When Tom Huntly rode home with a big bag of game after a satisfactory dinner with a crony it was nearly twelve o’clock. Yet to his surprise the whole house was lit up, and there was an uneasy sense of motion and confusion. He dismounted and called for a servant. Suddenly he heard a woman crying. He let the horse go and walked into the house.

“How can you expect me to go to her? No, I won’t! I won’t! Oh, it’s horrid! it’s terrible!—just when I was so happy too! No, doctor, go and sit with her till Tom comes! Oh, my God! . . . Doctor! here he is!”

“Where is my wife?” said Tom Huntly. The words sounded to his ears like a quotation; it was absurd to suppose they could be his. He did not look at Gladys, dissolved in frightened tears over the inappropriateness of the angel Death. The doctor spoke with the unreal cheerfulness of his profession.

“Another hæmorrhage, Major Huntly. It is over now, but you must expect to find her a little weak.” Then, as Tom Huntly uncomprehendingly followed him, “It is my duty to tell you that I consider her case serious—very.” A nurse stood by the bed fanning her. A sudden remembrance of the boy’s birth (the boy at Eton) swept over him.

She looked very young, with that old, bright something in her eyes that the last ten years of the world had managed to dim. She whispered his name.

“Tom, come a little nearer.” He knelt beside her, and put his arms around her. They had wasted a lot of time. “I wanted you so—Tom,” she whispered. “It’s been such a poor sort of thing, hasn’t it? What we might have been to each other, I mean? But it’s been all my fault, dear. I never knew a man that could have made me half—so happy. There are not many women who could say that of their husbands in our—world—are there, Tom?” She coughed till the slow breath came back. “So you’ll not worry, Tom?” she gasped.

“Mary—Mary, darling—you won’t leave me and the boy?” It was frightful this want of time. She smiled bravely.

“I’m so glad you care,” she murmured. “Tell him—Tom—that his mother says she wants him to be—a gentleman—like his father.” The nurse stepped forward, but the doctor shook his head.

“There is no need,” he said, but he meant “There is no hope.”

“Ah, Mary! Mary!” She opened her eyes again: she was much too tired to be frightened of death.

God takes the ignorant, plucky souls who have fought the good fight, not quite knowing why, very peacefully to Himself.

“I should like,” she gasped, “more air.” The nurse came towards her bed with the fan in her hand, but before she could reach her a gust of wind strangely cool and fresh swung the curtains of the window, and Mary Huntly was dead, having passed from a life which stifled, limited and kept back all the highest and noblest in her to beyond the horizon where “Over all this weary world of ours breathes diviner air.” The room was very quiet and still. The doctor after a few words to the nurse, engaging her for another case, went off to his quarters.

Gladys composed two heart-broken notes to Jack Hurstly in her sleep, and Tom Huntly left alone with the body of the woman he loved fought the old fight with the grimness of things.

“Too late!” is a phrase holding the eternal knell of life. It sounds like a muffled peal even to those who hear it lightly said. To those who have lived through it, the worst of the battle passes before their eyes again. Many, perhaps blissfully, miss all that it means. They dare not, or cannot, face remorse. That they themselves have pulled down their house about their ears seems to them an infamous impossibility. They forget all their own cruel words, long neglect and unfair judgment, and only remember flashes of sunlight which they connect—probably quite falsely—with themselves. Their “yesterdays look backward with a smile.”

Gladys never realized even as much as a tinge of shame. She cried a great deal. Mary knew how to manage things so beautifully, and, better still how to manage Tom. There was a certain heavy awkwardness about Tom that Gladys didn’t like. It had the effect of putting her in the wrong, which was, on the face of it, absurd. Also he wouldn’t do what she wished without coarsely asking “Why.” Altogether, Mary had taken the edge off a difficulty; and Gladys hated difficulties almost as much as she did explanations.

It was so dreadfully trying, too—Mary’s dying just then! Another week, perhaps, and it would not have mattered so much. The thought forced her to look into the glass. The crying had done no great damage; she would dress entirely in white. Jack would come round soon after breakfast to find out how Mary was. Oh, poor Mary!

There was something so bald and primitive and earnest about death; whatever happened she would not be taken to see the body. She went out into the dining-room. Suddenly she began to be afraid of meeting Tom.

Tom had passed the night of a thousand years; it comes once or even twice in a lifetime. He was looking very old and haggard. When Gladys came into the room he winced as if he had touched a snake. It was a very awkward meeting. Tom would have gone out of the room and said nothing, but there was breakfast—and the servants. By-and-bye there was only breakfast, and Gladys sitting where Mary used to sit. She was thinking that at least he might have shaved, and wondering if she dared to speak to him. It was very hot and still.

“Did you know that Mary had had a hæmorrhage before?” he asked in the dangerously level tones of passion curbed. Gladys burst into tears.

“How can you speak of her in that heartless way, Tom?” she cried. He gave a queer little sound that might have been a laugh.

“Answer me,” he said. The question was how much did he know, and what was the safest lie? He saved her the trouble. “Very well, you did know, then! Now how long has this been going on?”

“It was easy enough to keep it from you, Tom!” she said, with the brutality of a weak thing cornered. “You never took the trouble to find out. Poor Mary made me promise not to tell you. She told me first in England that her temperature rose every night, but that she didn’t intend to make herself an invalid for that. She said you were the sort of man who hated invalids.” Tom broke a paper-cutter he had been playing with on the table. “I don’t know how many hæmorrhages she had—not very many; certainly not one for a long time——”

“Certainly not one yesterday morning,” he interrupted slowly, a little pause between each word. “Before you went to the picnic?” Gladys looked desperately at the paper-cutter. There was something in the psalms about a green bay-tree that occurred to her, not of course in connection with herself.

“No, she never said so. She wanted particularly to go to the picnic; she said (who was it that said women are no inventors?) that she would be so dull without you. I tried to persuade her not to go, but she would——”

“I wonder,” said Tom meditatively, “how many lies you have been telling me? Don’t get angry, it really isn’t worth while, and it doesn’t matter in the least, you know, only you had better save some for your old age. You can pack your things, as we are going home next week.” He rose drearily from the table and made his way out of the room; he cared so very little about anything.

He felt as physically tired as after a forced march. An endless expanse of days and months and years passed before his eyes—there seemed so much time now.

Suddenly he thought of the boy!—Mary’s boy and his. He straightened himself up; there was still somebody left to do that for. For Mary’s sake he would devote himself to the boy; it was tremendously worth while. He sat down and painstakingly wrote a letter that made his own tears come and the boy’s when he read it, and drew the two together as nothing but sorrow and loneliness and love can ever do. It followed so naturally and plainly that if Mary wanted her son to be like his father, the father must try to be a better sort of chap. Remorse receded, and took with it the burden of hopelessness.

Gladys went into the garden, where it was coolest and shadiest, and sat, a lovely and pathetic figure, leaning, it is true, against a cushion with her listless hands in her lap.

So Captain Hurstly found her. She had written the little heart-broken note, and she rose to meet him with quivering lips.

“Oh, Jack, Jack!” she murmured—in an abandonment of grief Christian names fall so naturally, and it sounded very sweet to Jack—“how good of you to come!”

“Good of me?”—he held both her hands; she had given them to him unconsciously—“I think it was awfully sweet of you to see me—I’m so sorry, dear—so sorry!” The tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked very pretty when she cried, and it was very difficult not to kiss her.

“Mary was everything I had in the world,” she said withdrawing her hands with a swift blush, and sinking back on the cushions again—“mother, sister, friend. And Tom—Tom has been so brutal to me Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!”

“Tom brutal to you?”

“Yes! he hates me. I’m sure I don’t know why. Perhaps he feels now he might have done more for Mary. She told me often how terribly lonely she was before I came to her. We are to go back to England next week, and I know too well what that means!”

“What does it mean?” he asked looking at her long and carefully, the white dress that fell away from the little fair throat, the pathetic quiver of the dainty mouth, the hopeless, hunted look in the big dark eyes.

“Oh, I can’t tell you!” she cried with a sudden gasp. “Don’t—don’t ask me!”

“I must know,” he said firmly; “tell me, please.” The color swept over her cheeks, her eyes faltered and fell before his, her hands trembled in her lap.

“Tom wants me to marry,” she said at last, “a man I can never—love.” She covered her face with her hands. “Go away!” she cried piteously. “Isn’t it hard enough already without making me tell—you!” She gasped the word containing her passionate heart. She was in earnest now, that was why she hid her face; she knew that she would not be so pretty.

The word that fell in the hot still morning lived ever afterwards in Jack’s mind with the heavy scent of tropical flowers, the restless quiver of the air, and the sharp metallic stroke of a coppersmith’s beak near by. She was unhappy, and pretty, and clinging—and she loved him. Had he any right to make her love him so, and then leave her to a bitter and miserable marriage? So pity spoke, and the beauty of the girl’s lithe form, the curl of hair just escaping the uplifted hand, the delicate scent she used, the whole scene with its setting of the old hot Indian garden spoke to passion. And when pity and passion speak at the same moment, reason, sense, and self-control fade fast away. He took her hands from her face; she looked at him as a startled child would look; he felt the beating of her heart; he drew her closer to him, and she made no resistance.

“Gladys, Gladys, will you be happy with me, darling?” he asked her.

“Oh, Jack!” she cried, “you never even asked me—if I loved you!”

An hour later, radiant, triumphant, cruel, Gladys stood before Tom Huntly.

“I am not going back to England with you,” she said. “I am going to marry Jack Hurstly. I shall stay with Mrs. Collins till the wedding, and come home with Jack, for good.” Tom Huntly looked at her, alive and young! and upstairs lay the body of his wife, and the girl could be so happy!

“Are you quite heartless?” he asked wearily. The insolence of her joy turned to weak self-pity, and she began to cry again.

“Oh, poor, poor Mary!” she sobbed. “She so wanted to help me choose my trousseau!” Tom left the room, shutting the door after him.

Jack went back to his quarters. He wondered why the scent she wore seemed so familiar. He remembered at last that Edith le Mentier had used it too, and he remembered at the same time with equal irrelevancy that Muriel never used scent.

That evening he had a long talk with Tom Huntly. His friendship with Mary had been a deep and real one, and he thought Gladys must have been mistaken about Tom’s brutality. He was not that sort of man; and he thought Tom was equally mistaken when he said rather doubtfully, “I hope you will be happy with Gladys; she’s not half up to the form of that other girl of yours.”

Any reference to Muriel was peculiarly irritating to him just now.

It also seemed that people who knew Gladys very well did not appreciate her so deeply as people who knew her slightly—a trait which is certainly a trifle unfortunate in a man’s future wife. But he had burned his boats, and he remembered how pretty she was, and tried to think it very natural that the day after his engagement he should find his fiancée playing love-songs on the piano to her very distant connection, Jim Musgrave.

Jim looked at his uncle and said nothing. The two men were smoking on the piazza. It was late evening, the day before Major Huntly was to sail for England. He had just mentioned Gladys’ engagement, and found that his nephew knew nothing about it. Jim grew rather white, and the two puffed steadily at their pipes again.

“She ought to have told you,” said his uncle at last. “Does it make a lot of difference?”

“Yes,” said Jim laconically.

“I don’t want to bother you, old fellow, but I think I ought to know did she give you any reason to think——” Jim shook his head.

“No—I was simply—a fool,” he said shortly; and then he added with a rather bitter smile “she wasn’t.”

“But now, you know,” said his uncle, “you’ll shake it off, I hope; there’s as good fish in the sea, you know, as ever came out of it.”

“And they can stay there,” said Jim.

“But you don’t mean you still care for her?”

“Yes, sir, I always shall—whatever she does!”

The night was radiant. Full in the starlit sky the moon poured forth a clear stream of light, bringing out the colors of the world thinly, not as the sun does, but with a strange, mystic richness all her own. The two men had not poetic temperaments. Nights and moons and stars were much alike to them, and they were not thinking just then so much of each other’s sorrows, chiefly of their own. Yet there was a very warm feeling of sympathy between them, and they sat for some time longer smoking in silent fellowship. At last Jim rose to his feet.

“I shall be on duty to-morrow, sir,” he said, “so I’m afraid I shan’t see you again. You’ll drop me a line when you’ve reached home, and tell me how you find the little chap?”

“Yes, Jim. I say, old fellow, I wish Mary was here to-night, she’d know what to say to you. I’m afraid I shall only make a mull of it—you’ve faced your guns pluckily about Gladys—don’t take it too hard; and if I could do any good at seeing your colonel about getting you some shooting leave——”

“Thank you, sir,” Jim interrupted; “it’s awfully good of you. I think perhaps there’s an opening for me to go to the front again, a fellow of ‘ours’ is taken with enteric out there. I’ll get along all right—and you know what I feel about aunt Mary. She was too good a woman to make me lose my faith in them, and it wasn’t Gladys’ fault, sir—it was all mine. You won’t blame her, will you?”

“Oh, I won’t blame her,” said his uncle shortly—“good-bye.”

“Good-bye, sir,” and Jim, sternly setting his shoulders with all an Englishman’s passionate determination to suppress his emotion, passed out into the night.

It was the same beautiful world when earlier in the evening he had enjoyed a talk with his lady-love, and had said that he thought the world was really “an awfully jolly place.”

He would believe no wrong of her now—it is love’s creed for the young—only the world was a beastly hole—that was all; and it was hard lines on a chap to have to come into it whether he would or no. His grief rushed him into metaphysics, an unknown quality to Jim, and he felt more himself again when he had applied for leave—and got it—to be sent to one of the most unhealthy parts of India where there was a little row on.

Paris, always in a glitter, struck both Cynthia and Geoffrey as being almost too emphatically the same.

They separated after the dear, delicious lightness of the earliest French meal, one to go to the studios and try to get a skilled but unpractised hand in again, the other whimsically to the lecture-rooms, an atmosphere congenial, but thin and uncolored to one fresh from the active fight. So the first week passed, and quite unconsciously they began to imbibe the gay French surface, the triumphant shrug at the disagreeable, the bright intensity of the absorbing present. It was not that they forgot or felt less, but as if straight from the seriousness of the downstairs rooms they had strayed into the nursery and were playing at being children again. It was one morning on her way to the studio that Cynthia met an old acquaintance of hers, an emphatic American girl, who exclaimed in the arresting tones of her countrywomen:⁠—

“Why, Cynthia Grant, is that you!” Cynthia turned smiling.

“Millicent!” she said, “in Paris?”

“Why, certainly,” laughed Millicent gayly; “didn’t you know I was married. I couldn’t keep it up any longer. You remember Clifton Perval? He was that set! I had to give in to him! But come right away home with me, Cynthia; I’ve the most perfectly lovely flat you ever saw!” Cynthia felt suddenly human.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll give myself a holiday. So you are actually living in Paris. You always wanted to, didn’t you?”

“Want to? I was just crazy. But I let my husband know I’d be planted here or nowhere! So we just came. Launcelot will be just as pleased to see us——”

“Who is Launcelot?” laughed her friend.

“My little boy. Why, didn’t I tell you?” Her bright, keen face clouded a little. “Yes, I’ve got a child.” She paused flatly, and then fell back with ready gush on an easier line. “Don’t you think Launcelot a real pretty name? I told Clifton I’d take nothing common. No William-George effects for me! So his name is Launcelot Cummins Perval. Cummins was my name, you remember, before I married. Oh, here we are. Now isn’t it a charming location? It’s so sweet and central.” Cynthia nodded.

They were taken up almost to the top of a high building. The flat was evidently small and inexpensive. As they entered Cynthia was struck with the effect of an aggressive effort to conceal. Everything seemed unnaturally placed so as to hide something else, and to block views. There were a quantity of unnecessary things, and some very bad pictures. Millicent had never had much art though she had a great deal of talent, but the talent had deteriorated and the art vanished.

Sitting on the floor, his head a mass of dark curls, with wide, blue, astonished eyes, was a little fellow of about six, in quaint, tight black velvet trousers. He looked at his mother wistfully.

“You said he would come back,” he exclaimed sorrowfully; “but he hasn’t for hours and hours!”

“Why, Launcelot, how silly you are,” cried his mother; “come here, right away, and shake hands with this lady. Aren’t you glad to see mother come home so soon?”

The child rose obediently and advanced towards Cynthia. His eyes were heavy with the difficulty to express his thoughts, his eyebrows were knitted painfully. Cynthia’s eyes grew tender as they met his.

“What have you lost, sonnie?” she asked gently.

“Oh, it’s Tony that’s goned away,” he began eagerly.

“The child’s bird escaped out of the window this morning,” his mother explained contemptuously; “Marie opened the cage, or something. The thing squealed awfully; it’s rather a relief. Now, Launcelot, you go back to your bricks, and mother will give you some candy by-and-bye.” But Cynthia held the child’s hand.

“I want to hear about Tony,” she said firmly. The boy’s eyes were full of tears, but he controlled himself manfully.

“If God has taken him,” he said, “I think it’s very selfish. God has birds and birds, and I only had Tony.”

“Why, Launcelot Perval,” exclaimed his mother in shocked tones, “whatever do you mean? You’re a very naughty boy to talk so; mother’ll have to punish you if you say such things.” The boy ignored his mother. She might have been an intrusive fly. He brushed her away. Cynthia understood.

“But perhaps God didn’t take him,” she suggested thoughtfully. The boy’s face brightened, but clouded again.

“He lives in the sky,” he said; “and that’s where Tony went. He must have flown straight to God, and I think God ought to have sent him back,” his lips quivered again. “I’ve waited hours and hours,” he repeated mournfully.

“God has got such a lot of things to do,” she said, “perhaps He will send him back to-morrow. Don’t you think you could wait till to-morrow, Launcelot?”

“Why, really, Cynthia,” laughed her friend, “I can’t let you encourage the child in such notions. Now, look here, Launcelot, if you will be a good boy, and not worry any more, I’ll ask papa to buy you another Tony.” She was a good-natured woman, but she missed the point.

“Oh, but there isn’t another Tony,” he said looking at his mother reproachfully; “there aren’t two mes nor two Gods, mama?”

“Oh, do be quiet, Launcelot,” she cried falling back on the dense weapon of her authority; “of course there aren’t two Gods. I shall send for Marie to take you away!”

This threat closed the discussion. The child went back to the window, and gazed wistfully at the roofs, still wondering at his unanswered prayer.

Millicent showed Cynthia her flat. Cynthia began to understand the pathetic concealments. They were very poor.

“We manage to have good times, though,” Millicent explained. “We get around and see things. Men don’t like women being too economical, and I don’t believe in it myself. They just spend and spend, and then make a row over the bills. I don’t see why we shouldn’t spend too; it don’t make much more of a row, for they put it down to us anyway! But it’s very unfortunate our having that child!” She cast an impatient glance at the little fellow in his odd-shaped, out-grown clothes. “Sometimes I positively don’t know which way to turn. His father and I don’t know what to make of him—he’s that funny! It doesn’t rightly seem as if he was our child!”

“He’s a dear little fellow,” said Cynthia pityingly; “I wish you would let me take him home for this afternoon, I would bring him back at bedtime. I shall be all alone.”

“Why, that’s real sweet of you, Cynthia,” said Mrs. Perval. “Clifton and I want so much to have a nice afternoon with some French friends of ours—Monsieur le Comte de Mouselle and his sister. He’s the most perfectly charming man. Do you know him?” Cynthia shook her head. Millicent tittered. “He’s just wild about me,” she said, “but of course I know how to deal with him. They can’t take me in, you bet! but I’ll be real pleased,” she added, seeing Cynthia’s attention wander, “to let you have Launcelot for this afternoon as soon as Marie can get him ready.” Ten minutes later the two left the flat. Mrs. Perval, her hands on her hips, talking to them as they went.

“Now, Launcelot, be sure you’re a good boy, and mind what you say. Cynthia, don’t let him worry you—please. I’ll be real pleased to see your brother again, Cynthia. Give him my love, and tell him——”

Whatever she was to tell him was lost on the way downstairs. Cynthia and the boy felt suddenly free, their eyes sparkled, they clasped each other’s hands tightly—the world lay before them, the great glittering Paris world, rich with delights. A French-woman with bright, bright eyes passed them. The boy pressed a little closer to Cynthia.

“The streets roar so,” he said fearfully. “Do you think it’s at all likely there’s any lions about?”

“They are always careful to shut them up,” Cynthia explained, “when boys go out with friends.”

They had a wonderful lunch and lots of marvellous French cakes, and if there were any lions they remembered that “friends” didn’t like them, and kept within bounds. Cynthia felt for the first time that she could breathe without it hurting her. To be alive and separate is so terrible to love. The child’s hand in hers made her look past herself into a world more beautiful and infinitely higher than her dreams.

Dr. Grant had not found the wrench of parting much easier than his sister, but, like many people with deep emotions, he had found room enough to keep his unhappiness apart from his everyday work and appearance, and to take a certain amount of placid enjoyment out of his new mode of living. The difficulty was in completely deceiving Cynthia by the constant holiday aspect she expected of him. Sometimes the shadow fell between them, and they would be silent and apart, then both would bitterly blame themselves, pity each other, and rush back into the holiday aspect again. They would have been far happier if they had been less reserved.

It was about six when Geoff, returning to their apartments, heard the noise of talk and merry laughter in his sister’s room. He opened the door hastily to find Cynthia on her knees before the fire roasting chestnuts with a curly-headed youngster, who laughed the more at his appearance, as if it were a part of the game.

“This is the Knight Sir Launcelot,” said Cynthia gravely, waving her hand towards the boy. “Launcelot—the King!” Launcelot nodded.

“I always ’spected him,” he said earnestly, “and now God must have sent him instead of Tony. Do you think kings are nicer than birds?” he added anxiously to Cynthia.

“Not most of them,” said Cynthia preparing to shell a hot chestnut; “but mine’s a very nice king, as nice as any bird I should think.”

“Things when they’re very nice fly away,” puzzled the thoughtful knight; “if kings was as nice as birds they might fly too!” He drew down his brows and gazed at the solid and substantial doctor. “But you—you don’t look as if you was a very flying person,” he finished triumphantly. “Would you like a chestnut?” The doctor accepted one with enthusiasm, and Launcelot, the king and the woman with red hair spent a charming and exciting evening.

They only parted at bedtime at his mother’s door on the express understanding that he was to come again the next day, and that knights never even under the hardest circumstances cried, and that last, but not least, the coal-black charger with a stiff neck under the king’s coat transported thither from a fairy shop must be shown without delay to Marie, daddy and the cook. These facts being grasped the worst was over, and the knight, strewing wet kisses in his wake, was borne away to bed, leaving his volatile mother expressing shrill-voiced thanks to Cynthia and Geoff. The streets seemed ten times brighter and less chilly to the doctor and his sister, and they went to a screaming French farce for the rest of the evening, and felt much the better for it. In fact they even forgot for a while their determination to enjoy themselves.

After this it became the custom for Launcelot to go to Cynthia every afternoon and stay with her till evening. Millicent was always grateful, but frequently hurried—more hurried even than an American woman in Paris generally is. She did not refer again to the charming Count and his sister, but one day she told Cynthia that “Clifton had gone away.”

“For how long?” asked Cynthia quietly. Millicent stared, then she sat down and laughed. She laughed for a long while, but not very merrily. Finally she explained with a blank terseness.

“He’s just quit; he’s gone! he’s left me. Don’t stand there and stare, Cynthia. Sit down. We didn’t have a very good time together.” She continued pacing restlessly up and down the little tawdry room. “He was always the sort of man that wanted a good time, and we didn’t have much money. After the child came, you know, it was worse than ever. I wasn’t going to play the door-mat to Clifton, but I did my best to make it pretty.” She looked at the little concealments, ragged and thin in the heartless Paris sunshine, and they looked more pathetic than ever. “And I dressed real well, but there wasn’t any keeping him. He only told me I was ruining him with dressmakers’ bills, though he knew I make the most of my own clothes! Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been so cock-sure about Paris. In America there’d have been something to keep him back, but there’s nothing to keep one back in Paris. Things look as innocent and pretty——” her voice broke; “but they aren’t, Cynthia—they’re real mean! they’re real mean!” Cynthia sat silently gazing at the carpet. The nervous, breaking voice, the frightened, restless figure were not lost upon her. They seemed familiar somehow, quite as if she had seen them before; and the ring of pain in the most meagre phrase “But they aren’t—they’re real mean! they’re real mean!” voiced a feeling that had once been part of her without a voice. She waited for the inevitable sequel. It came in a burst of hysterical sobs. “He left me a note, Cynthia—Clifton did—he said I should know where to look for consolation!”

“The brute!” cried Cynthia. Millicent laughed.

“Well! don’t you know they’re all that way when a man is tired. Nothing will keep him; and then he wants to throw a sop to something, maybe he thinks it’s his conscience, so he invents another man for the woman he’s left—if—if there isn’t one already.”

“Millicent,” Cynthia stood up, and took the pretty, heavily ringed hand in hers, “do you think the second man will bring you anything better than the first? He never does—the only difference is he leaves you worse. Stick to your art and Launcelot!” Millicent tore her hands away.

“Pshaw! you’re always talking about the child—I hate him!—there!—I hate him! I hated the pain, I hated being put aside, I hated having to spend my time on him—maybe if he hadn’t come Clifton would have been different; maybe other things would have been different too! As for my art, as you call it, what is art to a woman? Why, it’s nothing! you know it, Cynthia. If Leslie Damores hadn’t played the fool——”

“Hush!” Cynthia stammered in a piteous attempt to hide the pain of his name.

“Well, then! If a man wanted you, I’d like to know what pictures would mean? Pictures! I may be weak and silly—I know I am—I loved my husband. Yes! I did! I know I did. But if I can’t have him, I must have somebody. And you want me—to paint! Well! I’ll tell you. I wanted to please Clifton—so I painted. Now the Count doesn’t like the folks I mix with——” she bridled perceptibly, and Cynthia felt sick, “so I won’t paint any more.”

She looked at the clock. Cynthia gazed at her desperately; she heard Launcelot’s voice in the next room. She had taught him “Sir Galahad,” and his voice rose in a triumphant shout at the last words, “All arm’d I ride, whate’er betide, until I find the Holy Grail!”

“What are you going to do with the child?” she asked wearily. Millicent flushed. No woman is without the saving grace of feeling, through some chord, a touch of shame.

“The Count,” she said, “says he’ll send him to school; he’s very kind.”

“Very,” said Cynthia dryly. “He will send him to a French school, where he will grow into a second Count—it’s very kind of him. Millicent, if you have no other plan, will you give him to me?”

“To you!” said Millicent—“to you?” She was astonished. She was, after all, his mother, and even where motherhood brings no love it keeps its sense of property. “Why, Cynthia, I don’t know as I can; you see, after all, I’m his mother! It’s very kind of you, Cynthia—but——” She looked again at the clock.

“Look here!” said Cynthia suddenly, “I’m not going without the boy. You had better make up your mind to give him to me. You don’t want to ruin his life as well as your own, and if you don’t let me have him——” Cynthia’s eyes flashed. “He will be more in your way than ever now. I shall stay and—explain—to the Count!” she finished grimly. Millicent turned white.

“Oh, go!” she said. “For Heaven’s sake go, and take the boy with you. I suppose you don’t know what people will say! I suppose it doesn’t matter to you that we all know why Leslie Damores didn’t marry you. I suppose——”

“Oh, Lady Beautiful!”—the knight stood looking from one to the other at the door—“Lady Beautiful, do you know where it is?”

“Where what is, my darling?”

“The Holy Grail,” said the knight wrinkling his brows. “I don’t know where to find it.” Cynthia took his hand.

“Let’s go and look for it,” she said; “it isn’t here.”

She hesitated, but Millicent stood at the window with her back to them. She put her hands to her hair and replaced a pin. Cynthia turned with the boy, and together they left the little tawdry flat for the last time; left the strange, sad life with its shattered opportunities and sordid concealments; left his mother standing by the window waiting for the Count.

This brief but characteristic epistle rung in Muriel’s head as she left the club for the night. It was a trying time to leave the work. She had almost a settlement now of new helpers, men and women, all under her headship, devoted and earnest workers, but needing direction, and a firm, experienced hand. Cyril Johnstone had volunteered to come to her. Association with her having convinced him that she was neither light-minded nor superficial, and that in spite of his exalted office he still had something to learn from a woman. Captain Hurstly having withdrawn his liberal subscription, the club-work in his parish had fallen through, and the old, broad-minded, empty-headed vicar could jog on in peace to his grave with a sly chuckle or two at the fizzling out of modern efforts.

Meanwhile honest hard work and the buffeting experience of the working-man had opened the young curate’s mind and sobered his heart, and there is no such worker in any cause as the disciplined enthusiast.

Muriel was happier about her work than she had ever been. It was only right, according to her ethics, that as satisfaction dawned the new call should come. She did not know what her uncle’s illness meant, but she settled work for the next few weeks, had a final talk with her new associate, and putting on what she called her society dress drove off in a hansom to her uncle’s. She found him in the comfortable stage of a dressing-gown and hot chocolate. He closed his eyes as she entered the room.

“Muriel, is that you?”

“Yes, dear; I came at once.”

“If you had not come it would have been too late! Muriel shut the door!” Muriel shut the door. The room was very warm, and the bright winter sunshine lit up the gold in her hair, and brought out the smile which was always latent in her eyes. She sat down by him and took his hand.

“Have they made your chocolate nicely?” she asked.

“Never! Of course they haven’t. I am infamously neglected. My slightest wish is thwarted. I am not master in my own house, Muriel! That is why I sent for you. You at least, before you became so selfish and absorbed in your own pleasure, knew how to look after my comfort. The doctor says I must on no account move. I suffer agonies from my foot, and if anything was to upset me the gout might fly to my heart! Yet though I have spoken about it again and again, they will leave skin on my hot milk!”

“Shall I make you some more chocolate, and boil the milk myself?” asked Muriel smiling. He growled an affirmative. And Muriel, chatting brightly about his favorite topics, made him fresh chocolate, and lightened the room by certain little readjustments of flowers, books and cushions that the eyes of the most diligent of servants always just miss over, as if to prove that self-help smiles after all.

Sir Arthur Dallerton had aged terribly. Death’s hand rested upon so much that was mortal. It is only in such cases that death is dreadful. Muriel, who had so often seen it, thought she had never seen it more sadly, for in his eyes was the haunting fear from which there is no escape. Later on in the evening he called her to him. She had been singing over some old Scotch airs. She came and sat on a footstool at his feet, with her head on his knee. He liked to stroke her hair and hold her hand; it gave him a sense of peace and security.

“Muriel,” he said, “do you think there is any chance of—anything happening to me?” The verb “to die” is terrible to some people. Sir Arthur Dallerton preferred the evasion of something happening.

“Why, no, dear; what should—happen?” said Muriel smiling. “Things—sad things might cease to happen for you; but that would be beautiful, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, Muriel, I don’t want to die! I am afraid! afraid!” His voice rose almost to a scream. She stroked his hand and soothed him as if he were a frightened child.

“There, there, dear heart! it won’t hurt you, see; there isn’t any death, or anything to be afraid of, surely! Only light, peace and rest, dear uncle, and all the beautiful, lovely things of earth quite free, and nothing to hurt any more!”

“Oh, Muriel, child, do you think I shall see people whom I’ve come across in life? Oh, it’s awful!” The poor, silly, selfish life, held hopelessly before his eyes by the Inexorable Reality, made him catch his breath. The girl’s heart sank, but she spoke with firm assurance.

“We shall meet nothing that we can’t bear—nothing that is too hard for us—for God is just as strong to save after death as before.”

“But if there isn’t any God, if there’s only an awful grave? Oh, Muriel, it’s a dreadful thing to be an old man!” He shivered from head to foot, and she nestled closer to his side.

“The body dies, and never feels anything; it’s just a sleep, and it will never dream, or wake, or fret and trouble any more, and we believe that the spirit is safer without it, and close to God,” she murmured.

“I’m not so sure of that,” said her uncle sharply. “Some spirits can’t help it. They’re no better than they should be, and what do you think happens to them?”

The blind cannot see. It is a scientific fact and a living reality; the nearest they can reach to sight is to feel that they do not see as much as they might see, and they dim that view by the cry of the eternally inadequate “I can’t help it.”

Muriel pressed her lips to the poor human hand.

“Dear uncle, such spirits must be made as well as they ought to be. We must trust God for the method, for we can’t know what is best; but I am quite sure God meant us all for His, and if we hold fast to that we shall grow like Him in time, and He will give us time, for there is all eternity for us to go on being good in if we have made the start.”

“You’ll never leave me, Muriel? Promise you will never leave me!” There was a moment’s pause, while she looked into the fire and watched the red-hot coal grow black and drop to ashes in the grate.

“I’ll never leave you, dear,” she said at last. “And you won’t be afraid any more?” she questioned. “I shall sleep right in the next room to you if you want me. You won’t be afraid?”

“No, child! It’s been very lonely without you, and they’re very thoughtless about my chocolate. But you don’t think there’s any—hell, do you?”

“Oh, no, dear; I am quite sure there’s not. Now don’t you think I’d better ring for Thomas to carry you to bed, and I’ll see that the cook does your broth nicely.”

“You may if you like,” he said grudgingly; “and mind you come to bed early, and come to me the moment I call you.”

“Yes, dear, I will,” and she kissed him gently.

“You’re a good child,” he murmured sleepily. Just as she closed the door he called her back. “Muriel!”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Are you sure about what you just mentioned, you know?”

“There’s nothing in all the world or out of it but God, be very sure,” she said with the passionate certainty of her faith.

He was not quite certain whether he liked that very much better either. But his broth was just as he wished that evening, and he did not call her in the night for he passed away peacefully in his sleep. And there was no dark left but his own soul, and even that with the hope of light in it passed into the eternal.