The short June days soon came to an end, and Muriel found them none too short, for warmth can only be enjoyed by the luxurious, and her life at present was anything but that.

If one plunged into the work and life of the people it needed strength both of will and body to carry one through its disillusions.

There was nothing in the least exciting in the work before her—it was merely very hard. Occasionally it was true the great opportunity would arise, as it had done in the case of poor Liz. But next to their extraordinary infrequency came the swiftness with which all the greatness evaporated: their very sins were so matter-of-fact, and the larger elements in life were taken so unpicturesquely that they seemed shorn of their solemnity, and then strangely robbed of all “the trailing clouds” of mystery. When a widow spoke of her dead husband as “ ’E made a beautiful corpse, ’e did—yer ought to er seen ’im, miss,” the word died on her lips, and to look at a dead baby as being “one less mouth to feed,” jarred on all her tender notes of sympathy by the crudity of its truth.

Muriel wrote to Gladys, who, strange to say, had come to see her alone, not once but often, that she had never known “death could be vulgar before;” and, though she felt very worried at the thought of shutting up the club for three months, she confessed to herself her heart rose at the thought of the long, easy luxury of house-parties, country days, and even a glimpse of the sea. People, too, who said a little more—and meant a little less—she looked forward to meeting with a positive sense of rest. Clear black and white were rather glaring she thought, and how life was mellowed by a little mist! Jack Hurstly had never been to see her. She had heard of him occasionally from Gladys.

Sir Arthur wished her to come at once to Blacklands, a house in a beautiful vicinity, not too far from the conveniences of life; and towards the end of July, very tired and fagged, Muriel packed up her things to go. There were many good-byes to be said, but they were all over now with the exception of Liz—Liz and the baby. She had not seen either of them lately. As she knocked at the door she heard the long, fretful wail of a sick child, and then the ungracious tones of a woman’s voice.

“Ah, it’s you, is it?” she added shrilly as Muriel entered. “I thought you had given us the slip. No, I ain’t been comin’ to the club, nor I don’t mean to—nor Dick neither, we ’ave ’ad enough of it, we ’ave.”

Muriel showed no surprise. She sat down and looked at the poor little baby tossing disconsolately on its mother’s lap.

“Isn’t he well?” she asked.

“No, ’e ain’t,” said Liz more gently; “ ’e do take on somethink hawful in this ’eat. ’E cries all night, and Dick won’t come nigh ’im. I’d a been a deal better off without ’im, that’s what I’d a been. What’s the use o’ a ’usband who drinks all ’e earns? ’E don’t do me no good, and I don’t do ’im no good—we’re better apart.” She looked at Muriel viciously in her increasing anger and fear, turning on the first object she met.

“You’re very tired, Lizzie,” she said gently, “and very hot. Have you been sitting up all night with baby?”

“I don’t keep no nurse!”

“Poor little thing,” said Muriel, holding out her arms for it; “poor little dear.”

“ ’E’ll crease your pretty skirt.” Muriel laughed.

“Now, tell me,” she said, “what do you mean about Dick. Is he really taking to drink?”

Lizzie forgot her resentment and poured out her troubles, and so again the woman in Muriel conquered. Yet she knew that there would be no gratitude for what she did. Lizzie only envied her—“her pretty frock.”

She wrote to her uncle promising to go down the next day. Muriel arrived at Blacklands to be met by the footman and a carriage. The trappings of a luxury she had spurned seemed at present very grateful to her. They belonged, she realized, to a class of things one does not actually need, and yet seems to miss more than even the necessities. As she drove comfortably through the village she was possessed by a complete set of new faculties. All her old fund of light-hearted laughter sprang again within her; her quick, observant eyes (which she had used more lately to ignore than to observe) found beauties at every turn. She felt a desire to sketch two cottages half lost in honeysuckle planted with the most perfect effect of naturalness under the old tower of the ivy-covered church. The churchyard seemed the most perfectly restful thing she had ever seen. She longed to pick the hedge flowers; to let the wind blow about her hair, with no restraining erection to keep it in place; to walk barefoot across the cool, green fields; to hunt for birds’ nests in the wood; to climb the hills at sunset time—in short, a passion of longing to come near to Nature held her; to forget all the many inventions of the clever, brutal, unscrupulous mind of man; to be once, for however little time, one with the world as “God has made it.” She found herself taking off her gloves, and at that moment the carriage swept up the drive of a large old house, with an exterior too ancient to be quarrelled with, and an interior too full of the best of modern “improvements” to be in the least appropriate.

Gladys was standing on the steps. She held Muriel in her arms. On the younger girl’s face there was an almost passionate welcome, and she tried to hide her eagerness in laughter, chatting in graceful snatches over a thousand little nothings as the two girls went to their rooms. “Did Muriel know that there was no one there but themselves?—everybody was coming down to-morrow. Yes, that abominable little flirt, Edith le Mentier, and her husband with his exquisite stupidity, a cloak which covered all his other sins—in the eyes of his wife at least. Mary Huntly, too, not Tom—he couldn’t. These business men really worked; but Muriel was a business woman, wasn’t she—the dear Muriel.” Muriel declared she only worked for the sake of enjoying laziness. They went down to tea. “That doctor, too,” Gladys continued, “with an advanced sister with red hair, cigarette and a bull-dog—at least I think it’s a bull-dog.”

“Of course it is,” laughed Muriel. “You must retain something, however far you advance, and the bull-dog does that for you.”

“The doctor overworked, you know; and the sister’s devoted. Then there’s Captain Hurstly, of course!”

“Why of course?” said Muriel quietly.

“Oh, well——” Gladys stopped, “don’t you want him?”

“No, my dear, I don’t.”

“Your uncle thought——”

“Oh, when he thinks,” laughed Muriel, lifting her shoulders.

“And there’s a friend of his——”

“My uncle’s?”

“Silly!—Captain Hurstly’s—a Sir Somebody Bruce.”

“Alec?” suggested Muriel, quietly selecting some seed-cake. “I know him well.”

“Do you?” said Gladys, “I scarcely know him at all. What did you think of him?” Her little air of indifference was beautiful. Muriel sighed.

“He’s like the rest,” she said wearily. “Splendid, capable, broad-shouldered and—useless. I think if I were a man like that I should use my talent as a good shot for personal purposes; it would seem to me less wasteful.”

“Oh, but, Muriel, we girls we’re none of us any better. You, dearest, you’re different. And in America I was different too. There’s so little strain in being happy there—so little waste in pleasure. The rush of life, its width and lack of limits, is a continual occupation; but here there are too many women. Some of them must be old maids. It’s like the game of musical chairs. They none of them, you see, want to be left out, so they take the first place vacant. They have an eye on their opportunities; they make efforts to attain, and a masterly mamma backs them. When you come to think of it—their training, their suppression! You can’t wonder they take their first opening. But for women to be hunters—forgive the naked, cruel term, darling—is repulsive. Oh, if I had a daughter I should drown her, or bring her up to something more worth living for!”

She walked about the room putting this and that to rights. The housemaid had done it before her, but the quick, nervous movements delivered her of the tension she seemed under.

“Something’s very badly wrong,” thought Muriel, and aloud she suggested the garden.

The birds were making twilight magical on the velvet lawn. They sat breathing in the soft, rich air, heavy with the scent of summer flowers, too utterly at peace with Nature and the restful spell she can throw at moments over the most tortured hearts to do more than hush themselves into silence.

Muriel was the first to speak. She remembered long afterwards how startling her voice sounded.

“You have something to ask me?”

“Ah!—no, no.”

“Something to tell me?”

“It’s hard—oh, Muriel, dearest—dearest, it’s hard!” cried Gladys.

“Hard things are sometimes better shared,” said Muriel.

“The hardest and the dearest sometimes can’t be,” Gladys sighed. “What can I do?” she added miserably. “It’s so old and stale, just the eternal wrong situations Nature pulls about so, or man gets twisted into! Mary, my cousin, you know, wants me—wants me to marry. I’m dependent on her, you see, since father failed in the States. They had me educated in England, and they ruined that for me—the steady setness that might have helped me now—by the wildest three years in America. Sixteen!—and their world without barriers, where everybody wants you to have a good time! No, I’m not crying—not for that. It lasted three years, and after the smash they sent me here. Mary doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m not her sort—I’m always getting into scrapes. I seem to have got into the nursery again, where there is nothing but corners. I’m in leading strings to a—maid. There’s only one way out of my nursery, Mary says—Muriel, it’s open now—but I almost think I’d rather throw myself out of the window than make use of it.”

Muriel looked at her. “And is there no other door?” she asked gently.

“Ah! not mine—somebody else’s, and—they’ve got the key.”

“Where does it lead to?” Muriel asked.

“I—I don’t know. The most beautiful place in the world, I fancy; but if it was a wilderness it would be the only way for me!” Timidly Gladys put out her hands, and Muriel held them, drawing the girl closer to her. She asked with wonderful mother-eyes the question no words could draw from her.

“Yes,” she said at last, “people made a mistake when they thought the world was large. It’s very small—one woman’s heart can hold the whole of it.”

“Muriel,” the other gasped, “Muriel, do you care for him?”

“For Alec Bruce, dear child? No!” Suddenly her hands grew cold, a fear seized her, cutting her breath short and making the silence strangely empty. “You don’t mean him?” she asked very slowly as if she were just learning to talk. The girl shook her head. “You mean Jack Hurstly?” pursued Muriel gently inexorable. The girl caught her hands away and covered her face.

“Oh, Muriel! Muriel!” she sobbed. “I don’t—I don’t care for him.”

“Neither do I,” said Muriel very coldly.

“Don’t you?—don’t you?” the girl exclaimed, her eyes shining like stars through a cloud. “Then, oh, dearest—my dearest, give me the key!”

Muriel stood quite still smiling. She felt as if she were having a photograph taken; she must not move; she must try to look pleasant—that’s what they call it. She was still so long that Gladys looked up in wonder. The elder girl drew her into her arms.

“It will be sure to come out well,” she murmured. Then aloud: “Little darling, you have always had the key—mine was only a skeleton one, and, Gladys, I never could have used it.” The girl clung to her shivering with joy.

“Then, after all, you do care for him a little?” Muriel said tenderly. Gladys lifted up her eyes. They seemed much older—they were so happy and so sure.

“I told you there was only the one way—the one way in all God’s earth for me. I think I should have thrown myself out of the window if you hadn’t given me the key!”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Muriel half sobbing.

Gladys smiled. “Dearest, you don’t understand—you see you don’t care for him as I do!” she said.

“No,” repeated Muriel very slowly and carefully, “I don’t quite understand—you see I don’t—don’t care for him. Do you know, little dear, it’s getting rather chilly. Hadn’t we better go in and dress for dinner?”

“Oh, to think of dinner!” laughed Gladys. “How we do mix things, don’t we? It’s too terribly material.”

But of the two she had the better appetite. Muriel had never lied before, and she found it very tiring.

“Sunday,” said Edith le Mentier, lazily swaying her parasol, “does my religion for me. When I hear the sweet church bells chiming over the cow-laden fields I say to myself this is a Christian country. Cows and a church—certainly I, too, must be a Christian.”

“And your responsibility ends there?” asked Gladys, who with others of the party was dressed to go to the little church across the fields.

“My responsibility, my dear, er—Miss Gladys—as you so deliciously call it, is never at work in that sphere. No! I recognize it at my dressmaker’s; I am crushed under it in shops; I frequently come face to face with it in the choice of a cook. Beyond this,” Mrs. le Mentier put out a dainty foot under a frilled petticoat, “beyond this I am a rational being—that is, whenever it is possible I persuade some one else to do my effort-making for me. Captain Hurstly, I want a footstool; dear, delightful creatures, do go and do my praying for me; Sir Arthur,” here she put her head graciously towards their slightly embarrassed host, “is going to stay to keep me company.”

“Delighted, I am sure,” murmured Sir Arthur, handing Gladys’ prayer-book which he had been carrying to the doctor, who stood grimly and uncompromisingly silent. It was natural that after that Gladys and Dr. Grant should walk together and Muriel find herself with Jack Hurstly. Cynthia Grant, the doctor’s sister, had not yet returned from a visit to the stables with Sir Alec. Muriel had not seen Jack for some time. He was always large and masterful (in the most calmly protective meaning of the word), but there was to-day a certain alertness and unobtrusive eagerness in his manner that was new to her. They knew each other well enough to be able to float off easily into commonplace chatter. It paved the way for all the important things which lost their stiffness by being set in a background of familiar banter.

“I’m having a holiday,” said Jack, smiling down at her oddly.

“You a holiday! You look terribly as if you needed it!” she laughed.

“I’ve been working rather hard, really,” he said.

“Fishing is over?” she asked.

“Oh, Miss Muriel, but I’ve had a harder job to tackle. I’ve been trying to get the place at home in decent order—getting cottages built and all that sort of thing.”

“You were always so practical,” she murmured.

“Because, you see, the place has been a little weedy lately, and as I am to be off again soon I wanted to leave it in order before I went.”

“Hunting big game?” she suggested indifferently.

“Well—yes, rather. You see there’s been a little scrapping in India on the frontier, and—well, I thought it would be rather jolly to have a shot at the little beggars myself. You see the regiment being at Aldershot a fellow hasn’t got much to do, and so I have joined—temporarily, of course—a batch of men who are going out in September. Do you wish me luck?”

“Your occupations,” said Muriel coldly, “always seem to me a little brutal.” Then she glanced more kindly at him.

He was disconsolately grumbling, “Oh, I say now!” and cutting the heads off the nettles with his stick. They were nearing the church.

“Oh, I hope, Jack,” she used the name with her old deliberate frankness, looking him in the eyes, steadily and kindly, “that you will have the best of luck. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you set to work again, and make something of all that’s in you—all I know that’s in you.”

He beamed with pleasure, though he was still a little puzzled at her former sharpness. “It’s awfully good of you, Miss Muriel,” he said, opening the gate; “and you—you must know that if I am worth anything at all it’s all owing to you. And now that you say you believe in me,” he drew a long breath, “I think I could do anything—anything in the world to show you you’re not mistaken.”

Muriel said nothing. When they reached the porch she turned to him, and not looking at him said slowly, “I am quite sure I am not mistaken, Jack.”

The church was cold and dark after the bright sunshine in the fields. In the church she remembered Gladys, and forgot to listen to the sermon. She and the doctor walked back together and quarrelled all the way.

It was that still, impossible hour of Sunday afternoon when the drowsiness of after lunch and the distance of five-o’clock tea combine to make inaction of one sort or another absolutely essential. Sir Arthur Dallerton, however, was uncomfortably wide awake. His protracted conversation with his charming guest contributed not a little to the unnatural keenness of his feelings, and with Sir Arthur Dallerton to feel keenly was to be in more or less of a bad temper. He saw Muriel out of his smoking-room window, and beckoned to her to come in.

“What are you doing, Muriel,” he asked severely, “at this time of the afternoon?”

“Everybody is going out on the river after tea, so I was seeing about the boats,” she said.

“That, Muriel, is the business of the gardener.”

“I like minding the gardener’s business,” said Muriel smiling.

“My dear,” said her uncle gravely, “If you would leave the gardener’s business alone, and attend a little more to your own, I should be better pleased.”

“What do you mean, uncle?” the girl asked, sitting down opposite him with her wide-open, unembarrassed eyes.

“Of course I know that it makes no difference to you what I wish—that I take for granted to begin with.”

She moved her head impatiently; she hated the way he had of opening any discussion with injured personalities. He waited for a protest, and not hearing one he continued with increased vehemence.

“You are now twenty-seven. You have had plenty of opportunities to settle down in life. I have never attempted to force your hand——” A look in the girl’s eyes suggested the prudence of this course. “I must say I have been uncommonly generous in overlooking your extraordinary schemes, but I never dreamed they excluded marriage. May I ask, Muriel—I think I have a right to know—if all my hopes are to be in vain simply through the obstinacy of an untrained, selfish girl? Do you, Muriel—I insist upon knowing this—intend to marry?”

“I am sorry you insist, uncle,” said Muriel very quietly, though two bright spots of angry color burned in her cheeks, “because I am afraid I can give you no satisfactory answer to your hopes. It is very improbable—if you really wish to know—that I shall ever marry.”

“What about Jack Hurstly?”

“I do not know to what you refer.”

“I thought your objection to him was that he didn’t stick to his profession. He’s sticking to it fast enough now.” Muriel winced. “And,” he continued with more hope of success, “he’ll probably get potted by a native, and then perhaps you’ll be satisfied. You women who talk the most about cruelty are always the ones to send us poor devils to our graves.”

“I have never had any objection to Jack Hurstly, and I have none now, but I certainly am not going to marry him. If he gets killed in India, as you thoughtfully suggested, it will perhaps prove to you that he is beyond your matrimonial schemes. I do not believe anything else would,” said Muriel, now thoroughly aroused. She looked lovely when she was angry: the gray eyes blazed and widened, the firm chin became inexorable, and her nostrils dilated like a spirited horse. Her uncle, who had an eye for beauty, appreciated her appearance, but was too vexed to remark on it.

“Gad! you have the temper of a devil!” he grumbled in reluctant admiration; “but if you won’t have Jack Hurstly, you won’t. And on the whole you might do better. What I want you thoroughly to understand is I’ll have no monkey business with that young doctor. I didn’t ask him down here, or you either, for any such purpose. If you had liked Jack Hurstly, well and good. I wouldn’t have opposed the match. He’s got blood, and he’s got money, and I have nothing against him. But I have set my heart on one thing if you won’t have him.” He stopped a moment. “Muriel,” he said, “you know my heart is weak, and it’s very bad for me to be opposed.”

Muriel smiled; the scene lost its strain; the gay voices of idlers on the lawn came in through the windows with the after-dinner grace of the “wise thrushes” in the shrubbery. They all sounded so restful and contented. But she—must she battle till her life’s end? Tears of self-pity rose to her eyes. Her uncle supposed them to be signs of softening grace.

“My child,” he said, “Sir Alec Bruce is a good man, and he loves you.”

“He has a good income and a good family,” suggested the girl maliciously.

Sir Arthur waved them aside grandly. “I have set my heart upon the match,” said; “my life is risked by a disappointment.”

Muriel crushed her hands together nervously. “And what about my life?” she said at last. “But I suppose that doesn’t matter,” and ignoring her uncle’s wrathful exclamation she stepped out of the French windows and joined the idlers on the lawn. Sir Arthur waited a few moments for a heart attack to come on, but as nothing happened he also went into the garden. But a few moments had dissipated the group, and only Cynthia Grant remained with a bull-dog and a cigarette. She looked extremely unsympathetic, and grumbling under his breath something far from complimentary about advanced young women he returned to the house. A moment later Dr. Grant joined his sister on the lawn. The bull-dog, appropriately named “Grip,” looked wistfully from one to the other. He knew it was impossible to be at the feet of both at the same time, and so with chivalrous courtesy he curled himself up once more by his mistress’s side and listened with heavily absorbed eyes to the following conversation.

“Do you really mean to do it?” asked Cynthia curtly.

“If I hadn’t, why should I have come here?” replied her brother, giving short puffs at his pipe. “You know I feel awfully out of this sort of thing—an abominably lazy lot.” Grip, who with the magnificent patience of the strong had long been putting up with an inquisitive and infuriating fly, now relieved his feelings with a successful snap.

Cynthia laughed bitterly. “You won’t get her so easily as that,” she said by way of illustration. “And why should I want you to? Has it never occurred to you, my dear brother, that I might prefer you better unmarried. It’s a slackening sort of thing at best for a man, and we’ve always roughed it together, haven’t we, Geoff? Pretty cosily, too, I think.”

“You might get married yourself,” he said gloomily. The girl suggestively lit a cigarette.

“I don’t think so, Geoff,” she said with a queer little laugh. “Has it never occurred to you that I’m thirty, and you’ve never been particularly keen on it before?”

“I’m not now—but I think it’s a good thing for a girl.”

“You mean for a man, don’t you?” He looked at her quietly.

“You’re not like yourself to-day, Sis,” he said gently. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re trying to marry Muriel Dallerton. She’s in love with Jack Hurstly, whom she’s trying to marry to that emotional little Gladys thing. Meanwhile, unless they are all very careful, Edith le Mentier means to play her own game with them all.”

“How do you know Miss Dallerton’s in love with Hurstly?” asked the doctor, savagely ignoring the rest of the remarks. She turned on him with mocking eyes.

“She is interested in his conversation,” she said, and they both burst out laughing. Grip placed his head massively on her hands and looked both question and reproach at her. “His business, Grip,” she said, “is to get perfectly rested, not to tread on lazy people’s corns, and to see as much as possible of the right young lady. As for me, Grip”—she dropped some inconveniently heated ashes on his pink nose, which made him shake his head and blink severely like a shocked old lady—“where do I come in? Well, I have my own little game to play. And here’s dear Edith in a fresh pink gown. Let’s go and meet her—she’s so fond of us both. And you——” she looked back with a whimsical tenderness at her brother, “just go down to the river and find your young lady, only for Heaven’s sake don’t glare at her like that!”

Muriel had not in the least intended to find herself alone with Jack Hurstly in a canoe. It all happened so naturally that protests and excuses were out of the question. She looked rather wistfully at Gladys in a larger boat, who was talking with nervous gaiety to Alec Bruce, while Mary Huntly in the stern looked on with serene approval. Gladys would not look at her friend, and something in the girl’s manner and carriage seemed to denote an intense displeasure, which, after her confidence to Muriel, was not on the whole incomprehensible. Muriel sighed hopelessly. Circumstances, she thought, were against her, and Jack was with her; she might be stronger than the circumstances, but she had begun to feel that she was not as strong as Jack.

“I really have changed my life a bit,” he went on, as if continuing their last conversation. “Do you know when you went to Stepney, and I got to know about all you were doing—how you gave those girls such a good time and helped them in their homes, and all that, you know—it made me feel what a cheap sort of thing the life of the fellows about town is, and how, after all, there isn’t so very much in just having a good time if there’s nothing else besides or beyond it. I hope you won’t think I’m talking awful rot?” he interrupted himself nervously. She shook her head; she found it difficult to speak; her hand dipped in the water seemed to her a sort of illustration of how impossible it was to grasp her treasure even while it surrounded her. They were singing down the stream the air of a new opera, and that, and the trailing branches overhead, would have made a wonder of beauty if she had not loved Gladys. “Sacrifices lasted too long,” she thought.

“And so,” he continued, watching her with eager, earnest eyes as he talked, “while I was waiting for leave to go out to India I started a sort of club at home—among the tenants, you know. Nothing much of a place—only games and a room where the men can go and smoke and read their papers in the mornings. And it struck me that Miss Gladys’ cousin—am I boring you?”

“No, Jack—Gladys’ cousin?”

“That Parson Cyril Johnstone,” he explained, “was really an awfully good sort, and might help me a bit with the men—on his own line, you know. And as the vicar wanted a curate, it seemed to fit in rather decently. I had no idea how awfully interesting that kind of thing could be. Why, now I know the men, and drop in to play a game of billiards with them, you couldn’t believe how jolly they are with me; and many of them more decent, wholesome kind of men than one’s own sort. I should so much like to show you the place, Muriel, and ask your advice about it. I’m afraid I’m an awfully poor hand at managing that kind of thing.”

“Mr. Cyril Johnstone knows more about men’s clubs than I do!” she replied with half-averted head. Jack smiled. He was not used to Muriel in this mood; it was more like other women whom he had been used to.

“You see,” he said, “Cyril Johnstone is all very well in his way, but an unecclesiastical eye might be able to suggest more.”

“I feel quite sure,” said Muriel firmly, “that my eyes will be able to suggest nothing.”

“They must have changed then a good deal in the last few minutes,” said Jack coolly; “they have always suggested plenty to me.” Muriel looked up desperately, and saw Dr. Grant on the bank.

“Row to the shore, please, Jack,” she said, “there is room for the doctor.” Jack set his lips together firmly. He had no intention of rowing to the shore for any such purpose.

“Sorry,” he said; “I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

“I must insist,” she replied coldly.

“Please don’t, for I hate to disobey your wishes,” he pleaded.

“You overlook the alternative,” cried Muriel.

“Muriel,” he said, “you don’t really mean it—I know you don’t wish it!” He knew this would have been fatal with another woman, but he counted on her sincerity. She looked from him to the shore, and back again to the softly shaded water.

“I must ask you to do it just the same,” she said finally. He turned the boat into mid-stream, and they floated awhile in silence.

“It is the first time I have ever refused to do what you wanted,” he said at last, drawing a deep breath.

“It is the last time I shall ever give you an opportunity,” said Muriel coldly. But if she had hoped to prevent further words her hope was in vain.

“You told me once that you cared for me, Muriel, but that I wasn’t worth marrying. I have tried to make myself a bit more so, and now you are not going to tell me, are you, that you have changed your mind?” She faced him steadily.

“I can’t marry you,” she said. “Please don’t ask me questions, Jack.”

“But I must,” he said frowning. “Why can’t you marry me?” She was silent. “You don’t love me?”

“Perhaps I never did.”

“Nonsense, dear, you’re not that sort. Tell me the truth—you do love me?” Muriel turned in exasperation.

“Oh, yes, then, if you will have it. I do love you, but I’m not now or at any other time ever going to marry you!”

They had forgotten the other boat and the river. A burst of merry laughter awoke them to the fact that they had drifted on a snag, and that the rest of the party had been watching them for the last few minutes from the opposite bank.

It was the doctor after all who rowed out to their assistance and took Muriel home after tea across the fields. Muriel was desperate. Jack had found means to say to her that he did not in the least believe her, and that he was not going to give her up. Gladys had found means of very pointedly, though with exquisite intangibility, expressing a state of mind anything but pleasant to her friend. The constant flow of bright, good-natured chaff, the utterly superficial, pleasant brightness of the boating party, gave Muriel a feeling of weariness and age. She felt glad to be with the doctor. He at least left her alone and seemed contented to talk or to be silent in an easy, effortless way. Perhaps it was because in his profession a man “learns to do his watching without its showing pain.” He talked chiefly about his sister, and when they got home advised her in an off-hand manner “to go and lie down.”

“But I am not tired,” she cried, half vexed.

“No,” he replied soothingly; “still you know it’s a warm afternoon; you would find it restful.” Muriel smiled submissively.

“To tell the truth,” she said, “I think perhaps I am a bit tired,” and she went upstairs.

An hour afterwards there came a soft knock at the door and Cynthia Grant came in.

“They told me you had a headache,” she said apologetically, “and I came to see if I could do anything for you.”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Muriel gratefully; “but do come and sit down. My headache was only an excuse for laziness, and it would do it good to be talked to.”

Cynthia sat down near the sofa, and after a little conversation on general subjects, began in abrupt, curt tones to tell Muriel the story of her life.

Why she told it, it would be impossible to tell, except that she wished to approach nearer to the girl who had won her brother’s love, and that such a confidence was the most painful sacrifice it was in her power to make. It was a strange story of how she and her brother had studied together side by side for their degree; of how she had advanced even farther than he, till at length, finding she was outstripping him, in one magnificent burst of sacrifice she had thrown the whole thing up; but how the fascination of her work proved almost too much for her, till in desperation she left her brother altogether, and went to the Paris studios to study art. Here she paused awhile as if reluctant to speak further. “You don’t know,” she said, “what it was to have lived as I did, almost as a man among men. It was only we two—my brother and I—against the world, you know, and it’s a hard world. After I left him—I’m not going to tell you the whole story—there was a man who was a very fine fellow, an Englishman and an artist, and he fell in love with me before he quite knew—well, all the incidents of my life. Paris is rather a place for incidents, you know. He wanted to marry me. But, of course, I told him—and, I daresay, it wasn’t an ideal story. At any rate he told me he could not make me his wife, and I care far too much for him to be satisfied with anything else. So I went back to my brother, and I have been with him ever since. I help him with his cases, and, as his practice is rather large, and contains a good many poor people, I find enough to do. Are you horribly shocked, Miss Dallerton?”

“Have you given up your art?” said Muriel. The other girl went to the window. She laughed nervously.

“Art?” she said. “I never look at a picture if I can help it.”

“And does your brother know?”

“Everything; but it has made no difference.”

“I wonder why you told me?” said Muriel thoughtfully. Cynthia smiled.

“You look as if people were in the habit of telling you things. Besides—I don’t know—it seemed to me as if you ought to know the truth if we were to be friends.”

“I hope we shall be,” said Muriel softly—“I hope very much we shall be.”

“I think,” said Cynthia as she went to the door, “that if I had known you, it might have been different.”

Muriel puzzled thoughtfully awhile over the rather grim pair she had come into contact with. She had known very little of that great wide world of professional life. Society and the slums, though they were a great contrast, were not, she thought, so great a mystery. But though Muriel was distinctly broad-minded for a woman, it was impossible for her just at present to absorb herself in abstract problems when her own life presented such pressing personal ones. Her first misery at Gladys’ jealousy and misunderstanding seemed gone. To her surprise she had begun to feel almost a sense of relief. If she didn’t understand, it was plain there was not so very much to worry about. If one looks for too many things in one place, the few things one finds lose their significance. It is not one’s love so much that gets dulled as one’s sense of importance. The halo of expectation fails; next time one’s eagerness goes with slower feet, and is positively astonished if it ever gets met at all. So that now Muriel felt she had simply over-estimated both her friends’ characters and affection, and that nothing therefore remained but to clearly make Gladys see she did not intend to marry Jack Hurstly. Her responsibility ended there she told herself, after that she need not try to keep up this very unequal friendship any more. As for Cynthia Grant, she was a woman and old enough to know what to take for granted, and how not to be exacting.

Very firm and self-reliant natures make sometimes the natural mistake of under-estimating the power of passion. Their full self-control and constant watchfulness ignore the possibility of the strange touch of sudden lawlessness—the betrayal of the blood. That one could be one moment standing reason-bound, content, a soul at peace, and in another swept over the verge of thought into a sea of feeling, was absurd to Muriel. Yet the swift flash takes place: the world, like a curtain, rolls up, and all the conventions, the safeguards, the stationary landscapes, disappear! It was such a moment which took possession of her the very night that she had decided to give her lover to another woman. The evening had passed pleasantly, and the still glory of the summer night drew the party out into the dusk of the garden. Muriel slipped away from the rest and wandered into a little wilderness some distance from the house, wondering how best to carry out her plans, when suddenly all the blood in her body rushed to her heart, for there beside her stood the man she loved. It had been possible for her in the calm of loneliness and heartache to dispose of Jack, but now—the moon’s gold and silver gliding through the clouds; the thrushes calling heart to heart their breathless rapture in a liquid continuity of song; all the passion and the pain rushing into beauty, thrilled and throbbing with the heart of night—it was difficult to resist now. And the stars, how they shone down on love, each one a light struck from the royal conquest of their queen, the moon! They were enwrapped in that dream so boundless and so limited which for one breathless moment holds all the world can teach, and then scatters and breaks into the hundred lesser lights of life. A sigh broke the charm, and Muriel, wondering, withdrew herself from his arms, abashed and yet elated at her defeat, so much more sweet than any of the triumphs life had held for her.

“Now,” said Jack, smiling down at her, “are you going to tell me that you don’t care?”

“I am afraid,” said Muriel, “that it would not be very convincing if I did. It seems to me,” she added breathlessly, “as if before I had been living only on the outskirts of life. I did not know it was like that!” She looked at him wistfully, and asked humbly, “Is it quite right, Jack, do you think?”

“What, my dearest?”

“To forget everything; to see nothing but the world a background, and that one great avowal drowning all the rest?”

“I think it must be,” said Jack. “Just because it’s so powerful it must be meant to be good—in itself, you know—only some of us poor chaps don’t know how to use it.”

Muriel shivered a little; there was dampness in the air; the trees seemed to quiver. She remembered Liz and the squalid scenes where the power which meant heaven to her had meant darkness and life-long misery to the other woman. Had she gained the world only to lose it? Jack wrapped her shawl tenderly over her shoulders.

“You must go in, little woman,” he said practically. “Now you’re mine you shan’t run any risks, not even summer ones. Shall I speak to your uncle?” he asked her as they neared the little artificial lights of the house.

“Not yet,” she whispered hoarsely, with a terrible fear in her eyes. Jack followed her glance. It rested on a young girl’s face. Gladys was standing close at the French window looking out into the night—desperate, wild, despairing.

“There’s something wrong with the child,” Muriel said quick to Jack—“bad news from home, I think,” for even at that moment she knew she must keep the other woman’s secret. “Let me go to her, darling—good-night! It’s awful, isn’t it,” she said, “to be so selfish and so happy!”

She caught her hand from him, hurrying into the house. “It’s wicked, it’s wicked,” she murmured, “to be happy at all.”

Gladys called out over the approaching figure, “There is a letter for Captain Hurstly!” He came unwillingly forward into the light about the window. Muriel stood now with her hand in the girl’s looking back at him. Gladys herself seemed unaware of the touch. She was smiling painfully; the “On Her Majesty’s Service” seemed to demand attention.

Jack opened it, read it, glanced for a moment to Muriel, and placed it in his pocket.

“What does it say?” said Gladys, and Jack, so absorbed by its purpose and the strangeness of the scene, never knew till afterwards that it was not Muriel who had spoken. He tried to make light of it.

“Oh, I’m called off sooner than I expected.”

“When?” They both spoke at once this time. Again he only heard Muriel.

“The fact is—well, to-night,” he owned unsteadily. Gladys stepped quickly forward; a little quivering light shone in her eyes; she caught her breath and half unconsciously held out her hands.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Captain Hurstly!” she cried; “and I wish you—I wish you the very best luck in the world.” He looked towards Muriel, but she was gone. He met the girl’s eyes again. His own felt unaccountably misty. Muriel was gone, and this little thing was wishing him the very best luck in the world. He pressed her hands gratefully.

“Thank you, thank you awfully,” he murmured. “I think I’ve got it to-night——”

“Oh, where’s that tiresome Jack Hurstly?” cried a voice from the window. “I left him my fan to take care of, and——”

“I’ve got it here, Mrs. le Mentier,” cried Jack hastily, stepping through the low French window with the missing fan in his hand.

When he drove off an hour later to catch the midnight train it was Edith le Mentier who, side by side with Muriel, stood at the door to see him off. Looking back he saw that it was with her he had left “the very best luck in the world.” He had quite forgotten all about Gladys. From her window she watched him go on fire with love and happiness. His last words rang in her ears. She never doubted that they were meant for her. He had no time to say more then; but when he came back, not Muriel in all her beauty, nor any other woman, nor any other thing could ever come between them again she thought. And he would come back! The moonlight and the soft fragrance of the dusky night, what were they any of them but the earth’s pledges to her that her heaven should come again to meet that other heaven in her heart?

“I have broken my fan,” said Edith le Mentier to Muriel as they went up to bed. “So stupid of me, wasn’t it; but at any rate I was not going to let Captain Hurstly have another one.” Muriel looked straight before her.

“Another one, Edith?” she repeated.

“Yes, stupid, didn’t you know men were in the habit of keeping people’s fans when they were—well, rather—don’t you know?”

“I am afraid I’m rather dense—good-night,” said Muriel wearily. She stopped outside Gladys’ door, but there was no light or sound. “She’s asleep,” she thought, “I won’t disturb her,” and went on to her own room. It seemed rather strange to her that anybody could sleep.