The Lion's Share

THE TANK-ROOM

”Did you get my letter?” breathed Miss Ingate weakly, after she had a little recovered from the shock, which had the appearance of being terrific.

“No,” said Audrey. “How could I? We’re yachting. Madame Piriac, you know Miss Ingate, don’t you? And this is my friend Jane Foley.” She spoke quite easily and naturally, though Miss Ingate in her intense agitation had addressed her as Audrey, whereas the Christian name of Mrs. Moncreiff, on the rare occasions when a Christian name became necessary or advisable, had been Olivia—or, infrequently, Olive.

“Yachting!”

“Yes. Haven’t you seen the yacht at the Hard?”

“No! I did hear something about it, but I’ve been too busy to run after yachts. We’ve been too busy, haven’t we, Miss Foley? I even have to keep my dog locked up. I don’t know what you’ll say. Aud—Mrs. Moncreiff! I really don’t! But we acted for the best. Oh! How dreadfully exciting my life does get at times! Never since I played the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street have I—! Oh! dear!”

“Have my tea, and do sit down, Winnie, and remember you’re an Essex woman!” Audrey adjured her, going to the china cupboard to get more cups.

“I’ll just tell you all about it, Mrs. Moncreiff, if you’ll let me,” Jane Foley began with a serene and happy smile, as she limped to a chair. “I’m quite ready to take all the consequences. It’s the police again, that’s all. I don’t know how exactly they got on the track of the Spatts at Frinton. But I dare say you’ve seen that the police have seized a lot of documents at our head-quarters. Perhaps that explains it. Anyway I caught sight of our old friend at Paget Gardens nosing about, and so as soon as it was dark I left the Spatts. It’s a horrid thing to say, but I never was so glad about anything as I was at leaving the Spatts. I didn’t tell them where I was going, and they didn’t ask. I’m sure the poor things were very relieved to have me go. Miss Ingate tells me to-day she’s heard they’ve both resigned from the Union. Mr. Spatt went up to London on purpose to do it. And can you be surprised?”

“Yes, you can, and yet you can’t!” exclaimed Miss Ingate. “You can, and yet you can’t!”

“I met Miss Ingate on Frinton front,” Jane Foley proceeded. “She was just getting into her carriage. I had my bag and I asked her to drive me to the station. ‘To the station?’ she said. ‘What for? There’s no train to-night.’”

“No more there wasn’t!” Miss Ingate put in, “I’d been dining at the Proctors’ and it was after ten, I know it was after ten because they never let me leave until after ten, in spite of the long drive I have. Fancy there being a train from Frinton after ten! So of course I brought Miss Foley along. Oh! It was vehy interesting. Vehy interesting. You see we had to think of the police. I didn’t want the police coming poking round my house. It would never do, in a little place like Moze. I should never hear the last of it. So I—I thought of Flank Hall. I——”

Jane Foley went on:

“Miss Ingate was sure you wouldn’t mind, Mrs. Moncreiff. And personally I was quite certain you wouldn’t mind. We left the carriage at Miss Ingate’s, and carried the bag in turns. And I stood outside while Miss Ingate woke up Mr. Aguilar. It was soon all right.”

“I must say Aguilar was vehy reasonable,” said Miss Ingate. “Vehy reasonable. And he’s got a great spite against my dear Inspector Keeble. He suggested everything. He never asked any questions, so I told him. You do, you know. He suggested Miss Foley should have a bed in the tank-room, so that if there was any trouble all the bedrooms should look innocent.”

“Did he tell you I’d come here to see him not long since?” Audrey demanded.

“And why didn’t you pop in to see me? I was hurt when I got your note.”

“Did he tell you?”

“Of course he didn’t. He never tells anybody anything. That sort of thing’s very useful at times, especially when it’s combined with a total lack of curiosity. He fixed every, thing up. And he keeps the gates locked, so that people can’t wander in.”

“He didn’t lock the gate at the bottom of the garden, because it won’t lock,” said Audrey. “And so he didn’t keep me from wandering in.” She felt rather disappointed that Aguilar should once more have escaped her reproof and that the dream of his double life should have vanished away, but she was determined to prove that he was not perfect.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Miss Ingate. “It wouldn’t startle me to hear that he knew you were intending to come. All I know is that Miss Foley’s been here for several days. Not a soul knows except me and Aguilar. And it seems to get safer every day. She does venture about the house now, though she never goes into the garden while it’s light. It was Aguilar had the idea of putting this room straight for her.”

“And it was he who cut the bread-and-butter,” added Jane Foley.

“And this was to be our first tea-party!” Miss Ingate half shrieked. “I’d come—I do come, you know, to keep an eye on things as you asked me—I’d come, and we were just having a cosy little chat in the tank-room. Aguilar’s gone to Colchester to get a duplicate key of the front gates. He left me his, so I could get in and lock up after myself, and he put the water on to boil before leaving. I said to Miss Foley, I said, up in the tank-room: ‘Was that a ring at the door?’ But she said it wasn’t.”

“I’ve been a little deaf since I was in prison,” said Jane Foley.

“And now we come down and find you here! I—I hope I’ve done right.” This, falteringly, from Miss Ingate.

“Of course you have, you silly old thing,” Audrey reassured her. “It’s splendid!”

“Whenever I think of the police I laugh,” said Miss Ingate in an unsettled voice. “I can’t help it. They can’t possibly suspect. And they’re looking everywhere, everywhere! I can’t help laughing.” And suddenly she burst into tears.

“Oh! Now! Winnie, dear. Don’t spoil it all!” Audrey protested, jumping up.

Madame Piriac, who had hitherto maintained the most complete passivity, restrained her.

“Leave her tranquil!” murmured Madame Piriac in French. “She is not spoiling it. On the contrary! One is content to see that she is a woman!”

And then Miss Ingate laughed, and blushed, and called herself names.

“And so you haven’t had my letter,” said she. “I wish you had had it. But what is this yachting business? I never heard of such goings-on. Is it your yacht? This world is getting a bit too wonderful for me.”

The answer to these questions was cut short by rather heavy masculine footsteps approaching the door of the drawing-room. Miss Ingate grew instantly serious. Audrey and Jane looked at each other, and Jane Foley went quickly but calmly to the door and opened it.

“Oh! It’s Mr. Aguilar—returned!” she said, quietly. “Is anything the matter, Mr. Aguilar?”

Aguilar, hat in hand, entered the room.

“Good afternoon, Aguilar,” Audrey greeted him.

“’Noon, madam,” he responded, exactly as though he had been expecting to find the mistress there. “It’s like this. I’ve just seen Inspector Keeble and that there detective as was here afore—you know, madam” (nodding to Audrey) “and I fancy they’re a-coming this way, so I thought I’d better cut back and warn ye. I don’t think they saw me. I was too quick for ’em. Was the bread-and-butter all right, Miss Ingate? Thank ye.”

Miss Ingate had risen.

“I ought to go home,” she said. “I feel sure it would be wiser for me to go home. I never could talk to detectives.”

Jane Foley snatched at one of the four cups and saucers on the table, and put it back, all unwashed, into the china cupboard.

“Three cups will be enough for them to see, if they come,” she said, with a bright, happy smile to Audrey. “Yes, Miss Ingate, you go home. I’m ever so much obliged to you. Now, I’ll go upstairs and Aguilar shall lock me in the tank-room and push the key under the door. We are causing you a lot of trouble, Mrs. Moncreiff, but you won’t mind. It might have been so much worse.” She laughed as she went.

“And suppose I meet those police on the way out, what am I to say to them?” asked Miss Ingate when Jane Foley and Aguilar had departed.

“If they’re very curious, tell them you’ve been here to have tea with me and that Aguilar cut the bread-and-butter,” Audrey replied. “The detective will be interested to see me. He chased me all the way to London not long since. Au revoir, Winnie.”

“Dear friend,” said Madame Piriac, with admirable though false calm. “Would it not be more prudent to fly back at once to the yacht—if in truth this is the same police agent of whom you recounted to me with such drollness the exploits? It is not that I am afraid——”

“Nor I,” said Audrey. “There is no danger except to Jane Foley.”

“Ah! You cannot abandon her. That is true. Nevertheless I regret ...”

“Well, darling,” Audrey exclaimed. “You would insist on my coming!”

The continuing presence of Miss Ingate, who had lost one glove and her purse, rendered this brief conversation somewhat artificial. And no sooner had Miss Ingate got away—by the window, for the sake of dispatch—than a bell made itself heard, and Aguilar came back to the drawing-room in the rôle of butler.

“Inspector Keeble and a gentleman to see you, madam.”

“Bring them in,” said Audrey.

Aguilar’s secret glance at Inspector Keeble as he brought in the visitors showed that his lifelong and harmless enemy had very little to hope from his goodwill.

“Wait a moment, you!” called the detective as Aguilar, like a perfect butler, was vanishing. “Good afternoon, ladies. Excuse me, I wish to question this man.” He indicated Aguilar with a gesture of apologising for Aguilar.

Inspector Keeble, an overgrown mass of rectitude and kindliness, greeted Audrey with that constraint which always afflicted him when he was beneath any roof more splendid than that of his own police-station.

“Now, Aguilar,” said the detective, “it’s you that’ll be telling me. Ye’ve got a woman concealed in the house. Where is she?”

He knew, then, this ferreting and divinatory Irishman! Of course Miss Ingate must have committed some indiscretion, or was it that Aguilar was less astute than he gave the impression of being? Audrey considered that all was lost, and she was aware of a most unpleasant feeling of helplessness and inefficiency. Then she seemed to receive inspiration and optimism from somewhere. She knew not exactly from where, but perhaps it was from the shy stiffness of the demeanour of her old acquaintance, Inspector Keeble. Moreover, the Irishman’s twinkling eyes were a challenge to her.

“Oh! Aguilar!” she exclaimed. “I’m very sorry to hear this. I knew women were always your danger, but I never dreamt you would start carrying on in my absence.”

Aguilar fronted her, and their eyes met. Audrey gazed at him steadily. There was no smile in Audrey’s eyes, but there was a smile glimmering mysteriously behind them, and after a couple of seconds this phenomenon aroused a similar phenomenon behind the eyes of Aguilar. Audrey had the terrible and god-like sensation of lifting a hired servant to equality with herself. She imagined that she would never again be able to treat him as Aguilar, and she even feared that she would soon begin to cease to hate him. At the same time she observed slight signs of incertitude in the demeanour of the detective.

Aguilar replied coldly, not to Audrey, but to the police:

“If Inspector Keeble or anybody else has been mixing my name up with any scandal about females, I’ll have him up for slander and libel and damages as sure as I stand here.”

Inspector Keeble looked away, and then looked at the detective—as if for support in peril.

“Do you mean to say, Aguilar, that you haven’t got a woman hidden in the house at this very moment?” the detective demanded.

“I’ll thank ye to keep a civil tongue in your head,” said Aguilar. “Or I’ll take ye outside and knock yer face sideways. Pardon me, madam. Of course I ain’t got no woman concealed on the premises. And mark ye, if I lose my place through this ye’ll hear of it. And I shall put a letter in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, too.”

“Well, ye can go,” the detective responded.

“Yes,” sneered Aguilar. “I can go. Yes, and I shall go. But not so far but what I can protect my interests. And I’ll make this village too hot for Keeble before I’ve done, police or no police.”

And with a look at Audrey like the look of a knight at his lady after a joust, Aguilar turned to leave the room.

“Aguilar,” Audrey rewarded him. “You needn’t be afraid about your place.”

“Thank ye, m’m.”

“May I ask what your name is?” Audrey inquired of the detective as soon as Aguilar had shut the door.

“Hurley,” replied the detective.

“I thought it might be,” said Audrey, sitting down, but not offering seats. “Well, Mr. Hurley, after all your running after Miss Susan Foley, don’t you think it’s rather unfair to say horrid things about a respectable man like Aguilar? You were funny about that stout wife of yours last time I saw you, but you must remember that Aguilar can’t be funny about his wife, because he hasn’t got one.”

“I really don’t know what you’re driving at, miss,” said Mr. Hurley simply.

“Well, what were you driving at when you followed me all the way to London the other day?”

“Madam,” said Mr. Hurley, “I didn’t follow you to London. I only happened to arrive at Charing Cross about twenty seconds after you, that was all. As a matter of fact, nearly half of the way you were following me.”

“Well, I hope you were satisfied.”

“I only want to know one thing,” the detective retorted. “Am I speaking to Mrs. Olivia Moncreiff?”

Audrey hesitated, glancing at Madame Piriac, who, in company with the vast Inspector Keeble, was carefully inspecting the floor. She invoked wisdom and sagacity from heaven, and came to a decision.

“Not that I know of,” she answered.

“Then, if you please, who are you?”

“What!” exclaimed Audrey. “You’re in the village of Moze itself and you ask who I am. Everybody knows me. My name is Audrey Moze, of Flank Hall, Moze, Essex. Any child in Moze Street will tell you that. Inspector Keeble knows as well as anybody.”

Madame Piriac proceeded steadily with the inquiry into the carpet. Audrey felt her heart beating.

“Unmarried?” pursued the detective.

“Most decidedly,” said Audrey with conviction.

“Then what’s the meaning of that ring on your finger, if you don’t mind my asking?” the detective continued.

Certainly Audrey was flustered, but only for a moment.

“Mr. Hurley,” said she; “I wear it as a protection from men of all ages who are too enterprising.”

She spoke archly, with humour; but now there was no answering humour in the features of Mr. Hurley, who seemed to be a changed man, to be indeed no longer even an Irishman. And Audrey grew afraid. Did he, after all, know of her share in the Blue City enterprise? She had long since persuaded herself that the police had absolutely failed to connect her with that affair, but now uncertainty was born in her mind.

“I must search the house,” said the detective.

“What for?”

“I have to arrest a woman named Jane Foley,” answered Mr. Hurley, adding somewhat grimly: “The name will be known to ye, I’m thinking.... And I have reason to believe that she is now concealed on these premises.”

The directness of the blow was terrific. It was almost worse than the blow itself. And Audrey now believed everything that she had ever heard or read about the miraculous ingenuity of detectives. Still, she did not regard herself as beaten, and the thought of the yacht lying close by gave her a dim feeling of security. If she could only procure delay!...

“I’m not going to let you search my house,” she said angrily. “I never heard of such a thing! You’ve got no right to search my house.”

“Oh yes, I have!” Mr. Hurley insisted.

“Well, let me see your paper—I don’t know what you call it. But I know you can’t do anything-without a paper. Otherwise any bright young-man might walk into my house and tell me he meant to search it. Keeble, I’m really surprised at you.”

Inspector Keeble blushed.

“I’m very sorry, miss,” said he contritely. “But the law’s the law. Show the lady your search-warrant, Mr. Hurley.” His voice resembled himself.

Mr. Hurley coughed. “I haven’t got a search-warrant yet,” he remarked. “I didn’t expect——”

“You’d better go and get one, then,” said Audrey, calculating how long it would take three women to transport themselves from the house to the yacht, and perpending upon the probable behaviour of Mr. Gilman under a given set of circumstances.

“I will,” said Mr. Hurley. “And I shan’t be long. Keeble, where is the nearest justice of the peace?... You’d better stay here or hereabouts.”

“I got to go to the station to sign on my three constables,” Inspector Keeble protested awkwardly, looking at his watch, which also resembled himself.

“You’d better stay here or hereabouts,” repeated Mr. Hurley, and he moved towards the door. Inspector Keeble, too, moved towards the door.

Audrey let them get into the passage, and then she was vouchsafed a new access of inspiration.

“Mr. Hurley,” she called, in a bright, unoffended tone. “After all, I see no reason why you shouldn’t search the house. I don’t really want to put you to any unnecessary trouble. It is annoying, but I’m not going to be annoyed.” The ingenuous young creature expected Mr. Hurley to be at once disarmed and ashamed by this kind offer. She was wrong. He was evidently surprised, but he gave no evidence of shame or of the sudden death in his brain of all suspicions.

“That’s better,” he said calmly. “And I’m much obliged.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Audrey. “Madame Piriac,” she addressed Hortense with averted eyes. “Will you excuse me for a minute or two while I show these gentlemen the house?” The fact was that she did not care just then to be left alone with Madame Piriac.

“Oh! I beg you, darling! “Madame Piriac granted the permission with overpowering sweetness.

The procedure of Mr. Hurley was astonishing to Audrey; nay, it was unnerving. First he locked the front door and the garden door and pocketed the keys. Then he locked the drawing-room on the passage side and pocketed that key. He instructed Inspector Keeble to remain in the hall at the foot of the stairs. He next went into the kitchen and the sculleries and locked the outer doors in that quarter. Then he descended to the cellars, with Audrey always in his wake. Having searched the cellars and the ground floor, he went upstairs, and examined in turn all the bedrooms with a thoroughness and particularity which caused Audrey to blush. He left nothing whatever to chance, and no dust sheet was undisturbed. Audrey said no word. The detective said no word. But Audrey kept thinking: “He is getting nearer to the tank-room.” A small staircase led to the attic floor, upon which were only servants’ bedrooms and the tank-room. After he had mounted this staircase and gone a little way along the passage he swiftly and without warning dashed back and down the staircase. But nothing seemed to happen, and he returned. The three doors of the three servants’ bedrooms were all ajar. Mr. Hurley passed each of them with a careless glance within. At the end of the corridor, in obscurity, was the door of the tank-room.

“What’s this?” he asked abruptly. And he knocked nonchalantly on the door of the tank-room.

Audrey was acutely alarmed lest Jane Foley should respond, thinking the knock was that of a friend. She saw how idiotic she had been not to warn Jane by means of loud conversation with the detective.

“That’s the tank-room,” she said loudly. “I’m afraid it’s locked.”

“Oh!” murmured Mr. Hurley negligently, and he turned the searchlight of his gaze upon the three bedrooms, which he examined as carefully as he had examined anything in the house. The failure to discover in any cupboard or corner even the shadow of a human being did not appear to discourage him in the slightest degree. In the third bedroom—that is to say, the one nearest the head of the stairs and farthest from the tank-room—he suddenly beckoned to Audrey, who was standing in the doorway. She went within the room and he pushed the door to, without, however, quite shutting it.

“Now about the tank-room, Miss Moze,” he began quietly. “You say it’s locked?”

“Yes,” said the quaking Audrey.

“As a matter of form I’d better just look in. Will you kindly let me have the key?”

“I can’t,” said Audrey.

“Why not?”

Audrey acquired tranquillity as she went on: “It’s at Frinton. Friends of mine there keep a punt on Mozewater, and I let them store the sail and things in the tank-room. There’s plenty of room. I give them the key because that’s more satisfactory. The tank-room isn’t wanted at all, you see, while I’m away from home.”

“Who are these friends?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Spatt,” said Audrey at a venture.

“I see,” said the detective.

They came downstairs, and the detective made it known that he would re-visit the drawing-room. Inspector Keeble followed them. In that room Audrey remarked:

“And now I hope you’re satisfied.”

Mr. Hurley merely said:

“Will you please ring for Aguilar?”

Audrey complied. But she had to ring three times before the gardener’s footsteps were heard on the uncarpeted stone floor of the hall.

“Aguilar,” Mr. Hurley demanded. “Where is the key of the tank-room?”

Audrey sank into a chair, knowing profoundly that all was lost.

“It’s at Mrs. Spatt’s at Frinton,” replied Aguilar glibly. “Mistress lets her have that room to store some boat-gear in. I expected she’d ha’ been over before this to get it out. But the yachting season seems to start later and later every year these times.”

Audrey gazed at the man as at a miracle-worker.

“Well, I think that’s all,” said Mr. Hurley.

“No, it isn’t,” Audrey corrected him. “You’ve got all my keys in your pocket—except one.”

When the police had gone Audrey said to Aguilar in the hall:

“Aguilar, how on earth did you——”

But she was in such a state of emotion at the realisation of dangers affronted and past that she could not finish.

“I’m sorry I was so long answering the bell, m’m,” replied Aguilar strangely. “But I’d put my list slippers on—them as your father made me wear when I come into the house, mornings, to change the plants, and I thought it better to put my boots on again before I come.... Shall I put the keys back in the doors, madam?”

So saying he touched his front hair, after his manner, and took the keys and retired. Audrey was as full of fear as of gratitude. Aguilar daunted her.

THE THIRD SORT OF WOMAN

“It was quite true what I told the detective. So I suppose you’ve finished with me for evermore!” Audrey burst out recklessly, as soon as she and Madame Piriac were alone together. The supreme moment had come, and she tried to grasp it like a nettle. Her adventurous rashness was, she admitted, undeniable. She had spoken the truth to the police officer about her identity and her spinsterhood because with unusual wisdom she judged that fibs or even prevarication on such a subject to such an audience might entangle her in far more serious difficulties later on. Moreover, with Inspector Keeble present, she could not successfully have gone very far from the truth. It was a pity that Madame Piriac had witnessed the scene, for really, when Audrey came to face it, the deception which she had practised upon Madame Piriac was of a monstrous and inexcusable kind. And now that Madame Piriac knew the facts, many other people would have to know the facts—including probably Mr. Gilman. The prospect of explanations was terrible. In vain Audrey said to herself that the thing was naught, that she had acted within her rights, and that anyhow she had long ago ceased to be diffident and shy!... She was intimidated by her own enormities. And she also thought: “How could I have been silly enough to tell that silly tale about the Spatts? More complications. And poor dear Inspector Keeble will be so shocked.”

After a short pause Madame Piriac replied, in a grave but kind tone:

“Why would you that I should have finished with you for ever? You had the right to call yourself by any name you wished, and to wear any ring-that pleased your caprice. It is the affair of nobody but yourself.”

“Oh! I’m so glad you take it like that,” said Audrey with eager relief. “That’s just what I thought all along!”

“But it is your affair!” Madame Piriac finished, with a peculiar inflection of her well-controlled voice. “I mean,” she added, “you cannot afford to neglect it.”

“No—of course not,” Audrey agreed, rather dashed, and with a vague new apprehension. “Naturally I shall tell you everything, darling. I had my reasons. I——”

“The principal question is, darling,” Madame Piriac stopped her. “What are you going to do now? Ought we not to return to the yacht?”

“But I must look after Jane Foley!” cried Audrey. “I can’t leave her here.”

“And why not? She has Miss Ingate.”

“Yes, worse luck for her! Winnie would make the most dreadful mess of things if she wasn’t stopped. If Winnie was right out of it, and Jane Foley had only herself and Aguilar to count on, there might be a chance. But not else.”

“It is by pure hazard that you are here. Nobody expected you. What would this young girl Mees Foley have done if you had not been here?”

“It’s no good wasting time about that, darling, because I am here, don’t you see?” Audrey straightened her shoulders and put her hands behind her back.

“My little one,” said Madame Piriac with a certain solemnity. “You remember our conversation in my boudoir. I then told you that you would find yourself in a riot within a month, if you continued your course. Was I right? Happily you have escaped from that horrible complication. Go no farther. Listen to me. You were not created for these adventures. It is impossible that you should be happy in them.”

“But look at Jane Foley,” said Audrey eagerly. “Is she not happy? Did you ever see anybody as happy as Jane? I never did.”

“That is not happiness,” replied Madame Piriac. “That is exaltation. It is morbid. I do not say that it is not right for her. I do not say that she is not justified, and that that which she represents is not justified. But I say that a rôle such as hers is not your rôle. To commence, she does not interest herself in men. For her there are no men in the world—there are only political enemies. Do you think I do not know the type? We have it, chez nous. It is full of admirable qualities—but it is not your type. For you, darling, the world is inhabited principally by men, and the time will come—perhaps soon—when for you it will be inhabited principally by one man. If you remain obdurate, there must inevitably arrive a quarrel between that man and these—these riotous adventures.”

“No man that I could possibly care for,” Audrey retorted, “would ever object to me having an active interest in—er—politics.”

“I agree, darling,” said Madame Piriac. “He would not object. It is you who would object. The quarrel would occur within your own heart. There are two sorts of women—individualists and fanatics. It was always so. I am a woman, and I know what I’m saying. So do you. Well, you belong to the first sort of woman.”

“I don’t,” Audrey protested. Nevertheless she recollected her thoughts on the previous night, near the binnacle and Mr. Gilman, about the indispensability of a man and about the futility of the state of not owning and possessing a man. The memory of these thoughts only rendered her more obstinate.

“But you will not have the courage to tell me that you are a fanatic?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“There is a third sort of woman.”

“Darling, believe me, there is not.”

“There’s going to be, anyhow!” said Audrey with decision, and in English. “And I won’t leave Jane Foley in the lurch, either!... Now I’ll just run up and have a talk with her, if you don’t mind waiting a minute or two.”

“But what are you going to do?” Madame Piriac demanded.

“Well,” said Audrey. “It is obvious that there is only one safe thing to do. I shall take Jane on board the yacht. We shall sail off, and she’ll be safe.”

“On the yacht!” repeated Madame Piriac, truly astounded. “But my poor oncle will never agree. You do not know him. You do not know how peculiar he is. Never will he agree! Besides——”

“Darling,” said Audrey quietly and confidently. “If he does not agree, I undertake to go into a convent for the rest of my days.”

Madame Piriac was silent.

Just as she was opening the door to go upstairs, Audrey suddenly turned back into the room.

“Darling,” she said, kissing Madame Piriac. “How calmly you’ve taken it!”

“Taken what?”

“About me not being Mrs. Moncreiff nor a widow nor anything of that kind.”

“But, darling,” answered Madame Piriac with exquisite tranquillity. “Of course I knew it before.”

“You knew it before!”

“Certainly. I knew it the first time I saw you, in the studio of Mademoiselle Nickall. You were the image of your father! The image, I repeat—except perhaps the nose. Recollect that as a child I saw your father. I was left with my mother’s relatives, until matters should be arranged; but he came to Paris. Then before matters could be arranged my mother died, and I never saw him again. But I could never forget him.... Then also, in my boudoir that night, you blushed—it was very amusing—when I mentioned Essex and Audrey Moze. And there were other things.”

“For instance?”

“Darling, you were never quite convincing as a widow—at any rate to a Frenchwoman. You may have deceived American and English women. But not myself. You did not say the convincing things when the conversation took certain turns. That is all.”

“You knew who I was, and you never told me!” Audrey pouted.

“Had I the right, darling? You had decided upon your identity. It would have been inexcusable on my part to inform you that you were mistaken in so essential a detail.”

Madame Piriac gently returned Audrey’s kiss.

“So that was why you insisted on me coming with you to-day!” murmured Audrey, crestfallen. “You are a marvellous actress, darling.”

“I have several times been told so,” Madame Piriac admitted simply.

“What on earth did you expect would happen?”

“Not that which has happened,” said Madame Piriac.

“Well, if you ask me,” said Audrey with gaiety and a renewal of self-confidence.” I think it’s all happened splendidly.”

IN THE DINGHY

When the pair got back to the sea-wall the tide had considerably ebbed, and where the dinghy had floated there was nothing more liquid than exquisitely coloured mud. Nevertheless water still lapped the yacht, whereas on the shore side of the yacht was now no crowd. The vans and carts had all departed, and the quidnuncs and observers of human nature, having gazed steadily at the yacht for some ten hours, had thought fit to depart also. The two women looked about rather anxiously, as though Mr. Gilman had basely marooned them.

“But what must we do?” demanded Madame Piriac.

“Oh! We can walk round on the dyke,” said Audrey superiorly. “Unless the stiles frighten you.”

“It is about to rain,” said Madame Piriac, glancing at the high curved heels of her shoes.

The sky, which was very wide and variegated over Mozewater, did indeed seem to threaten.

At that moment the dinghy appeared round the forefoot of the Ariadne. Mr. Gilman and Miss Thompkins were in it, and Mr. Gilman was rowing with gentleness and dignity. They had, even afar off, a tremendous air of intimacy; each leaned towards the other, face to face, and Tommy had her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees. And in addition to an air of intimacy they had an air of mystery. It was surprising, and perhaps a little annoying, to Audrey that those two should have gone on living to themselves, in their own self-absorbed way, while such singular events had been happening to herself in Flank Hall. She put several fingers in her mouth and produced a piercing long-distance whistle which effectively reached the dinghy.

“My poor little one!” exclaimed Madame Piriac, shocked in spite of her broadmindedness by both the sound and the manner of its production.

“Oh! I learnt that when I was twelve,” said Audrey. “It took me four months, but I did it. And nobody except Miss Ingate knows that I can do it.”

The occupants of the dinghy were signalling their intention to rescue, and Mr. Gilman used his back nobly.

“But we cannot embark here!” Madame Piriac complained.

“Oh, yes!” said Audrey. “You see those white stones? ... It’s quite easy.”

When the dinghy had done about half the journey Madame Piriac murmured:

“By the way, who are you, precisely, for the present? It would be prudent to decide, darling.”

Audrey hesitated an instant.

“Who am I? ... Oh! I see. Well, I’d better keep on being Mrs. Moncreiff for a bit, hadn’t I?”

“It is as you please, darling.”

The fact was that Audrey recoiled from a general confession, though admitting it to be ultimately inevitable. Moreover, she had a slight fear that each of her friends in turn might make a confession ridiculous by saying: “We knew all along, of course.”

The dinghy was close in.

“My!” cried Tommy. “Who did that whistle? It was enough to beat the cars.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” Audrey retorted.

The embarkation, under Audrey’s direction, was accomplished in safety, and, save for one tiny French scream, in silence. The silence, which persisted, was peculiar. Each pair should have had something to tell the other, yet nothing was told, or even asked. Mr. Gilman rowed with careful science, and brought the dinghy alongside the yacht in an unexceptionable manner. Musa stood on deck apart, acting indifference. Madame Piriac, having climbed into the Ariadne, went below at once. Miss Thompkins, seeing her friend Mr. Price half-way down the saloon companion, moved to speak to him, and they vanished together. Mr. Gilman was respectfully informed by the engineer that the skipper and Dr. Cromarty were ashore.

“How nice it is on the water!” said Audrey to Mr. Gilman in a low, gentle voice. “There is a channel round there with three feet of water in it at low tide.” She sketched a curve in the air with her finger. “Of course you know this part,” said Mr. Gilman cautiously and even apprehensively. His glance seemed to be saying: “And it was you who gave that fearful whistle, too! Are you, can you be, all that I dreamed?”

“I do,” Audrey answered. “Would you like me to show it you.”

“I should be more than delighted,” said Mr. Gilman.

With a gesture he summoned a man to untie the dinghy again and hold it, and the man slid down into the dinghy like a monkey.

“I’ll pull,” said Audrey, in the boat.

The man sprang out of the dinghy.

“One instant!” Mr. Gilman begged her, standing up in the sternsheets, and popping his head through a porthole of the saloon. “Mr. Price!”

“Sir?” From the interior.

“Will you be good enough to play that air with thirty-six variations, of Beethoven’s? We shall hear splendidly from the dinghy.”

“Certainly, sir.”

And Audrey said to herself: “You don’t want him to flirt with Tommy while you’re away, so you’ve given him something to keep him busy.”

Mr. Gilman remarked under his breath to Audrey: “I think there is nothing finer than to hear Beethoven on the water.”

“Oh! There isn’t!” she eagerly concurred.

Ignoring the thirty-six variations of Beethoven, Audrey rowed slowly away, and after about a hundred yards the boat had rounded a little knoll which marked the beginning of a narrow channel known as the Lander Creek. The thirty-six variations, however, would not be denied; they softly impregnated the whole beautiful watery scene.

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Gilman suddenly, “perhaps your ladyship was not quite pleased at me rowing-about with Miss Thompkins—especially after I had taken her for a walk.” He smiled, but his voice was rather wistful. Audrey liked him prodigiously in that moment.

“Foolish man!” she replied, with a smile far surpassing his, and she rested on her oars, taking care to keep the boat in the middle of the channel. “Do you know why I asked you to come out? I wanted to talk to you quite privately. It is easier here.”

“I’m so glad!” he said simply and sincerely. And Audrey thought: “Is it possible to give so much pleasure to an important and wealthy man with so little trouble?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course you know who I really am, don’t you, Mr. Gilman?”

“I only know you’re Mrs. Moncreiff,” he answered.

“But I’m not! Surely you’ve heard something? Surely it’s been hinted in front of you?”

“Never!” said he.

“But haven’t you asked—about my marriage, for instance?”

“To ask might have been to endanger your secret,” he said.

“I see!” she murmured. “How frightfully loyal you are, Mr. Gilman! I do admire loyalty. Well, I dare say very, very few people do know. So I’ll tell you. That’s my home over there.” And she pointed to Flank Hall, whose chimneys could just be seen over the bank.

“I admit that I had thought so,” said Mr. Gilman.

“But naturally that was your home as a girl, before your marriage.”

“I’ve never been married, Mr. Gilman,” she said. “I’m only what the French call a jeune fille.”

His face changed; he seemed to be withdrawing alarmed into himself.

“Never—been married?”

“Oh! You must understand me!” she went on, with an appealing vivacity. “I was all alone. I was in mourning for my father and mother. I wanted to see the world. I just had to see it! I expect I was very foolish, but it was so easy to put a ring on my finger and call myself Mrs. And it gave me such advantages. And Miss Ingate agreed. She was my mother’s oldest friend.... You’re vexed with me.”

“You always seemed so wise,” Mr. Gilman faltered.

“Ah! That’s only the effect of my forehead!”

“And yet, you know, I always thought there was something very innocent about you, too.”

“I don’t know what that was,” said Audrey. “But honestly I acted for the best. You see I’m rather rich. Supposing I’d only gone about as a young marriageable girl—what frightful risks I should have run, shouldn’t I? Somebody would be bound to have married me for my money. And look at all I should have missed—without this ring! I should never have met you in Paris, for instance, and we should never have had those talks.... And—and there’s a lot more reasons—I shall tell you another time—about Madame Piriac and so on. Now do say you aren’t vexed!”

”I think you’ve been splendid,” he said, with enthusiasm. “I think the girls of to-day are splendid! I’ve been a regular old fogey, that’s what it is.”

“Now there’s one thing I want you not to do,” Audrey proceeded. “I want you not to alter the way you talk to me. Because I’m really just the same girl I was last night. And I couldn’t bear you to change.”

“I won’t! I won’t! But of course——”

“No, no! No buts. I won’t have it. Do you know why I told you just this afternoon? Well, partly because you were so perfectly sweet last night. And partly because I’ve got a favour to ask you, and I wouldn’t ask it until I’d told you.”

“You can’t ask me a favour,” he replied, “because it wouldn’t be a favour. It would be my privilege.”

“But if you put it like that I can’t ask you.”

“You must!” he said firmly.

Then she told him something of the predicament of Jane Foley. He listened with an expression of trouble. Audrey finished bluntly: “She’s my friend. And I want you to take her on the yacht to-night after it’s dark. Nobody but you can save her. There! I’ve asked you!”

“Jane Foley!” he murmured.

She could see that he was aghast. The syllables of that name were notorious throughout Britain. They stood for revolt, damage to property, defiance of law, injured policemen, forcible feeding, and all sorts of phenomena that horrified respectable pillars of society.

“She’s the dearest thing!” said Audrey. “You’ve no idea. You’d love her. And she’s done as much for Women’s Suffrage as anybody in the world. She’s a real heroine, if you like. You couldn’t help the cause better than by helping her. And I know how keen you are to help.” And Audrey said to herself: “He’s as timid as a girl about it. How queer men are, after all!”

“But what are we to do with her afterwards?” asked Mr. Gilman. There was perspiration on his brow.

“Sail straight to France, of course. They couldn’t touch her there, you see, because it’s political. It is political, you know,” Audrey insisted proudly.

“And give up all our cruise?”

Audrey bent forward, as she had seen Tommy do. She smiled enchantingly. “I quite understand,” she said, with a sort of tenderness. “You don’t want to do it. And it was a shame of me even to suggest it.”

“But I do want to do it,” he protested with splendid despairful resolve. “I was only thinking of you—and the cruise. I do want to do it. I’m absolutely at your disposal. When you ask me to do a thing, I’m only too proud. To do it is the greatest happiness I could have.”

Audrey replied softly:

“You deserve the Victoria Cross.”

“Whatever do you mean?” he demanded nervously.

“I don’t know exactly what I mean,” she said. “But you’re the nicest man I ever knew.”

He blushed.

“You mustn’t say that to me,” he deprecated.

“I shall, and I shall.”

The sound of the thirty-six variations still came very faintly over the water. The sun sent cataracts of warm light across all the estuary. The water lapped against the boat, and Audrey was overwhelmed by the inexplicable marvel of being alive in the gorgeous universe.

“I shall have to back water,” she said, low. “There’s no room to turn round here.”

“I suppose we’d better say as little about it as possible,” he ventured.

“Oh! Not a word! Not a word till it’s done.”

“Yes, of course.” He was drenched in an agitating satisfaction.

Five bells rang clear from the yacht, overmastering the thirty-six variations.

Audrey thought:

“So he’d never agree, wouldn’t he, Madame Piriac!”

AFLOAT

That night, which was an unusually dark night for the time of year, Audrey left the yacht, alone, to fetch Jane Foley. She had made a provisional plan with Jane and Aguilar, and the arrangement with Mr. Gilman had been of the simplest, necessitating nothing save a brief order from the owner to the woman whom Audrey could always amuse Mr. Gilman by calling the “parlourmaid,” but who was more commonly known as the stewardess. This young married creature had prepared a cabin. For the rest little had been said. The understanding between Mr. Gilman and Audrey was that Mrs. Moncreiff should continue to exist, and that not a word as to the arrival of Jane Foley should escape either of them until the deed was accomplished. It is true that Madame Piriac knew of the probable imminence of the affair, but Madame Piriac was discretion elegantly attired, and from the moment they had left Flank Hall together she had been wise enough not even to mention Jane Foley to Audrey. Madame Piriac appreciated the value of ignorance in a questionable crisis. Mr. Gilman had been less guarded. Indeed he had shown a tendency to discuss the coming adventure with Audrey in remote corners—a tendency which had to be discouraged because it gave to both of them a too obvious air of being tremendous conspirators, Also Audrey had had to dissuade him from accompanying her to the Hall. He had rather conventional ideas about women being abroad alone after dark, and he abandoned them with difficulty even now.

As there were no street lamps alight in summer in the village of Moze, Audrey had no fear of being recognised; moreover, recognition by her former fellow-citizens could now have no sinister importance; she did not much care who recognised her. The principal gates of Flank Hall were slightly ajar, as arranged with Aguilar, and she passed with a suddenly aroused heart up the drive towards the front entrance of the house. In spite of herself she could not get rid of an absurd fear that either Mr. Hurley or Inspector Keeble or both would jump out of the dark bushes and slip handcuffs upon her wrists. And the baffling invisibility of the sky further affected her nerves. There ought to have been a lamp in the front hall, but no ray showed through the eighteenth century fanlight over the door. She rang the bell cautiously. She heard the distant ting. Aguilar, according to the plan, ought to have opened; but he did not open; nobody opened. She was instantly sure that she knew what had happened. Mr. Hurley had been to Frinton and ascertained that the Spatt story as to the tank-room was an invention, and had returned with a search warrant and some tools. But in another ten seconds she was equally sure that nothing of the sort could have happened, for it was an axiom with her that Aguilar’s masterly lying, based on masterly listening at an attic door, had convinced Mr. Hurley of the truth of the story about the tank-room.

Accidentally pushing against the front door with an elbow in the deep obscurity, she discovered that it was not latched. This was quite contrary to the plan. She stepped into the house. The unforeseeing simpleton had actually come on the excursion without a box of matches! She felt her way, aided by the swift returning memories of childhood, to the foot of the stairs, and past the stairs into the kitchen, for in ancient days a candlestick with a box of matches in it had always been kept on the ledge of the small square window that gave light to the passage between the hall and the kitchen. Her father had been most severely particular about that candlestick (with matches) being-always ready on that ledge in case of his need. Ridiculous, of course, to expect a candlestick to be still there! Times change so. But she felt for it, and there it was, and the matches too! She lit the candle. The dim scene thus revealed seemed strange enough to her after the electricity of the Hôtel du Danube and of the yacht. It made her want to cry....

She was one of those people who have room in their minds for all sorts of things at once. And thus she could simultaneously be worried to an extreme about Jane Foley, foolish and sad about her immensely distant childhood, and even regretful that she had admitted the fraudulence of the wedding-ring on her hand. On the last point she had a very strong sense of failure and disillusion. When she had first donned a widow’s bonnet she had meant to have wondrous adventures and to hear marvellous conversations as a widow. And what had she done with her widowhood after all? Nothing. She could not but think that she ought to have kept it a little longer, on the chance....

Aguilar made a practice of sleeping in the kitchen; he considered that a house could only be well guarded at night from the ground floor. There was his bed, in the corner against the brush and besom cupboard, all made up. Its creaselessness, so characteristic of Aguilar, had not been disturbed. The sight of the narrow bed made Audrey think what a strange existence was the existence of Aguilar. ... Then, with a boldness that was half bluster, she went upstairs, and the creaking of the woodwork was affrighting.

“Jane! Jane, dear!” she called out, as she arrived at the second-storey landing. The sound of her voice was uncanny in the haunted stillness. All Audrey’s infancy floated up the well of the stairs and wrapped itself round her and tightened her throat. She went along the passage to the door of the tank-room.

“Jane, Jane!”

No answer! The door was locked. She listened. She put her ear against the door in order to catch the faintest sound of life within. But she could only hear the crude, sharp ticking of the cheap clock which, as she knew, Aguilar had supplied to Jane Foley. The vision of Jane lying unconscious or dead obsessed her. Then she thrust it away and laughed at it. Assuredly Aguilar and Jane must have received some alarm as to a reappearance of the police; they must have fled while there had yet been time. Where could they have gone? Of course, through the garden and plantation and down to the sea-wall, whence Jane might steal to the yacht. Audrey turned back towards the stairs, and the vast intimidating emptiness of the gloomy house, lit by a single flickering candle, assaulted her. She had to fight it before she could descend. The garden door was latched, but not locked. Extinguishing the candle, she went forth. The gusty breeze from the estuary was now damp on her cheek with the presage of rain. She hurried, fumbling as it were, through the garden. When she achieved the hedge the spectacle of the yacht, gleaming from stem to stern with electricity, burst upon her; it shone like something desired and unattainable. Carefully she issued from the grounds by the little gate and crossed the intervening space to the dyke. A dark figure moved in front of her, and her heart violently jumped.

“Is that you, madam?”

It was the cold, imperturbable voice of Aguilar. At once she felt reassured.

“Where is Miss Foley?” she demanded in a whisper.

“I’ve got her down here, ma’am,” said Aguilar. “I presume as you’ve been to the house. We had to leave it.”

“But the door of the tank-room was locked!”

“Yes, ma’am. I locked it a-purpose.... I thought as it would keep the police employed a bit when they come. I seen my cousin Sarah when I went to tell Miss Ingate as you instructed me. My cousin Sarah seen Keeble. They been to Frinton to Mrs. Spatt’s, and they found out about that. And now the ’tec’s back, or nearly. I reckon it was the warrant as was delaying him. So I out with Miss Foley. I thought I could take her across to the yacht from here. It wouldn’t hardly be safe for her to walk round by the dyke. Hurley may have several of his chaps about by this time.”

“But there’s not water enough, Aguilar.”

“Yes, madam. I dragged the old punt down. She don’t draw three inches. She’s afloat now, and Miss Foley’s in her. I was just a-going off. If you don’t mind wetting your feet——”

In one minute Audrey had splashed into the punt. Jane Foley took her hand in silence, and she heard Jane’s low, happy laugh.

“Isn’t it funny?” Jane whispered.

Audrey squeezed her hand.

Aguilar pushed off with an oar, and he continued to use the oar as a punt-pole, so that no sound of their movement should reach the bank. Water was pouring into the old sieve, and they touched ground once. But Aguilar knew precisely what he was about and got her off again. They approached the yacht with the slow, sure inexorability of Aguilar’s character. A beam from the portholes of the saloon caught Aguilar’s erect figure. He sat down, poling as well as he could from the new position. When they were a little nearer he stopped dead, holding the punt firm by means of the pole fixed in the mud.

“He’s there afore us!” he murmured, pointing.

Under the Maltese cross of electric lights at the inner end of the gangway could clearly be seen the form of Mr. Hurley, engaged in conversation with Mr. Gilman. Mr. Hurley was fairly on board.

IN THE UNIVERSE

When Audrey, having been put ashore in execution of a plan arranged with those naturally endowed strategists, Aguilar and Jane Foley, arrived at the Hard by way of the sea-wall, Mr. Hurley was still in parley with Mr. Gilman under the Maltese cross of electric lights. From the distance Mr. Gilman had an air of being somewhat intimidated by the Irishman, but as soon as he distinguished the figure of Audrey at the shore end of the gangway his muscles became mysteriously taut, and his voice charged with defiance.

“I have already told you, sir,” Audrey heard him say, “there is no such person aboard the yacht. And I most certainly will not allow you to search. You have no right whatever to search, and you know it. You have my word. My name is Gilman. You may have heard of me. I’m chairman of the Board of Foodstuffs, Limited. Gilman, sir. And I shall feel obliged if you will leave my decks.”

“Are you sailing to-night?” asked Mr. Hurley placidly.

“What the devil has that got to do with you, sir?” replied Mr. Gilman gloriously.

Audrey, standing behind the detective and unseen by him, observed the gloriousness of Mr. Gilman’s demeanour and also Mr. Gilman’s desire that she should note the same and appreciate it. She nodded violently several times to Mr. Gilman, to urge him to answer the detective in the affirmative.

“Ye-es, sir. Since you are so confoundedly inquisitive, I am sailing to-night. I shall sail as soon as the tide serves,” said Mr. Gilman hurriedly and fiercely, and then glanced again at Audrey for further approval.

“Where for?” Mr. Hurley demanded.

“Where I please, sir,” Mr. Gilman snorted. By this time he evidently imagined that he was furious, and was taking pleasure in his fury.

Mr. Hurley, having given a little ironic bow, turned to leave and found himself fronting Audrey, who stiffly ignored his salute. The detective gone, Mr. Gilman walked to and fro, breathing more loudly than ever, and unsuccessfully pretending to a scattered audience, which consisted of the skipper, Mr. Price, Dr. Cromarty, and sundry deck-hands, that he had done nothing in particular and was not a hero. As Audrey approached him he seemed to lay all his glory with humble pride at her feet.

“Well, he brought that on himself!” said Audrey, smiling.

“He did,” Mr. Gilman concurred, gazing at the Hard with inimical scorn.

“She can’t come—now,” said Audrey. “It wouldn’t be safe. He means to stay on the Hard till we’re gone. He’s a very suspicious man.”

Mr. Hurley was indeed lingering just beyond the immediate range of the Ariadne’s lamps.

“Can’t come! What a pity! What a pity!” murmured Mr. Gilman, with an accent that was not a bit sincere. The news was the best he had heard for hours. “But I suppose,” he added, “we’d better sail just the same, as I’ve said we should?” He did not want to run the risk of getting Jane Foley after all.

“Oh! Do!” Audrey exclaimed. “It will be lovely! If it doesn’t rain—and even if it does rain! We all like sailing at night.... Are the others in the saloon? I’ll run down.”

“Mr. Wyatt,” the owner sternly accosted the captain. “When can we get off?”

“Oh! About midnight,” Audrey answered quickly, before Mr. Wyatt could compose his lips.

The men gazed at each other surprised by this show of technical knowledge in a young widow. By the time Mr. Wyatt had replied, Audrey was descending into the saloon. It was Aguilar who, having ascertained the Ariadne’s draught, had made the calculation as to the earliest possible hour of departure.

And in the saloon Musa was, as it were, being enveloped and kept comfortable in the admiring sympathy of Madame Piriac and Miss Thompkins. Mr. Gilman’s violin lay across his knees—perhaps he had been tuning it—and the women inclined towards him, one on either side. It was a sight that somewhat annoyed Audrey, who told herself that she considered it silly. Admitting that Musa had genius, she could not understand this soft flattery of genius. She never flattered genius herself, and she did not approve of others doing so. Certainly Musa was now being treated on the yacht as a celebrity of the first order, and Audrey could find no explanation of the steady growth in the height and splendour of his throne. Her arrival dissolved the spectacle. Within one minute, somehow, the saloon was empty and everybody on deck again.

And then, drawing her away, Musa murmured to Audrey in a disconcerting tone that he must speak to her on a matter of urgency, and that in order that he might do so, they must go ashore and walk seawards, far from interruption. She consented, for she was determined to prove to him at close quarters that she was a different creature from the other two. They moved to the gangway amid discreet manifestations from the doctor and the secretary—manifestations directed chiefly to Musa and indicative of his importance as a notability. Audrey was puzzled. For her, Musa was more than ever just Musa, and less than ever a personage.

“I shall not return to the yacht,” he said, with an excited bitterness, after they had walked some distance along one of the paths leading past low bushes into the wilderness of the marsh land that bounded the estuary to the south. The sky was still invisible, but there was now a certain amount of diffused light, and the pale path could easily be distinguished amid the sombreness of green. The yacht was hidden behind one of the knolls. No sound could be heard. The breeze had died. That which was around them—on either hand, above, below—was the universe. They knew that they stood still in the universe, and this idea gave their youth the sensation of being very important.

“What is that which you say?” Audrey demanded sharply in French, as Musa had begun in French. She was aware, not for the first time with Musa, of the sudden possibilities of drama in a human being. She could scarcely make out his face, but she knew that he was in a mood for high follies; she knew that danger was gathering; she knew that the shape of the future was immediately to be moulded by her and him, and chiefly by herself. She liked it. The sensation of her importance was reinforced.

“I say I shall never return to the yacht,” he repeated.

She thought compassionately:

“Poor foolish thing!”

She was incalculably older and wiser than this irrational boy. She was the essence of wisdom.

She said, with acid detachment:

“But your luggage, your belongings? What an idea to leave in this manner! It is so polite, so sensible!”

“I shall not return.”

“Of course,” she said, “I do not at all understand why you are going. But what does that matter? You are going.” Her indifference was superb. It was so superb that it might have driven some men to destroy her on the spot.

“Yes, you understand! I told you last night,” said Musa, overflowing with emotion.

“Oh! You told me? I forget.”

“Naturally Monsieur Gilman is rich. I am not rich, though I shall be. But you can’t wait,” Musa sneered.

“I do not know what you mean,” said Audrey.

“Ah!” said Musa. “Once I told you that Tommy and Nick lent me the money with which to live. For me, since then, you have never been the same being. How stupid I was to tell you! You could not comprehend such a thing. Your soul is too low to comprehend it. Permit me to say that I have already repaid Nick. And at the first moment I shall repay Tommy. My position is secure. I have only to wait. But you will not wait. You are a bourgeoise of the most terrible sort. Opulence fascinates you. Mr. Gilman has opulence. He has nothing else. But he has opulence, and for you that is all.”

In an instant her indifference, self-control, wisdom vanished. It was a sad exhibition of frailty; but she enjoyed it, she revelled in it, giving play to everything in herself that was barbaric. The marsh around them was probably as it had been before the vikings had sailed into it, and Audrey rushed back with inconceivable speed into the past and became the primeval woman of twenty centuries earlier. Like almost all women she possessed this wondrous and affrighting faculty.

“You are telling a wicked untruth!” she exploded in English. “And what’s more, you know you are. You disgust me. You know as well as I do I don’t care anything for money—anything. Only you’re a horrid, spoilt beast. You think you can upset me, but you can’t. I won’t have it, either from you or from anybody else. It’s a shame, that’s what it is. Now you’ve got to apologise to me. I absolutely insist on it. You aren’t going to bully me, even if you think you are. I’ll soon show you the sort of girl I am, and you make no mistake! Are you going to apologise or aren’t you?”

The indecorous creature was breathing as loudly as Mr. Gilman himself.

“I admit it,” said Musa yielding.

“Ah!”

“I demand your pardon. I knew that what I said was not true. I am outside myself. But what would you? It is stronger than I. This existence is terrible, on the yacht. I cannot support it. I shall become mad. I am ruined. My jealousy is intolerable.”

“It is!” said Audrey, using French again, more calmly, having returned to the twentieth century.

“It is intolerable to me.” Then Musa’s voice changed and grew persuasive, rather like a child’s. “I cannot live without you. That is the truth. I am an artist, and you are necessary to me and to my career.” He lifted his head. “And I can offer you everything that is most brilliant.”

“And what about my career?” Audrey questioned inimically.

“Your career?” He seemed at a loss.

“Yes. My career. It has possibly not occurred to you that I also may have a career.”

Musa became appealing.

“You understand me,” he said. “I told you you do not comprehend, but you comprehend everything. It is that which enrages me. You have had experience. You know what men are. You could teach me so much. I hate young girls. I have always hated them. They are so tasteless, so insufferably innocent. I could not talk to a young girl as I talk to you. It would be absurd. Now as to my career—what I said——”

“Musa,” she interrupted him, with a sinister quietude, “I want to tell you something. But you must promise to keep it secret. Will you?”

He assented, impatient.

“It is not possible!” he exclaimed, when she had told him that she belonged to precisely the category of human beings whom he hated and despised.

“Isn’t it?” said she. “Now I hope you see how little you know, really, about women.” She laughed.

“It is not possible!” he repeated. And then he said with deliberate ingenuousness: “I am so content. I am so happy. I could not have hoped for it. It is overwhelming. I am everything you like of the most idiotic, blind, stupid. But now I am happy. Could I ever have borne that you had loved before I knew you? I doubt if I could have borne it. Your innocence is exquisite. It is intoxicating to me.”

“Musa,” she remarked dryly; “I wish you would remember that you are in England. People do not talk in that way in England. It simply is not done. And I will not listen to it.” Her voice grew a little tender. “Why can we not just be friends?”

“It is folly,” said he, with sudden disgust. “And it would kill me.”

“Well, then,” she replied, receding. “You’re entitled to die.”

He advanced towards her. She kept him away with a gesture.

“You want me to marry you?” she questioned.

“It is essential,” he said, very seriously. “I adore you. I can’t do anything because of you. I can’t think of anything but you. You are more marvellous than anyone can be. You cannot appreciate what you are to me!”

“And suppose you are nothing to me?”

“But it is necessary that you should love me!”

“Why? I see no necessity. You want me—because you want me. That’s all. I can’t help it if you’re mad. Your attitude is insulting. You have not given one thought to my feelings. And if I said ‘yes’ to you, you’d marry me whatever my feelings were. You think only of yourself. It is the old attitude. And when I offer you my friendship, you instantly decline it. That shows how horribly French you are. Frenchmen can’t understand the idea of friendship between a man and a girl. They sneer at it. It shows what brutes you all are. Why should I marry you? I should have nothing to gain by it. You’ll be famous. Well, what do I care? Do you think it would be very amusing for me to be the wife of a famous man that was run after by every silly creature in Paris or London or New York? Not quite! And I don’t see myself. You don’t like young girls. I don’t like young men. They’re rude and selfish and conceited. They’re like babies.”