Shadows of Flames: A Novel

Chesney moved uneasily. His eyes slipped from under hers. He lit another cigarette with elaborate care.

"Look here, Daphne," he said in a would-be bluff, frank tone. "What did I say ... and do? You know I get confoundedly blurry sometimes, when one of these beastly attacks is coming on."

"You really don't remember?" Sophy asked, looking at him keenly. She saw a slow red cloud his pale face.

"Well ... I've a hazy notion that I went for Gerald ... about those pearls. Nasty things!" he broke off viciously. "Mere pretty diseases—tumours—you know I loathe 'em."

Sophy had wondered many times what had become of her pearls after he had strewn the floor with them. She said now:

"What have you done with them, Cecil?"

His shoulder went up crossly.

"Oh, they're safe enough," he said grudgingly. "I'll have 'em strung over for you. Counted 'em this morning. They're all there. So you haven't got that against me."

Sophy sat looking down at her hands, and turning her wedding ring slowly round and round. She had never thought that she could come to hate an inanimate object as fiercely as she sometimes hated her wedding ring. But to-day she did not hate it. It seemed a dreary little symbol of a dreary fact that must be borne somehow, that was all. Suddenly she lifted her eyes to his.

"I don't harbour things 'against you,' Cecil," she said. "The pearls were the least of it all. It was the way you spoke of Gerald and that ... that loathsome book." Her look grew suddenly impassioned with resentment. "Why should you wish to show me such a thing?" she asked very low, and her voice trembled.

Chesney was deeply embarrassed again. He looked away from her, and that slow red rose in his face.

"Oh—men are hell!" he said thickly. "You'd never really understand a man, Sophy. There are abysms ... cess-pools in us."

He got up suddenly and flung himself on his knees beside her, hiding his face in her lap like a child.

"Don't try to understand," she heard him muttering. "Just try to ... to forgive."

There was something at once piteous and repulsive, in that huge figure crouching so humbly at her knee.

Sophy felt a choking sensation.

"Get up ... get up, dear," she pleaded. "I do forgive you! Please, please get up!"

"Will you kiss me then?" came the muttering voice, muffled by her skirts.

"Yes. Yes, I will. Only get up—do, dear, do!"

He knelt up, and, flinging his arms around her, reached his mouth thirstily to hers. That kiss was a deathly draught to Sophy, but pity made her accept it without shrinking visibly. In her mind the thought went round and round: "Mystery—mystery. What was once like life to me is now like death—worse." Then: "I must be kind to him. If I am kind perhaps I can save him."

Chesney was fingering the folds of her gown shyly.

"I say—what a darling you look in this frock, Daphne," he said. "It clings so—shows your lovely Greek body so beautifully. What's it made of?"

"They call it Chudder Cloth," she said, smiling.

Chesney gasped, as if she had sprinkled water in his face, then, sinking back upon the floor at her feet, he went into fits of the most immoderate mirth. "Oh! Ah!" He could scarcely get his breath. "Forgive me, Sophy! But 'Chudder Cloth'—'Chudder'—I never heard anything so ludicrous in my life——"

And he rolled over on the floor, shaken from head to foot with preposterous laughter, beating the carpet with his hands.

Sophy was used to these outbursts caused by some especial, yet apparently trivial, word. Sometimes they took the form of mirth, as to-day, sometimes that of rage. She remembered what Olive had told her. Her heart felt very heavy.

There came a knock at the door. Chesney sprang to his feet, scowling at the closed door.

"Come in!" said Sophy.

It was William, with a card on a tray.

"The Marquis Amaldi to see you, madam."

"Very well," said Sophy.

Cecil lighted another of his huge cigarettes.

"Who's this——foreigner?" he asked, amiably enough.

Inwardly Sophy contracted at the brutal adjective that she detested. Outwardly she was unmoved.

"A friend of Count Varesca's. I met him at the Illinghams'—no, at the Ponceforths' the other night."

"Mh!—— Well, so long. I'll make myself scarce for a bit. Can't stand foreigners."

He started towards a side door, turned, came back, and lifting her hand kissed it tenderly.

"You're a splendid thing!" he said very low. "I'm often a beast to you—but I love you—always."

He was gone. Sophy stood looking after him for some seconds, then she lowered her eyes to Amaldi's card, which she still held. She left the room thinking ... thinking....

VI

When Sophy entered the drawing-room, Amaldi was standing with his hands behind him, looking down at a drawing of herself that stood on a table near the fireplace. The drawing had been made when she was eighteen by a young Polish artist. It was done in yellow-and-brown chalks and had a curious glow—a look of golden light about it. Chesney disliked it. He pronounced it too "mystical." The truth was that it revealed a side of Sophy's nature which was forever inaccessible to him.

As she gave Amaldi her hand, she said: "You were looking at that old drawing. It's a strange thing, isn't it?"

"Yes. Like 'the shadow of a flame,'" he answered. Then as Sophy started and looked at him inquiringly, he added, smiling: "Varesca told me of your poems. I read them yesterday. I won't bore you by telling you how beautiful I thought them. And the title— I wondered so much how you came to think of that lovely title. That, in itself, is a poem."

Sophy blushed like a girl. She was very sensitive about that book of verse. Since she had known more of life, she had often wondered at her own naïveté which had allowed her to pour out from her heart, as from a cup, those inmost feelings, for any chance buyer to possess in common with her. The voice in that little volume was the voice of one crying in the wilderness of youth; now she was a woman, and she blushed for the passionate ignorance of the girl she had been.

Amaldi said quickly:

"Have I been indiscreet? Perhaps you don't like to talk of your writing. Please forgive me if I've been indiscreet."

"No, no; indeed you haven't been," she answered. "I'm very glad you like my verses. Only—well— I wrote them so long ago. One changes— I was very young...."

"And now," said Amaldi, smiling, "you feel very old, I suppose?"

She smiled in answer.

"I certainly feel older," she said lightly.

Amaldi was thinking how much like a young girl she looked, sitting there in her plain white gown, with her hands clasped about one knee. Having read those impassioned early poems, he marvelled at a spirit that could be at once so fiery and so virginal. He felt sure that there could be no other like her in the world—so deeply was he in love with her already. But this love was quite different from anything that he had ever felt before. It had in it both mysticism and fatality. It was a desire of the soul as well as of the body. He had had "loves" before—this was Love.

And in Sophy's mind was the consciousness of what Olive Arundel had told her, only the day before, about the tragedy of Amaldi's life. It seemed that when he was only twenty-three he had made a mariage de convenance to please his father. He had married his cousin, Clelia Castelli. Two years afterwards she had been unfaithful to him. Amaldi had fought with her lover. Then husband and wife had separated. There is no divorce in Italy.

Sophy was thinking now: "When he was twenty-five—two years younger than I am—he was fighting his wife's lover with a bare sword. He was living out those real, dreadful things when he was a mere boy."

And she could not help glancing curiously at his hand, to which a seal ring of sapphire engraved with his arms gave such a foreign look.... Only thirty-one, and cut off forever by the laws of his country and its religion from family, from children.... Yes—that was tragic. That was real tragedy.

Amaldi said suddenly in his grave voice:

"May I know how you came to call your book The Shadow of a Flame?"

"Yes; it's very simple," she answered. "I was rather unhappy. I had stayed awake all night—reading by candle-light. My window looked to the east. When the sun rose, my candle was still burning. And as I started to blow it out, I noticed that in the sunlight, its flame cast a shadow on the page of my book. And it came to me that we were all like that—like little flames casting shadows in some greater light. And that our passions were also like little flames that cast shadows—of sorrow ... regret ... despair ... weariness...."

"Yes," said Amaldi, "yes—it is like that...."

Something in the timbre of her voice as she said the words, "sorrow ... regret ... despair ... weariness," moved him deeply. He did not dare to say more. He was not at any time a man of fluent speech, now his earnest desire not to be "indiscreet" in the least degree made him feel oddly dumb.

Sophy herself changed the note of their conversation to a lighter key.

"Tell me," she said suddenly, "is the home that you care for most in the town or in the country? I can't help thinking that your real home is in some beautiful country part of Italy."

"Yes," he said, his face lighting. "On Lago Maggiore."

"Ah! I was sure of it! I'd thought of Como. Is your lake as beautiful as Como?"

"I think it more beautiful. I believe you would think so, too. How I should like to show it to you—the Lake and our old Tenuta. We have a dear old place. I live there most of the time with my mother. We are great friends, my mother and I."

"Ah! that is beautiful!" she said warmly. "That is what I want my son to feel for me when he grows up."

Amaldi winced. He had not thought of her as having a child. It seemed to set her still farther from him. He had for an instant an almost overpowering sense of the bleakness of his lot. Like all Italians, he adored children. He would never have a son. And now he learned suddenly that she had a son—the child of another man.

"Ah," he said mechanically. "You have a son? Is he like you?"

"No; like himself. But some people think that his eyes are like mine. You shall judge for yourself. Only, please don't be vexed if he doesn't go to you at once. He's a funny mouse. He's rather stiff with strangers."

The butler here brought in tea, and as Sophy finished pouring it, she turned suddenly, exclaiming:

"I think that's my boy coming in now!"

She sprang up and, crossing the room with her light, joyous step, opened the door before Amaldi could overtake her. When she turned again, her little son was in her arms.

"You needn't wait, Miller," she said, over her shoulder, to the nurse. "I'll send him up to you later."

The boy leaned with one arm about his mother's neck, his slim, polished legs, emerging from white socks, hanging down against the soft curve of her breast. His little face, grave and concentrated, regarded the stranger with impartial attention.

Sophy seated herself, slipped off his quaint hat, and ran her hand over the short dark red curls. It seemed to Amaldi that the white hand quivered with ecstasy over the child's head like a white moth over a flower. The boy was not beautiful, but he had his mother's eyes, though he did not look like his mother.

"This is my little man ... this is Bobby," said Sophy, smiling from the boy to Amaldi, and sliding the child from her knee upon his feet.

"You really mustn't mind if he isn't friendly—he doesn't seem to like many people—and none, just at first."

Amaldi and the boy were looking gravely at each other. Suddenly Amaldi smiled. His face seemed to put off a certain delicate mask when he smiled like that. He held out his hand.

"Will you come and try my stick, Bobby?" he said. "It makes a splendid horse."

The boy pressed back hard against his mother's knee for an instant, his eyes still on Amaldi's. They continued to look at each other steadily for some seconds. Then Bobby twisted around as he leaned against Sophy, looked up inquiringly into her face, smiled suddenly, showing his little crimped teeth, and, drawing himself erect, walked straight up to Amaldi.

"Oh!" said Sophy on a hushed breath, as when a bird alights near one. Never before had Bobby gone to a stranger. A feeling of delight came over her. The child was ratifying her own instinct about Amaldi. She looked on with lips parted and eyes softly shining, while Bobby, leaning now against Amaldi's knee, fingered the dark, smooth stick that made "a splendid horse." But while his small hands wandered over the curved handle, he was gazing not at the stick but into Amaldi's face.

Suddenly he pushed the stick aside.

"Take Bobby," he said.

Amaldi lifted him upon his knee, and the child, putting one hand against the young man's breast, continued gazing up into his eyes. Then he said:

"Stan' up.... Bobby! stan' up."

Amaldi put his hands about the firm little body, and raised it, so that Bobby stood like a tiny Rhodian Apollo, with a foot on either knee of his new friend. For some moments he stayed so, looking down into Amaldi's face with deep consideration. Then, as if having thought everything out to his entire satisfaction, he bent forward, and set the soft, damp ring of his small mouth against the young man's cheek.

"Bobby man!" he announced. And at once burst into the wildest chuckles, hugging Amaldi's head to him with both arms, springing in his grasp like a bewitched india-rubber ball—repeating over and over, "Bobby man!—Bobby man!"

Amaldi clasped him close. His dark face glowed with pleasure. All at once it came back to Sophy afresh that his tragic marriage had been childless. Her heart felt very pitiful towards him.

Here the door opened, and Chesney entered.

Amaldi rose with Bobby still in his arms.

"My husband—Marchese Amaldi," said Sophy.

"How d'ye do?" said Chesney. He was looking at Bobby. Then he turned to Sophy.

"Isn't it rather late for the little chap to be downstairs?" he asked.

"I was going to send him away in a few moments. But he's made such friends with the Marchese. Isn't it odd? Just look at him."

Chesney sank into an armchair, and Amaldi also sat down, keeping the boy in his arms. Bobby had suddenly grown quite still. He remained with his head against Amaldi's breast, his thumb in his mouth, looking fixedly at his father. His blurs of reddish eyebrow were drawn together.

"Little monkey! He's scowling at me——" observed Chesney, with his short laugh. "He's not a filial character—young Robert," he flung out carelessly, as though he might be addressing Amaldi, but he did not look at him; his eyes were fixed on the boy, and he himself was scowling slightly.

Sophy spoke in a low aside, meant only for his ear.

"Now, Cecil; don't excite him, please. He doesn't sleep well when you worry him."

Chesney acted as though he had not heard her. He sat erect, then leaned forward, and with his great hands hanging loose between his knees, said in a firm tone: "Come here, Bobby."

The child did not stir. Then he took his thumb from his mouth.

"No," he said in a clear, distinct little voice. He put back his thumb and began sucking it vigorously, swinging one foot to and fro in a sort of accompaniment.

Sophy knew well this sign in Bobby. It meant flat rebellion and rising temper.

"Cecil...." she murmured. "Cecil...."

He took not the slightest notice of her.

"Charmingly you're brought up, ain't you ... you cheeky little brat," said he to his son, in a lazy sort of drawl. Then he barked it at him: "Come here to me when I tell you!"

Again Bobby removed his thumb, and again he said, "No," clearly and firmly.

Chesney got up.

When the child saw this, he relinquished his small arms of mutiny, and flattening himself against Amaldi's breast, clung to him, crying: "No! No! Teep Bobby—teep Bobby."

Amaldi was very pale. Sophy stepped in front of Chesney. She tried to take Bobby in her arms, but nervous dread made him refuse, and he clung like a burr to Amaldi, hiding his face in his neck, clutching with his little hands.

"Cecil——" said Sophy again, for he had actually laid his hand on her arm as though to put her from his way.

Amaldi felt in an impossible nightmare. An icy rage congealed him. And suddenly, over the boy's head, the eyes of the two men met. Strange to say, Amaldi's were absolutely expressionless. Something in their still, blank look checked Chesney. He stood a second undetermined, then gave that self-conscious, embarrassed laugh that Sophy knew so well. It was over, then. That especial laugh always meant yielding on Cecil's part. She turned again to Bobby, her lip quivering in spite of her will.

"Come, darling.... Come to mother...." she whispered.

Suddenly the boy let her take him. He was trembling all over, but scorned to cry.

Amaldi murmured a few formalities and left. With Bobby close in her arms, Sophy went quickly past her husband out of the room. He made no effort to detain her.

VII

It was very hard to get Bobby to sleep that night. At last, however, he wearily subsided against Sophy's breast and, thumb in mouth, demanded "All a gees." This meant the old nursery song of "All the pretty little horses." Obediently she began to sing in her rich contralto that was like the flutes and viols of love, tempered to the inanity of the nursery rhyme. But though she sang and sang, it was after seven o'clock before the boy fell fast asleep. She dressed hurriedly for dinner, slipping into a tea-gown of dull orange that Cecil particularly liked. She had made up her mind to talk to him about his attitude towards Bobby. She wished it to be as quiet a talk as possible, so she put on the orange tea-gown to please him, and set in her hair some tiny, orange lilies that had been sent down from Dynehurst that morning. He liked her to wear flowers in her hair. But though she made these preparations, she was quite determined to face anything in the matter of having "her say out" about his relations with the boy. She had long realised, in silence, that there was a strong antagonism between father and son. It seemed terrible, but she knew that such things were. It had been the same between Cecil and his own father. But she would not have the child terrorised and herself treated with indignity because of Cecil's moods. No; not even his illness could make her put up with that. And she thought, with a hot wave of pain and shame, of the scene that Amaldi had just witnessed.

Chesney came in to dinner, rather late and very much excited. He began rattling politics to her. The damned government was going under. He'd give it two more years. Then, by Jove! he was going to cut in and give his Radicalism a fling! The Conservatives were pretty well played out; they'd been in just four years too long, confound 'em! 'Twas Kitty O'Shea had saved the Union for 'em, and none of those rotters in office. As a clever Irish Unionist had said, they ought to raise statues to Kitty O'Shea all over Ulster—and so on and so on.

Sophy listened pleasantly, putting in a word every now and then to show that she was really attentive. She was thinking all the time how pale his face was, and how dark and excited his eyes. This last was all the more noticeable, as of late his eyes had been so dull and faded looking. Now the pupils almost covered the iris. And she noticed, too, that, though he helped himself freely from every dish, he ate scarcely anything. This made her apprehensive. He was so much more apt to be irritable when he did not eat. Then he suddenly ordered a pint of champagne.

"Will you have some, too?" he asked her. "But you don't like it, do you?"

"Sometimes—when I'm thirsty. Not to-night."

"And just send another pint up to my room, Parkson. I shall read late to-night," he added, as an explanation to Sophy.

In the drawing-room after dinner he was very restless, roaming to and fro, smoking those great cigarettes, one after the other. He kept glancing at the clock. Sophy had drawn on a pair of long gardening-gloves and was peeling the stems of some roses. The butler had placed a great trayful of them on a low table before her, and as she peeled the long, thorn-armed stems, she arranged the roses in a crystal vase. They kept for days longer when stripped of their outer rind in this way. The tranquil monotony of her movements seemed to get on Chesney's nerves.

"For God's sake," he said finally, halting near her, "get through with that business and sing me something."

She sat down at once to the piano and sang some of Schumann's Lieder and soft, melancholy Russian folk-songs—the songs of a people bowed immemorially by oppression—almost in love with sorrow, as a prisoner comes to love his prison. She was glad that he had asked her to sing. Many a time had she played David to his Saul. Music, her singing especially, always softened him. Now it would be easier to talk with him of Bobby.

When she paused, he looked up at her from the chair in which he had stretched himself, his head sunk moodily forward. "By God! You're a sweet woman," he said.

Sophy rose, and, going over to him, sat on the arm of the big chair.

"I want to talk to you about something, Cecil. Something very important. Will you be nice to me?"

She had yielded him her hand, and he was looking at it earnestly, turning it this way and that in his great fingers, which were covered between the knuckles with a light furze of reddish hair—playing with the rings that he had given her. Sophy hated these rings, but he insisted on her wearing them; he was proud of their beauty on the beauty of her white hand. There were three, a pink pearl, an emerald, a ruby.

As she spoke, he clutched the hand with which he had been toying and looked up at her.

"Eh?" he said. "What's up?"

"It's about you and Bobby, Cecil."

He put her hand back upon her knee.

"Oh, the tigress and her cub. I see."

"No, Cecil, you don't see. I don't want to be disagreeable. I only want to try to explain things to you."

"Your son's high priestess interpreter?"

"No, dear; just a woman who understands babies better than a man could."

"Well?"

"I think the boy gets on your nerves, Cecil, and——"

"He does. Cross-grained little beggar."

"Yes, he is cross-grained. But harshness only makes him worse. He's one of those natures that can only be controlled by love."

"Like yours, eh?"

"Exactly."

Chesney thrust his hands deep into his pockets and smiled. It was an ugly, secretive smile.

"What the little monkey needs is a good thrashing," said he.

Sophy struggled desperately to keep her voice natural. Her heart was beginning to beat so fast that she felt her voice must surely tremble.

"Ah, Cecil, do be nice to me," she murmured. "You were so gentle and kind this afternoon."

"'Gentle and kind!' Oh, Lord!" he went off into a sort of frenzy of smothered laughter. "'Gentle and kind'—that's your ideal of manhood—husbandhood—— Eh? What?"

Sophy retreated from him. She remained standing, very quiet, very pale, her lips pressed together.

"As for being nice to you," he continued between his chuckles, "I thought it was your offspring you wanted me to be nice to."

Sophy said nothing. She was so angry, and so mortified at her own lack of self-command in allowing him to make her angry, that she was literally afraid to speak.

Chesney got up and lounged towards her.

"Look here," he said, putting his face close to hers. "I'd like you to realise, once for all, that that boy is mine as well as yours—at least I hope he is——" he interpolated brutally. "And what's more, if I choose to, I'll go upstairs this moment and thrash him in his crib!"

There is no doubt of it. At that moment Sophy felt the full force of the expression to have murder in one's heart. In her heart there was certainly murder. She felt herself saying over and over in thought, as to some Dark Power: "Let him fall dead. Let him fall dead. Before he can touch my son—let him fall dead, dead."

"Pfew! What eyes!" said Chesney, somewhat sobered. "You look a regular Jael—glowering at me like that...."

Sophy's eyes blazed on. She felt them burning in her head. She said nothing.

Suddenly his mood took another turn. He gave her a glance of would-be shrewdness, very hateful.

"Ill tell you what's at the bottom of all this," he said sullenly. "It's that dirty little foreigner who was coddling the brat when I came in this afternoon. You've been discussing me with him behind my back. A pretty——"

"How dare you!" It came in a slow, fierce whisper. "How dare you!" she repeated.

"All the better—if I'm mistaken," he retorted, again rather sobered for the moment.

"Oh...." Sophy drew a long breath, another. She shuddered convulsively, then grew rigid. "Oh...." she said finally. "To think I ever thought myself ... in love with you!" Her emphasis on the words "in love" was sick with self-contempt.

A ghastly look came over Chesney's face. It turned grey, and moisture sprang out on his forehead. He collapsed all at once into a chair, leaning his forehead on his hands.

"By God—I'm an ill man——" he stammered. Sophy stood an instant in doubt. He was a great actor in his way. But that livid face was not one that could be assumed at will. She rang for help—went over to him.

"What is it? Do you feel faint?" she asked, in a constrained voice. He seemed unable to answer. Parkson appeared in the doorway. "Send Gaynor at once. Mr. Chesney is very ill."

She thrust her handkerchief into the vase of roses, and drawing his heavy head against her shoulder, moistened his brow and temples. She felt somewhat as if she had risen from the block, to minister to the headsman, who had inadvertently wounded himself with his own axe.

Gaynor came within ten minutes. He was a small, quiet man, a little older than his master. He had been in his service ever since Chesney left Cambridge, had travelled with him, knew his every idiosyncrasy. Chesney would have no one but Gaynor with him during his mysterious attacks. Parkson was waiting at the door to know if he could be of assistance. "It's nothing serious, madam," the valet assured Sophy. "I'll just get the butler to help me to assist Mr. Chesney upstairs. He'll come round in half an hour. Pray don't worry, madam." Gaynor spoke very prim and correct English, when he did speak. He was singularly taciturn. Chesney used to boast that he had trained Gaynor to be silent in season and out of season, as some people train a pet dog to "speak."

Three-quarters of an hour later, as Sophy was sitting before her dressing-table while Tilda brushed out her long hair for the night, there came a knock at the door. Tilda went to answer it, and returned with an envelope in her hand. It was a note from Chesney, written by himself. It said that he felt much better—implored Sophy to come to his room before going to bed. She gazed down at the handwriting, feeling mystified. It was strong, flowing, and abounded in eager flourishes where the pen had glided from word to word without lifting from the paper. Yet she had seen Cecil only a short while ago in a state of collapse that really alarmed her.

"Who gave you this?" she said to Tilda.

"Mr. Gaynor, m'm."

"Very well. Tell Gaynor to say to Mr. Chesney that I will come in a few moments."

VIII

When she entered her husband's bedroom, he was already in bed, lying propped up against a heap of pillows. A shaded lamp burnt on a table close by—the same lamp that Sophy had extinguished at five o'clock the other morning. Gaynor was folding some garments and laying them away in a cupboard. As soon as Sophy came in, he slipped out in the mousey way that she so disliked. She had never been able to overcome her antipathy towards Gaynor. Then she looked earnestly at Chesney and was startled by the change in him. His face was slightly flushed, but looked gay and good-humoured. He had on pyjamas of a light, grey-blue that threw out the gold in his fair hair. There were books all about him—on the bed, and on the table. Writing materials were laid close at hand on a leather blotting-pad. He smiled, with an almost childlike, ingenuous expression, and held out both hands to her.

Sophy felt bewildered. She did not know how to return this look. Her heart felt sore and outraged, yet something in this eager, humble look of his melted her against her will. She went up to the bed and let him take her hands.

"You'll forgive a chap, won't you, eh, Daphne?" (Oh, if only he wouldn't call her "Daphne" on these occasions!) "A rum, seedy duffer, who's devilish crusty at times, but who worships your shoe-soles!" (So he called it being "crusty"—those ways and words that seared her most intimate womanhood like a hot iron!)

"Are you really better? What was it?" she said, evading a direct answer, and trying to infuse extra kindness into her voice to make up for the evasion.

"Oh, it's just the fag end of that beastly jungle fever I got in India. Gaynor understands it like a native. Gave me some drops. Indian specific for the thing, you know. So I'm forgiven—eh? It's pax between us?"

"Yes—pax," said Sophy. She felt very tired, and turned as if to draw up a chair, but the big hands held her fast.

"No—no—not an inch away from me, even for a second. Sit here—on the bed—close to me."

She let him draw her down. She could not keep her eyes from his face. There was something in it—a strangeness. It was Cecil's face and yet it was not quite his face. Or was it his voice that was strange? Yes; there was something in his voice. It was almost as though he were imitating himself. She felt that her own thoughts were becoming mixed. But the impression of strangeness—of something queer—grew upon her. And all at once, as she became accustomed to the shaded lamp, she noticed, with an odd little start of the spirit, that his eyes were pale, and dull again—like bits of glass that have been rubbed together—like those pale, greenish glass marbles that boys call "taws." It was doubly striking—this change in his eyes—because of the way that they had been over-dark and dilated only a little while ago. His lips, too, she noticed, were very dry. As he talked eagerly, volubly, he kept sipping champagne from the glass that Gaynor had filled just before leaving the room. Sometimes his lips stuck to his teeth, they were so dry. And his upper lip caught up for an instant in this way, gave him a peculiar, unnatural look.

"Isn't the medicine that Gaynor gives you very strong?" she asked anxiously. "Isn't it dangerous to take such strong medicine—without a doctor's advice?"

She was so utterly ignorant of the effects of opium or morphia, that she put aside the things that Olive Arundel had told her, as she listened to his excited, garrulous talk. Opium gave wonderful dreams—deep sleep. Morphine was used to quiet delirium. This could not be the effect of either of those drugs. It seemed much more probable to her that what he had said was the simple truth, and that Gaynor had given him some strong Oriental medicine to check the effects of fever.

"No—no—nonsense," he cried, in answer to her suggestion, a fretful look crossing his forehead. Then a sort of slow ecstatic expression crept over his face. He caught her hands in his again.

"Oh, the bliss—the sheer bliss of relief from pain!" he murmured. "Half an hour ago I was in hell—quite so. Now...." He drew away one of his hands, and spread it out slowly at arm's length, smiling at it. It was odd and painful to see the huge man thus reproduce exactly the gesture of a baby who gazes with wonder at its own hand.

"Now," he went on, "my very hands are happy. It's a pleasure—a thrilling joy just to move my fingers—quietly, like that...."

"You aren't feverish now, are you?" asked Sophy. She put her hand on his forehead. It was dry and warm, but not feverish.

"No—no. Not in the least," he said, and again that fretful look crossed his face. But the next instant he was rambling on.

"Yes—bliss just to be—just to breathe. To stretch out—so." He elongated his limbs under the bedclothes, stretching luxuriously like a great cat. "If I were a Titan, by Jove!—I could fill up space just by stretching myself like that. Bum fancy, eh?" He laughed softly, and took several sips of champagne—then lighted a cigarette.

"Ought you to smoke?" faltered Sophy. Somehow, the more gay and garrulous he grew, the more depressed and anxious she felt. She did not trust Gaynor. What was this sinisterly benevolent medicine that could change a man from an angry, brutal invalid, into a huge, merry child as it were, chirping at the toys of fancy?

"Do you know anything about epilepsy, Sophy? Bless you, you darling! don't look so frightened. I haven't got epilepsy—but there was that Russian chap—Dostoievsky—who had it. He speaks of a wonderful moment—a luminous moment that comes just before an attack—before the fit, you know. He says you seem to understand everything, and know everything, and be in harmony with everything—as if there were no more time. Well—I have not only one moment like that but hundreds, thousands—when I'm as I am now—after a collapse like that. By God! It's worth the suffering. That's what Dostoievsky said. He said that moment was worth all the rest of his life. He was right.... Yes, he was right."

Sophy took one of his excited hands and held it in both her own.

"Cecil—dear Cecil," she said. "Please, for my sake—consult a doctor about that medicine Gaynor gives you."

For a second—the merest flash, a look of fury narrowed his eyes. Then he laughed, gaily, good-naturedly, patted her hand.

"My good child, haven't you ever heard the expression 'crazy with joy'? Well, I'm crazy with the joy of relief from pain, that's all. Can't a chap babble a bit to his own wife without being threatened with a doctor? Come— I suppose I am talking a bit too much. Tell me a story, as the children say—and I'll keep quiet. By the way—talking of children—I sent for you chiefly to tell you that you were right about the boy. He's a devil of a little individual, that's all. I'm rather an individual myself. Naturally we clash. Relationship doesn't alter such things. Relationship is a big farce. There aren't any true relationships except those of the spirit. You're Queen of Bobs from this time forward. There— I am forgiven now, ain't I!"

"Yes; truly—from my heart," said Sophy, quite melted. She put her face down against his hand. "If only...."

"If only what?"

"If only you could always be your true self—this self."

Chesney said nothing. He was lighting another cigarette—leaning over and holding it to the lamp clumsily.

"Oh, poor dear! You can't do it that way; here's your other hand," she said, smiling and releasing the hand she held. Chesney closed his eyes for a moment. Dreamily he said:

"Won't you tell me that story? You tell such lovely stories when you're in the mood."

"I can't think of one somehow. You tell me one."

In that thick dreamy voice, his dry lips cleaving together now and then, he began to speak.

"Once there was a man who was shut by his arch enemy into a dark dungeon. This enemy's name was Bios." (Sophy knew no Greek, and somehow it pleased him to fling out to her this clue to the parable that he was inventing, knowing that she could not use it.) "Bios shut the man up in his foul dungeon. But worse than the darkness and the stone walls was the legend of the place. It was told that out of the crevices there came a horrid Thing like a winged scorpion, with steely horns and a sting of living fire. And in the darkness this Thing would dart upon the prisoner in that dungeon, and drive him round and round. By the light of its fiery sting he could see just enough to run from it but not to escape. This man thought: 'I will not run from this Thing until I die from exhaustion. I will bare my breast to it and die at once, from its sting.' Pour me out a bit more champagne, there's a dear girl."

"Did—did Gaynor say that champagne was good to take with that medicine?"

"Yes—yes"—impatiently. "Don't you want to hear the end of my story?"

"Of course—but—yes, go on."

He drank half a glass of the wine at a draught, and dropping the lighted cigarette on the bedclothes seemed not to notice it. Sophy hastily brushed it upon the floor, then lifted it and put it in the ash-tray. He went on in that sing-song way:

"So the man bared his breast. And he felt the little sting go in—delicately—deliberately——" His slowly modulated voice seemed to make her see this fiery sting going into the man's flesh in the dark. She shivered.

"Oh, finish!" she said. "I don't like this story, Cecil."

"Wait," he murmured. "And as the sting went into his living flesh—there flowed through him, not death—but rapture—rapture—rapture——" His voice trailed off.

He seemed to have fallen suddenly asleep. Sophy hoped that he had. It seemed to her as if he were a little delirious. She started to rise softly—at once his hand gripped her, holding her down. "I'm not asleep," he said. "I'm only thinking. I'm thinking how badly I told that story, when it is really beautiful—quite beautiful. But I don't want to talk any more."

She waited some moments—then said in a soft, even whisper:

"Asleep, dear?"

Only his heavy breathing answered her. She lifted her hand from his breast, little by little, turned down the lamp, and stole from the room. Neutral tinted in face and figure, quietly alert, Gaynor sat on a chair outside the door. He rose for Sophy to pass. For some reason, that even she herself could not quite make out, she broke down and wept when she reached her own room. Kneeling beside her bed, her face buried in her pillow, her arms clasping it, she kept sobbing: "Oh, poor Cecil! poor Cecil!"

IX

For a week after this Chesney was much better, if rather languid. He seemed in a peaceable, rather indifferent frame of mind—that is, he was apparently detached from immediate matters, such as the life of his little household, which usually "got on his nerves." He kept his room a good deal, or lay on the big, leather lounge in the smoking-room, reading incessantly. His interest in politics, however, seemed suddenly to have revived, and he continually assured Sophy that the party which had been in power since 1886 was on its last legs, and that the G. O. M. would be reinstated as Prime Minister within two years. "If I wasn't so handicapped with this rotten fever, I'd throw off my coat and jump into the ring," he kept telling her.

"With the Liberals?" Sophy ventured.

He scowled, then grinned.

"Do I strike you as Conservative?" he asked.

"No—but your family——"

"Confound the family," he said cheerfully.

He took up his book again—a heavy volume on German politics, and Sophy sat watching him quietly as she embroidered a collar for Bobby. She wished with all her heart that he would "go in" actively for politics. She felt that what he needed, perhaps most of all, was some steady, vital interest and occupation. He was only thirty-three, and she had heard from many people that much had been expected from him by men whose opinion in such things mattered. Of course, his mother was furious at his Radical tendencies and called him "turncoat" to his face, among other terms as frank and equally harsh. He always met this with the secretive smile that so enraged her. At twenty-seven his brilliant series of articles, "The Liberalism of a Tory-Born," had been much talked of. In them he showed originality, a singular grasp of matters for so young a man, and, in addition, that perhaps most valuable gift for the man who wishes to "arrive"—a tremendous power of conviction that there is but one side to a question—the side on which he stands. He saw the other side, of course, but he saw it as the side of the wave which breaks—as froth.

There were people, however, who said that Cecil Chesney was "agin' the Government" as he was against most facts that happened to be established, that they had prophesied from the first that his "staying power" was nil, and his brilliancy of the unstable, sky-rockety sort that peters out in talk and scribbling. Certainly he had made an odd volte-face, when he whipped about at twenty-eight and went off on that exploring expedition to Africa.

Sophy was very ignorant about politics. She imagined that if Cecil only chose, he could easily become a member of the House of Commons and make a stir in that august and portly body. This innocent belief shows how really and sincerely and extremely ignorant she was. But then she had had few opportunities of information. The first year of her marriage had been spent chiefly in learning how to adapt herself in some sort to her eccentric, passionate husband, to the new characters and customs with which she found herself surrounded, to the amazing difficulties of her intercourse with Chesney's family. Lady Wychcote had been hostile to her from the first. But Sophy had a gift of natural, fiery dignity, which constrained even her imperious mother-in-law to treat her, if not with kindness, at least with a certain measure of outward respect. Gerald was a kindly, quiet, scholarly man of thirty-six, who cared nothing whatever for politics. His books and the welfare of the miners whose labour was one of the chief sources of the Wychcote riches, amply filled his time. It may be imagined what a severe thorn her eldest son proved in the proud flesh of his mother. And as her disappointment in Cecil waxed, her love for Gerald waned. When she realised that there had sprung up a quiet affection between him and his young sister-in-law—"the daughter of Heth" as Lady Wychcote called her to her own circle—she came near to hating him. That he had not married and showed no inclination to enter that respectable state so incumbent on the heirs of old titles and large fortunes, was like a continual draught on the smouldering embers of her grievance against him for having been born sickly. He had suffered from childhood with an obscure form of heart-trouble.

Sophy's second year of marriage had brought Bobby and the first serious symptoms of her husband's malady. She had certainly had scant time for the study of politics. What little she did know was gleaned from the glib, rattling talk of Olive Arundel, who, as the wife of an M. P., had the political patter at her tongue's tip.

So Sophy worked on the little collar for Bobby, and dreamed that she was sitting behind the grating of the Ladies' Gallery, in the House of Commons, to hear Cecil's maiden speech. She had just arrived at the pleasant moment when Mr. Gladstone, reinstated as premier, was listening, hand at ear, with unmistakable signs of surprised approval to the eloquence of his new supporter, when Cecil himself destroyed the vision. He let the heavy German book fall to the floor with a bang and said:

"What's on for this week in the way of society? Anything promising?"

"We've had lots of invitations, Cecil, but I've refused them, because you weren't feeling well."

He looked peevish.

"Hang it all! Why didn't you consult me before making such a holocaust as that? I'm feeling much more fit. Think I'd like to mix with pleasant fools for a time."

Sophy looked doubtful.

"Don't you think it's too soon, Cecil? You were awfully ill that night."

"Well, I didn't stay ill, did I?"

"N-no. You recovered wonderfully quickly. But it was that strong medicine that Gaynor gave you." She stopped stitching on the little collar, and looked at him earnestly. "Somehow, I am so afraid of your taking that medicine, Cecil."

"Rubbish!" he said curtly.

"You can't think how it affects you——"

"How that fever affects me, you mean, don't you?"

Sophy did not like to say too much. He was frowning, and he had been so amiable for several days. She began to sew again, saying only:

"Of course, I don't really know. Only—it worries me."

Chesney got up.

"I think I'll go out for a bit," he said. "Just a turn in the Park. It's beastly stuffy indoors."

"Would you like me to come with you?"

"You forget—don't you? You told me Olive Arundel was coming for tea."

"Oh, so I did. Well then—but don't overtire yourself."

He scowled frankly this time.

"Confound it, Sophy—I told you I felt quite fit." He reached the door, then turned. "Mind you hold on to the next invitation that seems promising. I need bucking up a bit. Mixing with my fellows, confound 'em! It will give me something to vent my spleen on, if nothing else. So long."

As it happened, Mrs. Arundel came with an invitation. It was for a dinner at the House of Commons. She had coaxed her Jack to give this dinner. Varesca had never been to a dinner at the House of Commons.

"You must come, Sophy," she said urgently. "It's going to be bwilliant." (Whenever Olive grew very intense she missed her "r's" and this suited her Greuze type charmingly.)

Sophy needed no urging. It seemed to her that this was the very thing for which Cecil had been wishing. She accepted for them both.

Olive leaned over and kissed her.

"Oh, I am so pleased. And that duck of an Amaldi will be in the seventh heaven."

Sophy could not help smiling at the idea of the quiet, reserved Amaldi being called a "duck."

"Why do you smile, Sophy? Don't you like him? Varesca says he is madly in love with you."

Sophy was annoyed to feel herself blushing, for this blush came wholly from vexation and she knew that Olive would interpret it otherwise.

"It's very stupid of Count Varesca to say such things," she said a little haughtily.

"Oh, no, darling!—Attilio may be impulsive—but he isn't stupid."

Sophy's grey eyes grew long with laughter. Olive, puzzled, demanded to know what she could be laughing at.

"I think Attilio is such a funny name, Olive. Do you really call him Attilio?"

"Of course I do. But I don't think it is a funny name exactly—only sweetly quaint. Besides—there's positively no shortening it. Tilio is too silly, and one couldn't call a man 'Tilly' ... an Italian of all things. Now could one?"

Sophy laughed and laughed, and Olive, after pouting for a second, joined in.

As Sophy thought, Chesney was much pleased with the idea of this dinner at the House of Commons.

"It will be mostly made up of the Conservative gang, I suppose," he commented. "All the more fun baiting them. I know a thing or two that will wring the withers of the Hon. John—stodgy duffer! Thank God, his career will end in the cul-de-sac of the House of Lords!"

He began walking up and down the room, grinning over the "thing or two" with which he would "wring the withers" of his host. Sophy felt suddenly anxious. Suppose he had one of his outbursts of rage at that dinner? She had forgotten his violent antipathy to the Powers that Were, when she accepted the invitation.

"I suppose there'll be Liberals, too, at the dinner," she ventured rather timidly.

"There'll be one Liberal there, by Jove!" said Chesney, and he added a few chuckles to his grin.

As the evening of the dinner drew near, Sophy grew more and more apprehensive. Chesney was no longer in the amiably apathetic mood that had followed the first days of his recovery from his last attack. His face had taken on again that waxen pallor, and his pupils seemed to her unnaturally dilated.

At tea-time an unfortunate incident occurred. Chesney sometimes had tea with Sophy. He would wait until the tea was frightfully strong, then drink two or three cups of it, without milk or sugar. This afternoon they were sitting together while he drank what she called his "tea stew," when William brought in a parcel.

"Fallals for to-night?" asked Chesney.

"No. I haven't bought anything. I can't think what it is," said Sophy, puzzled. She fetched the little scissors from her writing-table and cut the cord on the parcel. It contained an odd little boat, like the fishermen's boats on Lago Maggiore. When it was wound up the little men in it worked their oars. Amaldi's card lay on top. He had written on it:

"For my friend Bobby, from his 'man.'"

Chesney put down his cup, and came over.

"What the devil is that?" he said, scowling at the toy. Then he picked up Amaldi's card. The blood rushed to his face. "I call that a confounded liberty!"

Sophy paled. Amaldi had promised Bobby this toy the afternoon of his call. Then she said, in as commonplace a tone as she could manage:

"I see no liberty in it—only a natural piece of kindness. Bobby took a great fancy to him. He promised to send this toy."

Chesney turned on her.

"Throwing a nubbin to the calf to catch the cow, as you say in Virginia, eh?" he said brutally. She flushed with such crimson intensity that the tears sprang to her eyes. In a ringing voice she cried out, as she saw him eyeing the flush jeeringly:

"It's for you ... for you that I am blushing!"

Without another look at him, she took up the toy and went out of the room.

She was so pale in her gown of white crêpe when she came downstairs, dressed for dinner, that he said, after eyeing her discontentedly:

"Good Lord! You look like the family ghost. Can't you stick on a bit of rouge?"

"No. I don't like rouge."

His eyes fixed on the chaplet of ivy leaves in her shaded hair.

"I suppose that garland is to complete the impression of an Iphigenia about to be sacrificed, eh?"

"Cecil...." she said it earnestly, impressively. "Don't let's quarrel to-night."

"Why not to-night especially?"

"Because...." her lip quivered. "I've so looked forward to being proud of you to-night."

He struggled against it, but she had touched him. His face softened. He just brushed her shoulder with his great hand.

"You're a fine thing, by God!" he said, in a husky voice.

They drove to Westminster in silence.

X

Olive found the chance to whisper a few words. Sophy had told her frankly how ill Cecil had been only two weeks before, and of his renewed interest in present political questions. She had begged Olive to "arrange" things a little. She was so afraid that he would get excited if he found himself surrounded entirely by men who were of the Government or on its side.

"Poor dear," Olive now whispered. "You're so pale. I'm sure it's anxiety. Don't be anxious. I've put Cecil at the uttermost end from Jack. Poor, darling Jack does so irritate him with his honest platitudes. I know! Then he'll have that rabid Radical, Cunnynham Smythe, near by. He'd have to out-Herod Herod you know, to fall foul of Cunny Smythe. And there's the Russian Ambassador, Suberov, opposite. You told me that Cecil read the Russians, didn't you? Well—that ought to be soothing. I've gathered all the ultra-Tories at my end. Amaldi's to take you in, and I've put Oswald Tyne on your right—two poets together, you know. There's that provoking Sybil Chassilis—at least half an hour late——"

She went forward to greet Lady Chassilis, and Amaldi came up to Sophy. She saw her husband glance their way, then deliberately turn his back and begin talking to the man next him. Something in that great, stolid, well-shaped back struck Sophy as ominous. She felt herself grow even paler. Her very lips felt cold as they rested on each other. She was filled with a presentiment of coming disaster. But, somehow, as she looked into Amaldi's eyes and listened to his quiet voice, a feeling of reassurance stole over her. This feeling was wholly without reason. It was only that his mere presence seemed to give her a feeling of safety, as on that first occasion of their meeting.

"Did Bobby approve of my offering?" he asked, noticing her extreme pallor. He thought that she looked even more lovely pale like this.

"Yes. It was good of you. He went to sleep with the little boat in his arms."

Here Oswald Tyne approached. He was one of the most remarkable characters of his day. Years ago, when she was a schoolgirl, Sophy had heard him lecture in her own country. He himself had then been a youth but just graduated from Oxford. She remembered him, a slender, poetic figure. Now he was a heavy, middle-aged man. The long face had become jowled; the light irises of his eyes showed too broad a crescent of white below them. The sensual, heavy-lipped, good-natured mouth seemed to weigh upon the chin, creasing it downward. He was always delightful to Sophy, but she always felt ill-at-ease with him. This feeling was obscure to her herself. She had never tried to analyse it. With the oddest contradiction, at one and the same time she admired his gifts, and felt a great compassion for him—the man. And this compassion could not have been called forth by anything in the circumstances of his life.

"Thank you for being so pale to-night, dear lady," he said in his abrupt, whimsical way. "One gets so weary of colour. How Iris must have hated her rainbow at times. Our Englishwomen are too beautifully tinted. One longs sometimes for the sight of an albino. Think of an assembly of negroes and albinos. How austere and weird at the same time. Would you have such an assembly garmented all in black or white or dull orange?"

"But orange is a colour," ventured Sophy, smiling.

Tyne grew extremely serious and impressive. "No; no! Pardon me. Orange is only the earthly body of light. I think we should dress our assembly in orange—the albinos in a clear tulip tint—the negroes in a fierce saffron."

"Oswald! what fwightful nonsense you talk at times!" cried Mrs. Arundel, overhearing this. "Please go and take in Countess Hohenfels. She's dying to hear you talk."

Tyne looked at her out of his heavy, swimming eyes.

"A German? You have given me a German for dinner? I see. You divined that my mood would be musical. But Germans have mathematical imaginations. Their music is the integral calculus of the spheres. It is——"

Olive firmly drew him away, still pouring forth this flood of easy nonsense.

At table, Sophy noticed that her husband glanced from her to Amaldi once or twice. His look was hard and hostile. She determined to try to talk as much as possible with both Tyne and Amaldi. This would be easier—as it became at once evident that the dinner would be one of those delightful occasions on which little groups talk together, even across the table.

"When are you going to make me see another beautiful dawn?" asked Tyne abruptly.

Sophy gazed at him. She wondered what was coming, and as he smiled at her in his slow way, she thought how much worse it seemed for a poet to have black teeth than for a mere, ordinary mortal like John Arundel.

"How did I make you see a beautiful dawn?" she asked, knowing that he wanted her to put the question.

"By writing your 'Shadow of a Flame' and letting me read it. Yes—all night I played with those lovely, flickering verses."

"You are too kind to me," she said shyly. "Tell me when I am to read another of your books—that are not shadows of flames, but flames themselves."

"Lovely—lovely!" he murmured. "That is quite lovely of you. But as for a new book—— It is so prosaic to publish a book in London. Nothing really happens. Now in Paris—why—one day all the boulevards blossom like beds of daffodils. You are amazed. You ask, 'Why this delicious flowering?' You are answered—'Paul Bourget has published a new novel.'"

He went airily on for some moments in this strain. From across the table, a clever critic and man of letters was listening with pleased amusement. Suddenly he said:

"Tell me, Oswald, have you ever read the works of an American called Edgar Saltus?"

"Why Edgar Saltus, like a stiletto from the blue? Yes; I have read some of his productions. But why?"

"Because the American boulevards seem to blossom with his flowers of rhetoric in the way that you describe. I have often wanted to parody him. But parody crouches at his feet."

Tyne held up one of his suave, heavy hands.

"Softly, please," he murmured. "Tread softly there. I have a certain tenderness for Mr. Edgar Saltus. I know nothing in literature more touching than the way that passion and grammar struggle for mastery on every one of his wonderful pages!"

Amaldi listened with his quiet smile. He himself was not in a talkative mood that night. Besides, he was one of those men who, while seeming outwardly unconscious of what is not directly in contact with them, notice everything that takes place, and he had caught those dark looks cast by Cecil Chesney at Sophy and himself. Now he was glad to see that she was becoming diverted and roused from her listlessness by the talk of Oswald Tyne and his friend. He also observed that Chesney, too, had apparently changed his humour and was engaged in an animated conversation with the men and women nearest him. After a while, he saw that Chesney was holding forth alone. But it was evidently a perfectly amiable harangue, for the others were listening with animated faces. Still Sophy, who could not catch the gist of her husband's talk, looked suddenly anxious, and Amaldi was relieved when the critic, who had been talking with Tyne, and whose name was Ferrars, said to Sophy:

"Your husband's having a brilliant go at Russian literature, Mrs. Chesney. Are you as keen on that subject as he is?"

"Yes, quite, I think."

"Tolstoy and Dostoievsky are our living Pillars of Hercules," said Ferrars, a little didactically. "They guard the portals of modern literature. They are our colossi—we others fuss and potter about under their huge limbs like pygmies."

"Speak for yourself, Charles," said Tyne coolly. "I may not be a colossus, but I have wings. Gauzy, iridescent, little vans maybe, but sufficient to lift me. I am not what sportsmen call a 'heavyweight' of literature—but I can coruscate, which your colossi cannot. And I am not sure that I don't prefer fireflies to eagles."

"Which do you think greater—Tolstoy or Dostoievsky?" Sophy slipped in, before Ferrars could launch a sarcasm.

"Oh, Tolstoy, Tolstoy ... by all means," murmured Tyne.

"Which do you think greater?" said Sophy to Amaldi.

"Well...." Amaldi reflected an instant. "When Tolstoy regards the human race, one feels that he sees it made up of little Tolstoys. When Dostoievsky looks inward—it is as if he saw all humanity in himself—in Dostoievsky."

"Capital!" cried Ferrars. Sophy looked at Amaldi, pleased at hearing her own conviction so well put into words. Tyne regarded the young man dreamily.

"How charming is the multiplicity of opinion," he then said. "If I ever sacrificed it would be to the goddess of Variety. Now to me, Tolstoy is by far the greater figure of the two."

Ferrars had begun to talk to the woman on his right and was not listening any longer. The women on the left and right of Tyne and Amaldi were eagerly attentive.

"Why?" asked several voices at once.

"Because Tolstoy is the greatest Immoralist of his time," said Tyne serenely.

"Oh! Oh!" came several voices.

"He is immoral in spirit where others are only immoral in fact," continued the poet, quite unmoved. "Never was there so irreligious, so immoral a spectacle as that Titan in the throes of religion. For this religion of his violates and thwarts every natural instinct and desire of his pagan nature. To deny one's true nature is irreligion. To be egotistically selfless is the paradox of the inferno. Besides, is there a greater sin against genius than to worship the commonplace? Now virtue is the norm—the level convention invented by civilised man. The crime of virtuous genius is that it becomes null. The cult of virtue is the eighth deadly sin—in a creative mind. Fancy a virtuous Creator!"

He laughed suddenly into the faces which seemed not to have decided whether to look shocked or to smile.

Sophy turned to Amaldi. But try as she might, she could not overcome the gêne cast upon her by those hostile looks of her husband. She felt that she was not being natural with Amaldi, and the more this feeling overcame her, the more she felt it impossible to recover her free, delightful intercourse with him. They talked conventionally, gliding over the surface of things. Once, in spite of herself, her eyes strayed towards Cecil. But he was not looking at her. He was leaning close to Lady Chassilis. A flush had come into his face. His eyes glittered. He seemed to be saying something delightful but rather shocking, for Sybil Chassilis gave him a sidelong flash out of her black eyes—then flushed and cast them down, smiling in a peculiar way. Sophy noticed with a sinking heart that he drank glass after glass of champagne. It must indeed be good wine for Cecil to drink so freely of it. He usually cursed the champagne of his friends.

Suddenly Tyne turned again to Sophy.

"I have a grievance—a sorrow—a real sorrow," he said. "I wonder if you can console me?"

"What is it?" asked Sophy in a low voice. He seemed never to be in earnest, yet, at that moment, the queer feeling of compassion that he always excited in her, rose in her heart.

He drew a deep sigh. Now she was sure that there was a mocking light, far back in his pale eyes.

"It is that no one will believe in my real wickedness—my beautiful vileness. I have no disciple who really believes in me. Yet I am wonderfully vile. Virtue seems like a pale, pock marked wench to me. I feel like crying out on her like old Capulet: 'Out, you tallow-face! You baggage!' But Sin, with the clear black flames curled about her naked feet like the petals of a lotus—Sin, with her delicate, acrid lips that never satiate and are never satiated—her I worship! her I serve!—Do you believe me?"

Sophy sat gazing at him. Something strange and wild, and unbelievable took place in her. She saw—no, she knew—not by ratiocination, but as one knows when one falls into the sea that one is wet—she knew that this man was truly vile, that he was speaking the truth to her. But even more wonderful, she knew that horror and tragedy unspeakable waited for him. It was as if the poisonous shadow fell over him as she looked—as if its outer hem touched her like a thing of palpable texture.

He was looking at her strangely, too—half as if afraid, but curious. Like a man who knows that the oracle can divine truly—that it may answer to his undoing, and that, if it answers thus, that answer will surely come to pass.

"Do you believe me?" he said again, keeping up the bravado of his light tone, but some chord in his voice stirred oddly.