Jocelyn

When Giles reached the Mansions he hesitated for some minutes before he found the courage to go in. At the sound of his footsteps upon the tiled floor, the porter, a large personage in blue, with a stolid red face, and an evening paper in his hand, appeared from a corner and stood under the hanging lamp, an illuminated image of matter-of-fact civility.

“What name, sir?” He had a voice that leapt out of him with unexpected brevity, and a habit of twitching one eyelid.

Giles felt suddenly cool, and unemotional, with the calmness peculiar to nervous organisations in critical moments.

“Does Mrs. Travis live here?” he said.

“Yes, sir, number three.”

“And, Miss Ley?”

“Yes, sir, same number.”

“Ah!” He gave his moustache a twist, but he was not conscious of any particular feeling of relief, or indeed of any feeling except a slight surprise at himself.

“The ladies are well, I hope?”

“Quite well, thank’ee, sir. Do you wish me to send up your name?”

“No, thank you—er—that is—I should like to write a note. Can you give me a sheet of paper and an envelope?”

“Cert’nly, sir.” The porter, disappearing into a decorative sentry-box, emerged with pen and paper. He set them down upon a table. Giles wrote these words upon a sheet of paper:—“Langham Hotel, Wednesday.—May I come and see you to-morrow at 4 o’clock? G. L.” folded it, closed it in an envelope, and addressed it, “Miss Jocelyn Ley.” Then he stood, and looked at the porter, whose eyelid went up and down with regularity, giving the impression that he was continually endeavouring to relieve the stolidity of his visage with a wink.

“You will see Miss Ley to-morrow morning?”

“I can see her, if you wish, sir.”

“Give her this, not to-night, you understand, to-morrow morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here’s something for your trouble.” He pulled out a coin, handed it to the porter, and turned on his heel. The porter’s voice pursued him abruptly.

“Beg y’r pardon, sir, you giv’ me a sov’reign, sir.”

“Oh! did I? All right!”

The rustling in the trees outside was refreshing, the river consolingly dark and profound. He muttered irrelevantly to himself: “Here endeth the first lesson,” and leant against the stone parapet of the embankment, looking at the rows of lighted windows, and wondering which was hers. The dark figure of the porter, legs apart, was still outlined in the lighted cave of the open doorway. With a feeling of being “moved on,” Giles set his face eastwards by the side of the quiet river. Over the busy part of the town the dark vault of the sky was powdered with innumerable gold specks, and there was a hum, as of gigantic insects, in the air. He walked a few paces, and became suddenly conscious of the fact that he was dog-tired. Hailing a “hansom” he drove home in it, more than half asleep.

When he came out of the hotel the next day, a bright sun was staining wet patches of the pavement a ruddy orange, the air was clear, and the streets had a freshly-washed appearance. He had some matters of business to attend to, and he forced himself to go about them. He found nevertheless, in the afternoon, that he was at the Mansions fully half-an-hour too soon, and he paced restlessly backwards and forwards along the embankment until the appointed time.

CHAPTER XXIV

The door was thrown open, and he heard his name pronounced into a room which he could scarcely see from a feeling of giddiness that came over him. The door closed behind. There was a faint scent of violets, and he was conscious of the rustle of a skirt. He stood within the room twisting his moustache, and staring about him with uncertain eyes. Jocelyn had risen from a chair near the window. He took a step forward and stopped. Her face was white, then crimson, then white again; her hands gripped the back of the chair from which she had risen. Neither offered to move, or to speak; they stood still, and looked fixedly at each other, an unsparing space of conventional carpet between them.

After the first sign of emotion, Jocelyn’s face wore a mask of discouragement. It showed dark and mysterious against the bright sunlight behind her, and reproach seemed to be looking out of her eyes. Giles, clutching the fold of his coat across his chest, gazed at her with a countenance from which hunger had suddenly driven every other emotion.

Jocelyn spoke, and her voice sounded dull and expressionless.

“Why?” she said. “What was the good?”

Giles involuntarily took a half-step forward.

“Why?” he repeated. “Why? You stopped writing—I didn’t know—how could I——”

“Didn’t I write long enough?” she said wearily. “It didn’t seem any use going on. I wanted to forget. I didn’t know where you were—you might have been dead.” A sudden ring of irritability, telling of shaken nerves, came into the tone of her voice. Giles had a swift sense of injustice; he remembered the misery it had cost him not to answer those letters.

“I obeyed you, I would have given the world to write.”

“You should have gone on obeying me. Why have you come back? Why?” She spoke as if under the spur of some unbearable thought. She stamped her foot on the soft carpet, and her dark eyes were full of resentment. Giles winced, his head dropped upon his chest. This was the other side of the question; she made him feel guilty of an act of brutality. He asked himself why he had come back to torture her? Because he, a strong man, could not bear pain! The poorness of the reason struck him for the first time. As always, he admitted the other side at its full value without question.

“I love you,” was all he found to say.

“You love me! But you don’t care how you hurt me.” She pressed her lips tightly together. He could not help the swift thought, “She is cruel,” and hated himself for it in the same breath. He put his clenched hands against his forehead, and the words escaped him—

“Is that all? All—after——”

“What more do you want? What more do you expect?”

He gazed long and fixedly at her with the searching, upward look in his eyes peculiar to them. He could see nothing behind the mask of her resentful face. It fixed a barrier between them—impenetrable. Through the half-open window a puff of wind strayed in, and the petals of some flowers upon the table stirred; he heard the sheets of the open music on the piano rustling, and the clock ticking very solemnly. During a moment of numbness he had no other sensation. Then his mind leaped suddenly back to painful consciousness. How beautiful she was; standing, slender and motionless, between him and the light! How pitiless! So! It was all over! He had only exchanged the uncertainty of misery for the certainty of it! He made a movement with his mouth, a movement of dumb pain, and in the spasmodic motion which intolerable suffering exacts, strode past her to the window, and stood there, with his back to her, and his hands over his eyes. He tried to reason. “After all,” he thought, “a man has some pride—I’d better get away.” The subtle fragrance in the room tortured his senses—her fragrance. He stood motionless while long seconds crept by, and found—that he had no pride. He suffered so keenly that his reason refused to come to his aid. He could not think of the why or the wherefore of anything, of what it meant or did not mean; he could only feel; and he seemed to have no tongue with which to plead for himself. It was all over! He choked back a sob rising in his throat....

He had not heard any movement in the room, but he suddenly felt fingers pulling at his hands. Jocelyn was standing beside him, looking at him with pitying and mournful eyes.

“Don’t!” she said, “don’t grieve so! I’m not worth it.”

He knelt down, and clasping her knees looked up at her. She put a hand over her eyes, with a soft movement.

“I’m not worth it,” she repeated.

Suddenly his tongue was loosed, a pent-up torrent of tender words forced its way between his dry lips. He kissed her hands and her dress convulsively. She stood for a moment submitting, shivering a little, a faint colour in her cheeks, then she cried brokenly—

“Oh, get up! Get up, don’t kneel to me. How can you—when I am—what I am?” and burst into a passion of sobbing. The sense of degradation vivid in her voice wounded him like the cut of a knife. He sprang to his feet, and took her in his arms. He was quite silent, but his lips trembled. She grew quiet at last, till only little shudders running through her body, pressed against his own, told him of her emotion. They stood together at the window. In the momentary lull of his feeling, he had dim impressions of outward things—of the blue sky and the shifting play of white clouds, of the river dancing through the green of the trees in glittering patches. At intervals the melodious and doleful cry of a costermonger came to his ears through the soft air, the air that was young with the fluttering of leaves and the chirping of birds.

The spirit of the day seemed to be calling with a whisper of invitation. He felt a sudden hope spring up in his heart. Could her love be dead? He put his lips down to the level of her bent head—

“Have you no love for me, Jocelyn?” he said.

She did not answer, but bent her head a little lower, and he felt a faint pressure of her fingers upon his hand, a momentary clinging which passed, and left them cold and lifeless in his grasp. She did love him still! He felt it with a great joy. Was it possible then that she could throw away everything that made life bright, that gave it form, and colour, and meaning? And for what? For a shadow! Because of a memory. The matter-of-fact temper of his mind revolted. For a shadow! After all, nothing more!

His eyes fell upon the gleaming river.

“Come away from it all, my darling. Be my wife. Let me take you somewhere where you can forget. If you only will, you can. The world is so beautiful; I will give you everything. Won’t you come?” and he raised his eyes to her face. There were the marks of tears upon it, and her hands moved with a little gesture of helplessness, as though she found life too heavy for her. She shook her head wearily.

“Why?” he said, seizing her hands, so that she had to turn towards him. “Why?”

She did not answer at once, and when she did, every word went through him.

“You want me to take her place, and you say, forget? How could I? Forget! In her place. Ah! don’t ask me!”

From the living pain in her voice, he had a gleam of insight that to her the shadow was substance, the substance only shadows, and he said in a voice that shook, in spite of all his efforts to keep it calm and persuasive—

“Think, darling, can it be worse together than alone? Won’t you think of me a little?” He wanted to break into passionate words telling of his starvation, but somehow he couldn’t; they refused to come, they rose indeed to his lips, but vanished ashamed and unspoken.

“Think of you? I do think of you. Do you think I don’t know, that I haven’t thought and thought? I can’t trust myself. I should only make you wretched—I’m not good enough. It’s too strong for me—I can’t forget. I’m not good enough. Can’t you see what it is you’re asking of me?”

His grasp tightened upon her hands. In spite of himself he did see her side of the question, something of what it meant to her proud and sensitive nature to stand in the place of the dead woman; it did not move his passionate desire by the breadth of one single hair, but it deprived him suddenly of the power of fighting her with words. He seemed to see beforehand all her answers to his arguments, all the pitiless irony of the situation. It was not in him to thrust his convictions down the throats of other people. He wished to, but he was not able. The fatal turn of his mind was always to see the other view. He could only say—

“For my sake, dear.”

“It can’t be—it can’t be; it would kill me, perhaps both of us. I know what would come. Her place! Horrible!” She shivered as if with deadly cold, and shut her eyes. Then she said quite calmly—

“Some day, you see, it would be too strong for me, I should leave you, or kill myself. I can’t love as you do; if I could, perhaps it would be different. I know myself, I’m shallow, not good enough for you.”

In the expression of her face fear, pity, and wounded pride were strangely blended, and her voice was measured and even. He had an immense inclination to break into harsh laughter. Not good enough for him! What a reason! It was as if some one, holding a cup of water to the lips of a man dying of thirst, had snatched it away, with the words, “Don’t drink, it is not cold enough.”

He repeated the words—

“Not good enough!” In his desperation he turned away from her, and walked up and down the room.

“So!” burst from him suddenly and very bitterly, “it was only an episode! All our pain, all my life, all yours, for it is all yours, I tell you,—only an episode!” It was the only harsh thing he had ever said to her—a betrayal of his inmost instinct—a treachery to his nature. He knew it; and dropping into a chair, rested his head in his hands, muttering, “Forgive me.”

There was a tense silence in the room.... Jocelyn came quickly from the window. She sank upon her knees at his side.

“I can’t!” she sobbed. “I would—but oh! I can’t. Anything but that!” and she pressed her face against him.

“Not that, dearest! I will be anything else to you—anything. I love you! But not that—oh! not that.”

What was she saying? The blood throbbed in his veins; the perfume of her breath was on his cheek, he could feel the warmth of her body against his knee. The whole vehemence of his passion stirred within him. The temptation was such that he writhed; his senses reeled with the desire to gain, and lose, all things in her embrace. His instinct told him it was ruin for him and for her, but what did it matter?... He threw his arms round her. She rubbed her cheek against his hand with a little tender movement, and he felt it suddenly wet. A pure and great pity took hold of him. “God help me!” he thought. “Not again!” He got up on to his feet, and raised her, smoothing the loosened hair back from her temples.

“No, no!” he said gently. “No, no! Anything rather——”

He felt he was talking to himself, not to her, that he was suddenly thrust back into utter isolation; and he knew that he must get away quickly before the maddened throbbing in his blood overmastered him.

“This will make you ill, sweet,” he said, “I had better go—yes—I’ll write. God bless you! Good-bye!”

He did not know how he got out of the room, how he left her, or where. Everything swam in a mist before his eyes, but at last he found himself on the stairs, going down slowly and deliberately, and trying to pull his gloves on to his hands. A man passed him at the foot of the stairs, and stopped in his ascent to look after him.

CHAPTER XXV

“This, what you have done to Miss Ley, to that angel. What is it you have said to her to make her cry? Pardieu! C’est un peu trop fort.”

Giles’s face quivered at the words, then was instantly hard again. He looked at the other, with his jaw thrust forward.

“What is it to you?” he said.

He felt grateful for the sensation of anger. By nature very gentle, at this moment he felt a savage enjoyment.

“You have hurt her, I will not have it; do you understand me, you—you?”

“Ah!” said Giles, and he looked very dangerous. Each man felt that all the old antagonism between them was being compressed into the few words they spoke.

Nielsen continued, tugging at his moustache, his face white with anger.

“What you have done you shall not again do; I will take care of it—I. You are not fit to speak to her, vous êtes un lâche, vous avez tué votr’ femme!” The last words seemed to explode in his mouth before they found vent—he had probably never intended to utter them.

Giles did not move, he only gritted his teeth together.

“Perhaps!” he said between them. At the word, so measured and so strange, Nielsen’s hands dropped inertly to his sides, his face expressed a sudden blank amazement, all his anger seemed to evaporate in surprise. A barrel organ was playing within a few feet of where they stood, the man, as he turned the dismal handle, grinned and kept holding a greasy hat towards them.

Giles, taking a step forward, spoke in a low voice—

“Look here, Mr. Nielsen,” he said, “I don’t take this sort of thing from you or any other man. Get out of my way, please, or by God, I’ll throw you.”

He stepped past Nielsen, who involuntarily moved to one side, and made no attempt to detain him. His face still expressed a blank astonishment, and he was endeavouring to fix his eyeglass into his eye as a short-sighted man does when he is puzzled. Giles strode along. The organ-grinder muttered: “Buon giorno, Signore,” thrusting his hat almost into his face, an intruding triviality which was quite acceptable to him.

He walked quickly eastwards. The incident with Nielsen had, for the moment, done him good; he thought grimly of the sudden change which had come over the Swede’s broad face. It served as a temporary distraction to his thoughts. But the next instant he was pursued again by a dull sense of utter unhappiness. Twice he actually turned round, and began to retrace his steps towards the Mansions, and each time his mind in the end was bent against it by the feeling, light and unsubstantial as a feather, that it would be ridiculous to go back now. He knew that it formed no part of the real balancing of his reasons, for or against, but there it was, a chance surface feeling just sufficient to turn the scale. He thought too of Nielsen, with a sensation of jealousy—which he knew all the time to be unreal. What was he doing there? What did his interference mean? He tried to bring the feeling to his own support, but it slipped away from him with the memory of the words Jocelyn had spoken. “I love you—I will be anything to you, anything but that——”

He got back to his hotel at last, having formed and reformed resolutions a dozen times. He drank some more brandy. He felt so miserable that he thought he could understand the Canadian Indian, who will drink red ink because it gives him a feeling of warmth inside. A benevolent State passes a law against the sale of red ink. There was no law, however, to prevent him from drinking brandy, except the invincible law of his own intelligence, which he preferred to stifle for the moment. In spite of the warmth of the weather he felt cold. He ordered more brandy and a fire in his bedroom; he went up, sat down before it, and shivered.

Jacopo, whose eyes glistened at the sight of the fire, came up to him with letters. He stared at them blankly, and left them unopened.

“Will the Signore dine?”

“No, Jacopo, I am too busy.”

He looked at his own empty, outstretched hands, and felt faintly amused. After the boy had gone he sat there a long time, staring stupidly into the fire. Then he drank some more brandy, which seemed to have no effect upon him, and began to stride up and down the room. He must write to her. His ideas were all blurred and misty in his head—he could not get them into focus. He sat down at the writing-table, and took up a pen. He wrote a few words, crossed them out, began again, tore the sheet, took another, and at the end of a quarter of an hour had written a whole sentence. Then suddenly he seemed to know what he wanted to say, and wrote steadily for a long time. This was what he said:—

The letter ended abruptly with those words. He made a fair copy of it, and read it through. While writing it he had had a certain feeling of satisfaction. He was at any rate doing something. But now, reading it, he thought “It is cold: It will never move her.”

He sealed and addressed it, and as he did so he felt a great disgust with it and with himself. He stood with one foot on the grate holding it in his hand. The dying fire glowed with a sombre redness. He dropped the letter suddenly on the table with a groan, bent his forehead against the mantelpiece, and stared into the grate. Let it go! He could do no more. He looked at his watch, it was already ten o’clock. He felt very cold. There was still some brandy left and he drank it. With sudden energy he undressed, and got into bed. He thought, “I’ll be done with it all; I’ll get away to the East, there’s always something going on there. Lots to see and do.” He had a momentary glow in his heart; then he thought: “Without her! O God! Without her! It’s all empty!” And he turned his face to the wall.

. . . . . . . .

The next morning he sent Jacopo with his letter, telling him to give it into Miss Ley’s own hands, and knowing that he would be obeyed. The boy came back about noon.

“What did she say?” Giles asked.

“She thanked me, Signore.”

“She gave you no message? Did she read the letter?”

The boy shook his head mournfully. From constant living with his master in lonely places he had an intuitive knowledge of the workings of his mind, and his own impressionable nature was wont to adapt itself accordingly.

“How did she look?”

“Her eyes were big and dark, Signore.”

With that presentment of her he was obliged to be content. He sent Jacopo to take berths for Singapore, in the superstition, that if he prepared for the worst the best might come, the same feeling that makes a man take an umbrella out upon a fine day. No day that he had ever spent was quite as terrible as that day of waiting. He kept buying things for tropical use, telling himself that everything was settled, that she could not come, but he expected her all the time. The day dragged to its end.

She did not come.

On Saturday morning he drank brandy for breakfast—smoking was no use, but brandy was a good thing. The last year had been of use to him, he did not take trouble so resentfully. He was quiet under it, it seemed more a matter of course.

The brown was fading out of his face, he was hollow-eyed, and moved like a man recovering from an illness. He said to the hotel porter, a man who remembered him as a boy—

“If a lady calls for me or sends a message, a young lady with dark hair and eyes, that is the name, but perhaps she won’t give a name,” and he handed him a piece of paper with Jocelyn’s name written on it—“Wire to me at Plymouth, Malta, Brindisi. I am going by the steamship Rangoon, there are written directions.” He gave the man a ten-pound note. “It’s important.”

The man’s countenance remained unmoved, but he was touched.

“I wish you luck, sir,” he said; “you’re not looking well, begging your pardon.”

“Oh, I’m all right, thanks,” said Giles with a smile.

A couple of hours later he went on board. That afternoon the Rangoon rounded the Foreland.

CHAPTER XXVI

Nielsen, in a white flannel suit, sat squarely on the rowing thwarts. Now and then he dipped his sculls in the water stiffly, from the elbows, with a motion somewhat suggestive of the “deep-sea” stroke. He had on white shoes, and a broad white hat was pushed back from his forehead. His eyeglass was screwed into his eye, giving his face an expression of anxious concentration, ludicrously out of keeping with his attire and his occupation.

Jocelyn sat opposite him in the stern; the rudder lines were crossed idly in her lap, and she leant sideways, dangling a hand out of the boat and making little signs of the cross in the cool water. Sometimes she caught the young leaf of a water-lily plant, and then she would touch it softly with her fingers as if loth to let it go. She wore a blue skirt and a white silk blouse, which clung softly round the lines of her figure. Her jacket was thrown over the back of the seat, and a Japanese sunshade of a soft apricot colour lay unopened across her feet. She looked tired and languid; on her face there was a grave pre-occupied look, and the corners of her mouth drooped a little.

Nielsen glanced over his shoulder. At the end of the long vista of rippling water and bending trees, the lock stretched, a black and sturdy line across the narrowing river. In the centre of it the figure of the lock-keeper could be seen leaning, in his shirt sleeves, over the railing of the foot-bridge.

“Shall we go through the lock?” said Nielsen.

Jocelyn looked up.

“I don’t think there will be time,” she said, “our train goes at half-past six. We passed a lovely backwater just now, let’s go back to that and have tea.”

Nielsen turned the boat round, and sculled slowly up-stream. He did not look quite at home in a boat, and he finished each stroke with a precision suggestive of earnest endeavour. It was too early in the year for river-folk, and with the exception of a fisherman’s punt, their boat was the only one on the reach. Nielsen pulled through the entrance of the backwater, and ran the boat under a willow bank which formed a shelving islet in the centre. Jocelyn made tea. She handed Nielsen a cup, and he sat, very silent for him, alternately sipping it and puffing at a cigarette.

“What a heavenly day!” she said, with a sigh. Leaning back on the cushions of her seat, she glanced from side to side as if she would drink in to the full the calm beauty of the world. A little bird, sitting on an osier twig, cocked its head on one side, and chirped feebly—an answering chirp came from the branch above her head.

The rushes and the feathery grasses on the banks quivered as if the breeze were kissing them. A cuckoo called, another answered; two wood-pigeons flighted together across to the woods on the other side; a distant weir murmured gently, the willow branches over her head echoed it faintly, and the sun, breaking through the trees, made soft, white holes of light in the running water. A spirit of perfect harmony seemed to be looking gently at her from everywhere around. Her face clouded, and she made a quick movement with her hands. A startled water-rat dropped with a splash into the stream, and swam in a strenuous line for the other bank, where it scrambled to the mouth of its hole and sat calmly looking at her. Two swans with a brood of dusky infants paddled majestically past, hissing faintly; they disappeared up a narrow passage of reed-grown water, leaving tiny eddies for a memory.

A furrow came between her brows. Nielsen, watching her, wondered. He sent a cloud of smoke through his lips.

“What is it you are thinking of?” he said at last. Jocelyn gave a little start, as if she had been brought back from very far.

“I was wondering,” she said, “what it all means.” She clasped her hands together, with their backs towards her. It was a motion that seemed to embrace all that was around them, and her eyes glanced at him with a troubled expression. The blue smoke from his cigarette was melting on all sides into the soft air.

“Even the smoke!” she said to herself quietly.

Nielsen did not answer—he did not understand. Jocelyn rested her chin in her hand; she was thinking: “Why isn’t there a place for me to fill? Why am I always alone? Everything I see has a home, all the birds, and the trees, and the beasts, everything has its mate and its place. I am out in the cold—in the cold, always in the cold.”

Nielsen was bending slightly forward on the seat, staring at her with his eyes screwed up. He held his cup in one hand and his cigarette in the other, and he seemed to have forgotten the existence of both.

There was a long silence, and the boat swayed once with some unseen stir of the water.

Jocelyn said suddenly—

“Do you believe in free will?”

Nielsen put down his cup, a little surprised at the sudden question, and threw away the end of his cigarette; it floated gently away from them, and stuck in some driftweed.

“Yes,” he said, “and—no.”

Jocelyn waited. He cleared his throat.

“That is a verry difficult question, but I think it is like this, don’t you know. One to another of us, has frree will; that is, you know, in our social relations. Looked at from the—er—the narrow point of view, there is of course frree will, yes—frree will, and we make use of it, as we are weak or strrong. But,” and he spread his hands, and looking fixedly at the bank, “there is quite another point of view, don’t you see, equally trrue; of course, we are all at the ends of long chains of—er—of circumstance. Whatever we do, you know, is only what comes out of that—it is all settled before, so that, of course, in that sense there is no frree will. For instance, my dear young lady, if you choose to do something unexpected, it is rreally the expected thing you are doing all the time, because the chains of your circumstances and your tempérrament would not permit you to do otherwise. I am afrraid I do not explain what I mean verry well.”

Jocelyn did not speak, she leaned forward with her chin on her hand gazing downwards.

Nielsen, with a puzzled look, rubbed his hands softly together. “Of course,” he began again, “that is a verry brroad view, too brroad for everyday wear; it is——”

Jocelyn, without looking up, interrupted him—

“And do you believe in morality?”

Nielsen sighed.

“Ah! What is morrality?”

He plucked a long blade of spikey grass from the bank, and said, twisting it in his fingers—

“What we call morrality—I believe in it,” and he shrugged his shoulders. “Certainly. Why? Because there it is, don’t you know? One can see it, it is quite thick, one can cut it with a knife. Every peoples has its own, and every peoples disobeys it more or less, don’t you know; that is natural.” He took out another cigarette, and began to nod his head up and down.

“Yes, yes,” he said, continuing to nod his head. Presently he went on, fixing his eyes on the driftweed, where the end of the cigarette was giving up the ghost of its tobacco, and speaking to himself rather than to her. “Ah! it is a little thing, our morrality; but there is a big morrality, yes, yes, a big morrality; over there, don’t you know,” he pointed with his spike of grass towards the sweep of glistening water and the woods beyond.

“Over there!” he repeated, “everrywhere! Yes, yes, Nature is verry morral. Ah! she is big, but she is morral. She has to be, you know. Look at that grass, my dear young lady,” he said, holding up his spike of grass, and drawing it once or twice gently through his fingers, “she can’t play frreaks, she has got her place, you know. It is wonderful to think, isn’t it, if that little blade of grass vanished quite away, all the world would come undone. Ah! I think that is wonderful, that is morrality.” He lit his cigarette and puffed at it thoughtfully.

“I think you know, everry man and woman has his place according to the big morrality—so have flies”—he went on, stabbing with his spike at an early fly which had settled on the rim of his cup—“and in spite of everrything they come to it at the last.” He did not see Jocelyn’s face. A wave of colour had rushed suddenly into it, and her eyes looked eager and startled; her lips moved—she was repeating to herself his words. A chance current swept the disembodied cigarette gently back past the boat, the paper and tobacco floated apart, pathetically close to each other.

“Ah!” said Nielsen, “there you are, my frriend; when we come apart like you, perrhaps we shall know all about it—this morrality.” He straightened himself on his seat with a sudden jerk, and looking at Jocelyn remarked in an apologetic drawl—

“I am afrraid I have bored you drreadfully.”

She was leaning back again on her cushions, twisting her fingers in her lap in the way peculiar to her when she was troubled or thinking deeply. Her face was still flushed, and her dark eye-lashes almost rested on her cheeks. A faint scent of May-blossom drifted to them from the bank. Nielsen threw away his cigarette. His eyes began to glow, his face suddenly lost its habitual apathy—the attitude of his mind was no longer leisurely. Indeed, it had not been leisurely for eight days, in fact, since he had passed Legard upon the stairs. Legard was gone, he had found that out, but he was still in a hurry.

His cheeks grew slightly red, a rare thing with him, and the lines deepened about his eyes. He bent forward as far as he could upon his seat, and the boat rocked slightly from side to side. He kept his eyes fixed upon her face. The colour was coming and going upon it. He fancied that her eyes were soft under their drooping lids, though he could not see them. Did she know that he was looking at her? Could she be thinking of him?

The long fingers were still twisting in and out of each other upon her knee. He put out his hand and touched one of them gently.

“I am waiting,” he said; “I have been waiting so long.”

She raised her eyes, and he was astonished at them. They were so large, and they changed as he looked at them. At first they were full of shrinking, almost of fear, then suddenly they blazed with excitement, which died away in a gentle look. She did not draw her hand away, she did not seem to know that he was touching her.

“I love you,” he said. “Will you not marry me? I am always waiting.”

It was curious that, generally so full of phrase and gesture, he was obliged to be quite simple in this matter. Her face did not change, but the corners of her mouth shaped themselves into a queer little smile. She did not speak at first, then she said softly—

“Wait a little longer,” and her eyes seemed to be looking at something beyond him; “wait till to-morrow morning; I promise to tell you then—everything comes to its own place at the last, you know.” His own words, but they sounded strange to him, as if used in some sense, he did not know what, which he had not intended for them. His face became puckered with the confusion of his thoughts. He bent it forward, and raising her hand, kissed it gently. She let him do it, but he was left with the feeling that she had known nothing of it.

Presently she rose suddenly to her feet, and stretched herself with a little shake, as if freeing herself from some weight. The colour rushed into her cheeks.

“Come,” she said, “it’s time to go.”

Nielsen got out his sculls, and pushed out into the narrow stream. He said nothing more; with the kiss he had given her hand, he seemed to have relapsed into his usual patient resignation.

Every breath of wind had gone, the swallows were flying low, the hush of a perfect silence lay upon the river, yet there was felt rather than heard a mysterious singing, lost behind the veil of the blue sky—the voice of innumerable larks.

The sun, dropping into the west, laid a touch of warm light on Jocelyn’s cheek when she turned and, looking behind her, as the boat shot through the narrow entrance, grasped at a drift of thistledown floating aimlessly just out of her reach.

“That was like me,” she said to herself softly.

Nielsen, occupied with his sculls, did not catch the words. All the way to Reading she was either moodily silent or talked with spasmodic gaiety. She kept saying nervously, “You don’t think we shall lose the train, do you?”

As they were walking to the station from the river, she suddenly stood still, and said to Nielsen—

“D’you remember that picture we saw at Watts’s studio—the ‘Paolo’?”

“Yes,” he answered, “a drreadful picture.”

“It was not dreadful,” she said, “it was beautiful—you don’t see the meaning in it. I didn’t then, but I do now. There was ‘union’ in that picture—‘union’ in spite of everything else. I never realised it before.”

Before he could answer, she started to walk again. He did not understand her.

It was nearly half-past eight before they got to the Mansions. Jocelyn asked him to come in and have some supper, but she did not appear herself, sending a message from her room to say that she was very tired, and was going straight to bed. Mrs. Travis accepted the excuse with a wry face—she disliked the trouble of entertaining single-handed; she made no remonstrance, however. During the last few days, she had found Jocelyn so variable in her moods, so silent and restless, that for the sake of comfort she mildly accepted any conduct at her hands. It had so happened that she had heard nothing of Legard’s reappearance, but she had been acutely conscious of something disturbing, for which she neither knew, nor cared to know, the reason. She never dived below the surface.

Nielsen took his departure early. The paramount impression on his mind as he drove back to his hotel was that of uneasy perplexity; it did not, however, prevent him from sleeping soundly.

The next morning he rose early, and dressed very carefully. He made a good breakfast, eating it slowly and earnestly, as if he wished to place each morsel where it would be of the greatest service to him. During breakfast he entered into conversation, over the top of his newspaper, with an old gentleman at the adjoining table, to whom he gave much useful advice as to the treatment of lumbago. He had never had it himself. When he had finished his paper, he went out.

It was a beautiful morning, and he moved leisurely along with his square walk, turning every now and then to look at somebody, generally a lady, and removing his grey top-hat politely if he chanced to brush against any one in the crowded street. He stopped at his hairdresser’s, and went in. He had his hair cut, discussing affably with the man the political situation, and a new instrument for crimping hair. When he came out again he drew his gloves on to his round, freckled hands, and hailed a hansom. He directed the man to “Wills & Segar’s,” where he bought a beautiful bouquet of roses and lilies, and an orchid for his own buttonhole. He lectured the florist for two minutes upon the injustice of demanding eighteenpence for his orchid, and gave half-a-crown to a ragged child he found on the doorstep. He told the cabman to drive him to the Mansions. As the cab bowled down to the Embankment, his pale, broad face under its white hat looked out over the bouquet with the weary, anxious expression of a dog sitting on its hind legs.

Arrived at the Mansions, he went up the stairs slowly, holding his bouquet carefully in front of him, and stopping at the top to wipe his forehead. He felt very nervous. The maid, who let him in, looked scared and troubled, and he detained her a moment in the passage to inquire after her health. He was such a constant visitor that he was admitted to the drawing-room without special announcement.

He placed his bouquet upon the table, and rubbed his hands together. A door opened behind him, and Mrs. Travis came into the room. She was incongruously majestic in black silk and a rose-coloured bonnet with hummingbirds in it. She did not shake hands, but held a note out to him. Nielsen looked at her face as he took it. It gave him the impression that she had somehow neglected to finish it that morning. It was, so to speak, patchy, and there were strange and sudden wrinkles round her mouth and eyes. This was alarming to him, as no words could have been. He bowed over her hand, and opened his note.

Mrs. Travis said nothing, but stood in front of him, puffing her lips. His note was from Jocelyn, and it was in these words:—