affection tore at her. She wanted to cry to him that she would never fail him, that no forgiveness was needed between them, that they would begin life together again. The impulse of reckless generosity rose to blot out the relentless unalterability of truth.

Every carefully inculcated falsity of upbringing strove against her, every easy sentimentality sought to stifle sincerity of thought.

"Let me wait—don't make me say anything now," she besought him. "I ought to think—I want to think, before we settle anything. Give me time, Nicholas."

He was obviously puzzled and she knew that he thought her forgiveness of him to be still in the balance.

"But you'll tell me soon, Lily?" he said wistfully. "Of course you have a right morally to claim this—this terrible penalty, and I would make it as easy as I could for you, dear—you know I'd do that. But you won't—you couldn't. Talk to your father, darling. He'll help you."

But Lily talked to no one.

She had taken advice once before. This time, she sought to confront her own issues alone.

Freedom. This might mean freedom.

She had longed, with the frantic desire of hopelessness, to begin again. And Nicholas himself had provided her with a door of escape. A legitimate exit.

Her thoughts roamed free and disconnected.

Freedom to begin again! Who knew what life might yet hold, with the gain of bitter and profound experience behind her, and the potent, incalculable fact of a freed spirit before her?

She had learnt honesty at last, and at last the gaze of her soul was steady.

"The very beginning of it all, when they made me believe myself in love with Nicholas, and I hadn't the courage to own to myself that I wasn't! Or perhaps it goes further back even than that, back to the time when Vonnie and I were little. Vonnie, my Vonnie, shall I ever love anyone again? Vonnie knew the truth about values; she knew what mattered to her and what didn't. Perhaps I did too—I think I did when we were little, but afterwards I took my values ready-made. One can't do that. Humbug brings its own penalty—my life since I've grown up here has been just that—Humbug. Yes, and long before I was grown-up, too."

Wandering from the bewilderment of her own life, Lily thought of the problem of education.

Wherein lay the failure of one generation to render enduring help to another?

"It isn't love—the lack of it. They do love—so do we. Is it the old, possessive idea? Children belonging to their parents? They don't belong. Each soul belongs to itself—I'm certain of that. The parents have responsibility, at first, yes—they brought one into the world for their own pleasure, or because they thought it right, or because they couldn't help it. They have to keep their children alive—to do the best they can for them—to tell them the truth as far as they know it. And that's what they don't do. They tell the children what they think is good for them to know.... They arrogate to themselves the right of claiming infallibility. And they're not infallible—they know they're not. But they won't let the children know it. And so they evade, and deceive, and suppress, and the children grow up and find that there is no infallibility—but by that time they have learnt to evade, and deceive, and suppress, themselves."