CHAPTER XIV

"I have," said Kitty, "an admirable adviser in Mr. Marston."

"You are always kind. Even if you don't always act on my advice."

"Sometimes you think you know your own affairs best."

"And sometimes," said Lucy, "it's just possible you do."

"Sometimes. I've been telling Mrs. Tailleur that she's incapable of managing her own affairs when it's a question of her own advantage. If you know anything of Mrs. Tailleur, you will agree with me there."

"I certainly agree with you, if Mrs. Tailleur will forgive my saying so. I hope I've not come too soon."

"Oh, no. Mr. Marston has missed the last train up."

"And Mrs. Tailleur has been kind enough to ask me to stop the night."

"If you don't prefer the Métropole. Mr. Lucy is not going. Don't—it's all right, Robert."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. Our business is finished."

"All except one or two details which we may perhaps arrange later," said Marston, who preserved a perfect suavity.

"How much later?" said Kitty. "I'm not going to arrange anything more to-night."

"To-morrow night."

"There won't be any to-morrow night—if you're going up to town."

"Well, then, perhaps if Mr. Lucy will excuse us, you will give me a moment now. It seems a pity not to put things straight while you're about it."

"You can't put things straight at eleven o'clock at night. My poor head's all muddled and aching abominably."

"To-morrow morning, then."

"There will be no time to-morrow morning. Robert, has Jane gone to bed?"

"No, she's sitting up. She wants to speak to you."

"Will you bring her to me, please?"

He rose. When he had left the room she turned on Marston in a fury.

"Wilfrid, you're a beast, a perfect beast."

"A man of business, my dear Kitty, very often is. He's paid, you know, for doing beastly things."

"They come easy to you."

"Is that all the thanks I get for playing up to you? I gave you every point, too."

She raged dumbly.

"I can't congratulate you on your skill in the game. You'd have given yourself away ten times over—if I hadn't stopped you."

"What are you waiting for now, then?"

"I have not said good night to your friend Mr. Lucy, nor to you."

"You can say good night to me now, and good bye. I shall not see you again."

"Pardon me, you will see me to-morrow morning."

"No. Never again. I've done with you."

"My dear girl, you are absurd. Mr. Lucy is not going to marry you to-morrow morning, is he?"

"Well?"

"And until he marries you, you haven't exactly done with me."

"I see. You want to remind me that the clothes on my back belong to you."

He flushed painfully.

"I don't want to remind you of anything that may be unpleasant to you. I'm only suggesting that in the circumstances—until you marry him—you can hardly refuse to see me."

"Why should I see you? It'll make no difference."

"To me, none. To you it may possibly make a considerable difference. There are some points you have evidently not thought of, which it would be well for us to talk over before you think of marrying."

She capitulated.

"If I see you to-morrow, will you go now?"

"I will go, my dear Kitty, the precise moment I see fit. If I were you I should wipe that expression from my face before Mr. Lucy comes in. He might not like it. The pocket-handkerchief might be used with advantage now—just there."

In obedience to his indication she passed her hand over the flushed tear-stain. At that moment Lucy entered with his sister.

Jane, less guarded than her brother, looked candidly, steadily at Marston, whose face instantly composed itself to reverence and devotion before her young half-spiritual presence.

Kitty's voice was scarcely audible as she murmured the ritual of introduction.

Lucy was aware of her emotion.

"I think," said he, "as Mrs. Tailleur has owned to a bad headache, Mr. Marston and I had better say good night."

Marston said it. There was nothing else left for him to say. And as he went through the door that Lucy opened for him, he cursed him in his heart.

"Jane," said Kitty.

But Jane was looking at the door through which Marston and Robert had just gone.

"Robert did that very neatly," said she. "You wanted to get rid of him, didn't you, Kitty?"

"I've been trying to get rid of Wilfrid Marston for the last three weeks."

She had such wisdom, mothered by fierce necessity, as comes to the foolish at their call. She was standing over little Jane as she spoke, looking down into her pure, uplifted eyes.

"You've been crying," she said.

"Yes." Jane's eyes were very bright, new-washed with tears.

"I know why. It's because of me."

"Yes; but it's all right now, Kitty."

She did not tell her that ten minutes ago she, too, had been out on the Cliff-side and had had a battle with herself there, and had won it. For little Jane there couldn't be a harder thing in the world than to give Robert up. Of course she had to do it, so there could be no virtue in that. The hard thing was to do it gracefully, beautifully.

"What are you going to say to me, Janey? He told you?"

"Yes; he told me."

"Oh, don't look at me like that, dear. Say if you hate it for him."

"I don't hate it. Only, oh, Kitty, dear, do you really love him?"

"Yes; I love him."

"But—you've only known him ten days. I don't think I could love a man I'd only known ten days."

"It makes no difference."

"That's what Robert said."

"Yes; he said it to me. Ah, I know what you mean. You think it's all very well for him, because men are different. It's me you can't understand; you think I must be horrid."

"Oh no, no. It's only—I think I'm different, that's all."

"Is that all, Janey?"

"Yes."

"And will you love me a little if I love him a great deal? Or do you hate me for loving him?"

"Kitty—you needn't be afraid. The more you love him the more I shall love you."

"Did—did his wife love him? Oh, ought I to have asked you that?"

Jane shook her head.

"I'm not sure that I ought to tell you."

"She didn't, then?"

"Oh yes, she did, poor little thing. She loved him all she could."

"And it wasn't enough?"

"No, I don't think it was, quite. There was something wanting. But I don't think Robert ever knew it."

"He knows it now," said Kitty. Her voice lifted with the pride of passion.

CHAPTER XV

His rival had made a very favourable impression on him, with the curious effect of heightening Kitty's value in his eyes. Other causes contributed, her passion for Lucy, and the subtle purification it had wrought in her (a charm to which Marston was by no means unsusceptible), the very fact that his own dominion was uncertain and his possession incomplete.

Up till now he had been unaware of the grip she had on him. He had never allowed for the possibility of permanence in his relations with her sex. The idea of marriage was peculiarly unsupportable to him. Even in his youth he had had no love affairs, avowed and sanctioned. Though Marston professed the utmost devotion to women like Miss Lucy, the women whom his mother and his sisters knew, he had noticed a little sadly that he soon wearied of their society, that he had no power of sustained communion with the good. The unfallen were for him the unapproachable. Therefore he had gravitated by taste and temperament to the women of the underworld. There his incurable fastidiousness drove him to the pursuit of a possible perfection, distinction within the limits, the inherent frailties of the type.

In Kitty Tailleur he had found even more than he was looking for. Kitty had certain graces, reminiscent of the upper world; a heritage from presumably irreproachable parents, that marked her from the women of her class. She had, moreover, a way of her own, different from the charm of the unfallen, different, too, from the coarse lures of the underworld. Kitty was never rank, never insipid. She had a few light brains in her body, and knew how to use them, woman-like, for the heightening of her charm.

There were other good points about Kitty. Marston disliked parting with his money, and he had found Kitty, so far, inexpensive, as women went.

For these reasons, so many and so plausible that they disguised the true kind and degree of his subjection, he had before now returned to Kitty more than once after he thought that he had tired of her.

Only three weeks ago, on her return from Matlock, he judged that he had come to the end of his passion for her; and here he was again at the very beginning of it. Instead of perishing it had thrived on absence. He found himself on the verge of a new and unforeseen adventure, with impulse sharpened by antagonism and frustration. Yet his only chance, he knew, was not to be impulsive, but cool rather, calculating and cautious. The fight he was in for would have to be fought with brains; his against hers.

He sent a note to her early in the morning asking her to see him at nine. At nine she saw him.

"I thought," she said, "you were going up to town early."

"I'm not going up to town at all, as it happens, to-day."

"Isn't it rather a pity to neglect your business?"

"My business, dear Kitty, is not any business of yours."

"I'm only trying to make you see that it isn't worth your while stopping out of town because of me."

He was a little disconcerted at her divination of his motives, her awareness of her own power.

"Well, you see, though the affairs of Whitehall are not your affairs, your affairs, unfortunately, are mine; and, since I have to attend to them, I prefer to do it at once and get it over. I had some talk with Lucy last night."

She turned on him. "Ah, you have given me away."

"Did you ever know me give any one away?"

She did not answer all at once.

He was shocked at her suspicion; at the things she believed it possible for a man to do. In the upper world, in a set that discussed its women freely, he had never used his knowledge of a woman to harm her. He had carried the same scruple into that other world where Kitty lived, where he himself was most at home, where an amused, contemptuous tolerance played the part of chivalry. The women there trusted him; they found him courteous in his very contempt. He had connived at their small deceits, the preposterous hypocrisies wherewith they protected themselves. He accepted urbanely their pitiful imitations of the lost innocence. Kitty, moving reckless and high in her sad circle, had been scornful of her sisters' methods. Her soul was as much above them as her body, in its unique, incongruous beauty, was above their rouge and coloured raiment. It was this superiority of hers that had brought her to her present pass; caused her to be mistaken for an honest woman. In her contempt for the underworld's deceptions she had achieved the supreme deceit.

Her deceit—that was his point.

"Then," she said presently, "what did you say to him?"

"I said nothing, my dear child, in your disparagement. On the contrary, I congratulated him on his engagement. As I'm supposed to be acting as your agent, or solicitor, or whatever it is I am acting as, I imagine I did right. Is that so?"

"Yes; if that's all you said."

"It is not quite all. I sustained my character by giving him a hint, the merest hint, that in the event of your marriage your worldly position would be slightly altered. We must prepare him, you know, for the sudden collapse of your income."

He rose and went to the mantelpiece, and lingered there over the lighting of a cigarette.

"You hadn't thought of that?" he said as he seated himself again.

"No; I hadn't thought of it."

"Well, he didn't appear to have thought of it either."

"What did he say, when you told him that?"

"He said it didn't matter in the very least."

"I knew he would."

"He said, in fact, that nothing mattered."

"What did you say then?"

"Nothing. What could I say?"

She looked at him, trying to see deep into his design, trusting him no further than she saw.

"Look here, Kitty, I think you're making a mistake, even from your own point of view. You ought to tell him."

"I—can't."

"You must. He's such an awfully decent chap, you can't let him in for marrying you without telling him." That was his point and he meant to stick to it. "It's what you might call playing it low down on a guileless and confiding man. Isn't it?"

"Yes, but I can't tell him."

"It's the straight thing, Kitty."

"I know. But it means giving him up."

"Not at all. He'll respect you all the more for it. He won't go back on you."

"He wouldn't if he'd only himself to think of."

"He isn't bound to tell his people. That's another thing."

"It isn't his people—it's—it's his children."

Marston became suddenly attentive. "His children? He's got children, has he?"

"Yes, two; two little girls."

That strengthened his point.

"Then, my dear girl, you can't—in common decency—not tell him. Hang it all, you've got to give the man a chance."

"A chance to escape? You talk as if I'd set a trap for him."

"My dear child, you haven't sense enough to set a trap. But, since there are spring-guns in his neighbourhood, I repeat that you ought to inform him of the fact. I dare say he wouldn't funk a spring-gun on his own account, but he may not want his children to be hurt."

"I know. He'd be afraid I should contaminate them. I wouldn't, Wilfrid, I wouldn't. I wouldn't hurt them for the world."

"I'm sure you wouldn't. But he might think you would. The fathers of little girls sometimes have strange prejudices. You see it's all very well as long as you can keep him in his beautiful innocence. But, if he finds out that you've deceived him, he—well, he might resent it."

He never turned his eyes from that livid, vulnerable spot, striking at it with the sword-thrust of his point.

"A man can forgive many things in a woman, but not that."

"I must risk it. He mayn't find out for years and years. If I tell him I shall lose him now."

"Not necessarily. Not if he cares for you as much as I should say he does."

"It doesn't matter how much he cares. He'd never marry me."

"No. He might make another and more sensible arrangement."

"And then?" She faced him with it.

"Then you'll be satisfied. You'll have had your fling."

"And—when—I've—had it?" she said slowly.

"Then, I suppose, I shall have to take you back."

"I see. That's where you think you'll come in."

"I wasn't thinking, at the moment, of myself. The suggestion was thrown out entirely on your behalf, and I may say his. I'm simply telling you what—knowing you as I do—I consider the wiser course, for both of you."

"You don't know. And you don't know him. He wouldn't do it. He isn't that sort."

She paused, brooding over it.

"Besides, I couldn't bear it. I can't go back to that."

"And how many years do you think you'll stand being proper and respectable, which is what you'll have to be as long as you're Mrs. Robert Lucy? It's a stiffish job, my child, for you to tackle. Just think of the practical difficulties. I've accounted for the sudden, very singular collapse of your income, but there are all sorts of things that you won't be able to account for. The disappearance, for instance, of the entire circle of your acquaintance."

She smiled. "It would be much more awkward if it didn't disappear."

"True. Still, a female friend or two is an indispensable part of a married woman's outfit. The Lucys mayn't mind, but their friends may regard the omission as peculiar. Then—you have charming manners, I know—but your speech is apt, at times, to be a little, what shall I say? Unfettered. The other day, when you were annoyed with me, you called me a beast."

"That's nothing. I might have called you something much worse."

"You might. Happily, you did not. I've no objection to the word; it can be used as a delicate endearment, but in your mouth it loses any tender grace it might have had."

"I'm sorry, Wilfrid."

"Don't apologise. I didn't mind. But if you call Lucy a beast he won't like it."

"I couldn't. Besides, I shall be very careful."

"You will have to be extremely careful. The Lucys live in Hampstead, I believe, and Hampstead enjoys the reputation of being the most respectable suburb of London. You've no idea of the sort of people you'll have to meet there. You'll terrify them, and they, my poor Kitten, will exterminate you. You don't know what respectability is like."

"I don't care. I can stand anything."

"You think you can. I know that you won't be able to stand it for a fortnight. You'll find that the air of Hampstead doesn't agree with you. And wherever you go it'll be the same thing. You had very much better stick to me."

"To you?"

"You'll be safer and happier. If you'll stay with me——"

"I never have—stayed—with you."

"No, but I'd like you to."

He was not going to make love to her. He was far too clever for that. He knew that with a woman like Kitty, in Kitty's state of mind, he had nothing to gain by making love. Neither did he propose to pit his will against hers. That course had answered well enough in the time of his possession of her. Passion, which was great in her, greater than her will, made his will powerless over her. His plan was to match the forces of her brain with superior, with overwhelming forces.

He continued coldly. "I'm not satisfied with the present arrangement any more than you are. If you'll stay with me you shall live where you choose; only don't choose Park Lane, for I can't afford it. I'll give you any mortal thing I can afford."

"You think you can give me what Robert Lucy's giving me?"

"I can give you a home, Kitty, as long as you'll live in it. I can give you the advantages of marriage without its drawbacks. You won't be tied to me a minute longer than you like. Whereas you can't leave Lucy without a scandal."

"You think that a safe arrangement, do you? I can leave you when I want to."

"You can leave me any day. So the chances are that you won't want to."

"And when you're tired of me?"

"That's it. I shan't be tired of you. I've a different feeling for you from any I've ever had for any other woman, for the simple reason that you're a different woman every time I see you. That's the secret of your fascination. Didn't you know it?"

She shook her head, but she was not attending to him.

"If you don't know it there's no harm in telling you that I'm very fond of you."

"What earthly use is it, Wilfrid, being fond of me, as long as I'm not fond of you?"

Ah, that was a mistake. He was on perilous ground. She was strong there. She matched his bloodless, unblushing candour with her throbbing, passionate sincerity.

"That's all the better," he said. "It wouldn't pay you, Kitty, to be fond of me. If I thought you were fond of me to-day it would leave me with nothing to look forward to to-morrow. If you were as fond of me as you are of Lucy, it would bore me horribly. What's more, it would bore you. It would tire you out, and you'd bolt in a week's time. As, I can tell you, you'll bolt from him."

"You think I shall do that. He doesn't. That's why I'm fond of him."

"I wouldn't be too fond of him. It never pays. Either you'll tire of him in a week, or, if you go on being fond of him you'll end by being afraid of him. You need never be afraid of me."

"I am afraid of you."

"Not you. I understand you, Kitty, and he doesn't."

"You mean you know the worst of me?"

"Precisely. What's more, I should condone what you call the worst of you, and he wouldn't."

"I know you would. That's why I'm afraid of you. You only know the worst of me, and he—he knows, he understands, the rest. There's something in me that you've never seen; you couldn't see it; you wouldn't believe in it; you'd kill it if I stayed with you. It's no use talking, for I won't."

"Why not?" he asked as if nothing she had said had been of any moment.

"I've told you why not. But I don't expect you to understand it."

"If there's anything in it I shall understand it in the end. I'm not a fool."

"No, you're not a fool. I'll say that for you."

"Unless it's folly to be as fond of you as I am."

"Oh, no, that's not folly. You'll be fond of me just as long as I'm nice to look at; as long as it doesn't bore you to talk to me; as long as I don't give you any trouble."

"Good God! Why, look at the trouble you're giving me now."

"Yes, the trouble I'm giving you now, when I'm young and pretty and you can't have me. But when you have had me; when I'm tired out and ill and—and thin; will you be fool enough to be fond of me then?"

"You have been ill, you were ill last night, and—I've got over it."

"You never came near me when I was ill at Matlock. You call that giving me what Robert Lucy gives me? Robert has seen me when I've been as ugly as sin, when my eyes have been bunged up with crying. And it made no difference. He'll love me when I'm thin and ill and old. When I'm dead he'll love me."

He faced her passion as it flamed up before him, faced it with his cold, meditative smile.

"That's just what makes it such a beastly shame."

"My not giving him up? How can I give him up?"

"I see your point. You think you're exchanging a temporary affection for a permanent one. You admit that I shall love you as long as you're nice to look at. Very well. You'll be nice to look at for some considerable time. I shall therefore love you for some considerable time. Robert Lucy will love you just as long as he believes in you. How long will that be?"

She did not answer.

"You don't know. Have you calculated the probable effect of gradual enlightenment on our friend's mind?"

"I've calculated nothing."

"No. You are not a calculating woman. I just ask you to consider this point. I am not, as you know, in the least surprised at any of your charming little aberrations. But our friend Lucy has not had many surprises in his life. He'll come to you with an infinite capacity for astonishment. It's quite uncertain how he'll take—er—anything in the nature of a surprise. And, if you ask me, I should say he'd take it hard. Are you going to risk that?"

He was returning to his point even when he feigned to have lost sight of it. Tortured and panting she evaded it with pitiful subterfuges. He urged her back, pressing her tender breast against the prick of it.

"I'm going to risk everything," she said.

"Risk it, risk it, then. Tie yourself for life to a man you don't know; who doesn't really know you, though you think he does; who on your own showing wouldn't marry you if he did know. You see what a whopping big risk it is, for he's bound to know in the end."

She sickened and wearied. "He is not bound to know. Why is he?"

"Because, my dear girl, you're bound to give yourself away some day. I know you. I know the perverse little devil that is in you. When you realise what you've let yourself in for you'll break loose, suddenly—like that." He threw out his arms as if he burst bonds asunder. "You can't help yourself. You simply can't live the life. You may yearn for it, but you can't live it."

"I don't want to be respectable. It isn't that."

"What is it then?"

"Can't you see?"

He looked at her closely, as if he saw it for the first time.

"Are you so awfully gone on him?"

"Yes," she said. "You won't tell him? It'll kill me if he knows."

"You think it will, but it won't."

"I shall kill myself, then."

"Oh no, you won't. You only think you will. It's Lucy I'm sorry for."

"And it's me you're hard on. You were always hard. You say you condone things, but you condone nothing, and you're not good yourself."

"No, I'm not good myself. But there is conduct and conduct. I can condone everything but the fraud you're practising on this innocent man." He rose. "It's—well—you see, it's such a beastly shame."

It was to be a battle of brains, and she had foiled him with the indomitable stupidity of her passion. But his point—the one point that he stuck to—was a sword point for her passion.

"You won't tell him? You won't? It would be a blackguardly thing to do."

"If Lucy was a friend of mine I'm afraid the blackguardly thing would be to hold my tongue."

"You'd tell him then?" she said. "You wouldn't think of me?"

She came to him. She laid her arms upon his shoulders. Her hands touched him with dispassionate, deliberate, ineffectual caresses, a pitiful return to a discarded manner, an outrageous imitation of the old professional cajoleries. It was so poor a thing that it had no power to move him. What moved him was the look in her eyes, the look which his brain told him was the desperate, incredulous appeal of her unhappy soul.

"I don't know, Kitty," he said. "Thank heaven, he's not a friend of mine."

CHAPTER XVI

Then there were the Hankins. She reflected sanely that they couldn't be dangerous, for they knew nothing. Still she did feel a little uneasy when she thought of the Hankins.

She was thinking of them now as she and Robert sat on the Cliff, making the most of their last hour together before the arrival of the little girls.

"Robert," she said, "the Hankins are probably sitting down there under the Cliff. Supposing they see us?"

"They can't, we're over their heads."

"But if they do what do you suppose they'll think?"

"If they think at all, they'll have an inkling of the truth. But it isn't their business. The children will be here soon," he added.

She looked at him intently. Was he trying, she wondered, to reassure her that the presence of his children would protect her? Or was he merely preoccupied with the thought of their arrival?

"You don't mind," he said presently, "not coming to the station?"

He had said that already twice before. Why ask, she said, when he knew perfectly well she didn't mind?

Of course she didn't mind. She knew his idea, that they were not to be confronted with her suddenly. He meant to let her dawn on them beautifully, with the tenderest gradations. He would approach them with an incomparable cunning. He would tell them that they were going to see a very pretty lady. And when they were thoroughly inured to the idea of her, he would announce that the pretty lady was coming to stay with them, and that she would never go away.

She looked at her watch.

"We've got another half-hour before they come."

"Kitty, I believe you're afraid of them?"

"Yes, Robert, I'm afraid."

"What? Of two small children?"

"What are they like? I haven't asked you that."

"Well, Janet's a queer, uncanny little person, rather long for her age and very thin——"

"Like you?"

"Like me. At first you think she's all legs. Then you see a little white face with enormous eyes that look at you as if she was wondering what you are."

He smiled. His mind had gone off, away from her, to the contemplation of his little daughter.

"I think she is clever, but one never knows. We have to handle her very carefully. Barbara's all right. You can pitch her about like anything."

"What is Barbara like?"

"Barbara? She's round and fat and going to be pretty, like——"

"Like her mother?"

"No, like Janey, if Janey was fat. They're both a little difficult to manage. If you reprove Barbara, she bursts out laughing in your face. If you even hint to Janet that you disapprove of her, she goes away somewhere and weeps."

"Poor little thing. I'm afraid," said Kitty sadly, "they're not so very small."

"Well, Janet, I believe, is seven, and Barbara is five."

"Barbara is five. And, oh dear me, Janet is seven."

"Is that such a very formidable age?"

She laughed uneasily. "Yes. That's the age when they begin to take notice, isn't it?"

"Oh, no, they do that when they're babies. Even Barbara's grown out of that. I say, Kitty, what a lot you know."

"Don't, Robert." She looked at him imploringly and put her hand in his.

"I won't, if you'll only tell me what I'm not to do."

"You're not to tease me about the things you think I don't know. I used to nurse my little sisters, when I wasn't very big myself. I can't nurse Janet, or Barbara, can I?"

"Why not?"

"They wouldn't let me. They're too old. It won't be the same thing at all."

"Well," said Robert, and paused, hiding from her the thing that was in his mind.

"Oh, Robert, I do wish, I do wish they were really small."

"I'm sorry, Kitty. But perhaps——"

He could not hide anything from Kitty.

"No, Robert," she said, "I'm afraid there won't be any perhaps. That's one of the things I meant to tell you. But I'm not bothering about that. I meant—if they were little—little things, I shouldn't be so dreadfully afraid of them."

"Why? What do you think they'll do to you, Kitty?"

"I—don't—know."

"You needn't be alarmed. I believe they're very well-behaved. Jane has brought them up quite nicely."

"What is Jane going to do?"

"Ah—that's what I wanted to ask you about."

"You needn't ask me. You want her to stay and look after them just the same?"

"No, not just the same. I want her to stay and she won't. She says it wouldn't be fair to you."

"But—if she only would, that would make it all so easy. You see, I could look after you, and she could look after them."

"You don't want to be bored with them?"

"You know that isn't what I mean. I don't want them to suffer."

"Why should they suffer?" There was some irritation in his tone.

"Because I don't think, Robert, I'm really fit to bring up children."

"I think you are. And I don't mean anybody else to bring them up. If you're my wife, Kitty, you're their mother."

"And they're to be mine as well as yours?"

"As much yours as you can make them, dear."

"Oh, how you trust me. That's what makes me so afraid. And—do you think they'll really love me?"

"Trust them—for that."

"You asked me if I could care for you, Robert; you never asked me if I could care for them. You trusted me for that!"

"I could have forgiven you if you couldn't care for me."

"But you couldn't forgive me if I didn't care for them? Is that it?"

"No; I simply couldn't understand any woman not caring for them. I think you will like the little things, when you've seen them."

"I'll promise you one thing. I won't be jealous of them."

"Jealous? Why on earth should you be?"

"Some women are. I was afraid I might be that sort."

"Why?"

"Because—oh, because I care for you so awfully. But that's just it. That's why I can't be jealous of them. They're yours, you see. I can't separate them from you."

"Well, well, let's wait until you've seen them."

"Don't you believe me, Robert? Women do love their children before they've seen them. I don't need to see them. I have seen them. I saw them all last night."

She looked away from him, brooding, as if she still saw them.

"There's only one person I could be jealous of, and I'm not jealous of her any more."

"Poor little Jane."

"It wasn't Jane. It was their mother. I mean it was your wife."

He turned and looked at her. There was amazement in his kind, simple face.

"I suppose you think that's fiendish of me?"

He did not reply.

"But—Robert—I'm not jealous of her any more. I don't care if she was your wife."

"Kitty, my dear child——"

"I don't care if she had ten children and I never had one. It's got nothing to do with it. She had you for—two years, wasn't it?"

"Two years, Kitty."

"Poor thing; and I shall have you all my life."

"Yes. And so, if you don't mind, dear, I'd rather you didn't talk about that again."

"I'm sorry. I won't ever again."

She sat silent for a moment in a sort of penitential shame. Then she burst out—

"I'm not jealous. But, Robert, if you were to leave me for another woman it would kill me. I daren't say that to any other man if I cared for him. It would just make him go and do it. But I believe somehow you'd think twice before you killed me."

He only smiled at this, and spoke gently.

"Yes, Kitty, you're right. I believe I would think twice about it."

He said to himself that this fierceness, her passionate perversity, all that was most unintelligible in her, was just Kitty's way—the way of a woman recklessly, adorably in love. It stirred in him the very depths of tenderness. When she was married (they must marry very soon) she would be happy; she would understand him; she would settle down.

He looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I must be going."

She glanced at the hands of the watch over his shoulder. "You needn't," she said. "It isn't really time."

"Well—five minutes."

The five minutes went. "Time's up," he said.

"Oh, no, Robert—not yet."

"Kitty—don't you want to see them?"

"I don't want you to go."

"I'm coming back."

"Yes, but it won't be the same thing. It never will be the same thing as now."

"Poor Kitty—I say, I must go and meet them."

"Very well." She stood up. "Kiss me," she said.

She took his kiss as if it were the last that would be given her.

They went together to the hotel. Jane had started five minutes ago for the station.

"It's all right," he said. "I'll catch her up."

She followed to the gates and looked down the white road where Jane had gone.

"Let me come with you—just a little way—to the first lamp-post on the station road."

"Well, to the first lamp-post."

At the lamp-post she let him go.

She stood looking after him till he swung round the turn of the road, out of her sight. Then she went back, slowly, sad-eyed, and with a great terror in her heart.

CHAPTER XVII

Up till now she had been careless of her destiny. She had been so joyous, so defiant in her sinning. By that charm of hers, younger than youth, indestructibly childlike, she had carried it through with the audacity of chartered innocence. She had propitiated, ignored, eluded the more feminine amenities of fate. Of course, she had had her bad moments. She had been sorry, sometimes, and she had been sick; but on the whole her powers had been splendidly recuperative. She had shown none of those naked tender spots that provoke destiny to strike. And with it all she had preserved, perhaps too scrupulously, the rules laid down for such as she. She had kept her own place. She had never attempted to invade the sanctuaries set apart for other women.

It was Robert who had tempted her to that transgression. He had opened the door of the sanctuary for her and shut it behind her and put his back against it. He had made her believe that if she stayed in there, with him, it would be all right. She might have known what would happen. It was for such a moment, of infatuation made perfect, that destiny was waiting.

Kitty had no very luminous idea of its intentions. But she bore in her blood forebodings, older and obscurer than the flashes of the brain; and her heart had swift immortal instincts, forerunners of the mortal hours. The powers of pain, infallibly wise, implacably just, would choose their moment well, striking at her through the hands of the children she had never borne.

If Robert found out what she was before he married her, he would have to give her up because of them. She knew better than he did the hold she had over him. She had tried to keep him in ignorance of her power, so great was her terror of what it might do to him, and to her through him. Yet, with all her sad science, she remained uncertain of his ultimate behaviour. That was the charm and the danger of him. For fear of some undiscovered, uncalculated quality in him she had held herself back; she had been careful how she touched him, how she looked at him, lest her hands or her eyes should betray her; lest in his heart he should call her by her name, and fling her from him because of them. Whereas, but for them, she judged that whatever she was he would not give her up. She was not quite sure (you couldn't say what a man like Robert would or wouldn't do), but she felt that if she could have had him to herself, if there had been only he and she, facing the world, then, for sheer chivalry, he simply couldn't have left her. Even now, once he was married to her it would be all right; he couldn't give her up or leave her; the worst he could do would be to separate her from them.

There was really no reason then why she should be frightened. He was going to marry her very soon. She knew that, by her science, though he had not said so. She would be all right. She would be very careful. It wasn't as if she didn't want to be nice and to do all the proper things.

And so Kitty cast off care.

Only, as she waited in the room prepared for the children, she looked at herself in the glass, once, to make sure that there was nothing in her face that could betray her. No; Nature had spared her as yet and her youth was good to her. Her face looked back at her, triumphantly reticent, innocent of memory, holding her charm, a secret beyond the secrets of corruption, as her perfect body held the mystery and the prophecy of her power. Besides, her face was different now from what it had been. Wilfrid had intimated to her that it was different. It was the face that Robert loved; it had the look that told him that she loved him, a look it never wore for any other man. Even now as she thought of him it lightened and grew rosy. She saw it herself and wondered and took hope. "That's how I look when I'm happy, is it? I'm always happy when I'm with him, so," she reasoned, "he will always see me like that; and it will be all right."

Anyhow, there would be no unhappiness about his pretty lady when he came back with them.

She smiled softly as she went about the room, putting the touches of perfection to the festival. There were roses everywhere; on the table, on the mantelpiece; the room was sweet with the smell of them; there was a rose on each child's plate. The tremulous movements of her hands betrayed the immensity and the desperation of her passion to please. The very waiter was touched by her, and smiled secretly in sympathy as he saw her laying her pretty lures. When he had gone she arranged the table all over again and did it better. Then she stood looking at it, hovering round it, thinking. She would sit here, and the children there, Janet between her and Robert, Barbara between her and Jane.

"Poor little things," she said, "poor little things." She yearned to them even in her fear of them, and when she thought of them sitting there her lips moved in unspoken, pitiful endearments.

The light from the south-west streamed into the little room and made it golden. Everything in it shimmered and shone. The window, flung wide open to the veranda, framed the green lawn and the shining, shimmering sea. A wind, small and soft, stirred the thin curtains to and fro, fanning the warm air. The sunlight and heat oppressed her. She shut her eyes and put her hands over them to cool them with darkness. It was a trick she had when she was troubled.

She sat by the window and waited in the strange, throbbing darkness of hot eyes closed in daylight, a darkness smitten by the sun and shot with a fiery fume.

They were coming now. She heard feet on the gravel outside, round the corner; she heard Robert's voice and Janey's; and then little shuffling footsteps at the door, and two voices shrill and sweet.

Robert came in first and the children with him. They stood all three on the threshold, looking at her. Robert was smiling, but the little girls (they were very little) were grave. His eyes drew her and she came toward them as she was used to come to the things of her desire, swift and shy, with a trailing, troubling movement; the way that he had seen her come, swayed by the rhythm of impulse.

The children stood stock still as she stooped to them. Her fear of them made her supremely gentle. Little Barbara put up her round rose face with its soft mouth thrust forward in a premature kiss. Janet gave her a tiny hand and gazed at her with brooding, irresponsive eyes. Her little mouth never moved as Kitty's mouth touched it.

But little Barbara held out her spade and bucket for Kitty to see. "Look, look," said little Barbara, "Daddy gave them me to build castles in the sand." Barbara spoke so fast that she panted, and laughed in a divine superfluity of joy.

Robert stood looking down from his tremendous height at Barbara, tenderly as one who contemplates a thing at once heartrending and absurd. Then his eyes turned to Kitty, smiling quietly as if they said, "Didn't I tell you to wait until you'd seen them?" Kitty's heart contracted with a sharp, abominable pang.

Then Janey took the little girls to the room upstairs where their nurse was. Barbara looked back at Kitty as she went, but Kitty's eyes followed Janet.

"Robert," she said, "will she always look at me like that? Shall I never know what she is thinking?"

"None of us know what Janet's thinking."

He paused.

"I told you we had to be very careful of her."

"Is she delicate?"

"No. Physically, she's far stronger than Barbara. She's what you call morally delicate."

She flushed. "What do you mean, Robert?"

"Well—not able to bear things. For instance, we'd a small child staying with us once. It turned out that she wasn't a nice child at all. We didn't know it, though. But Janet had a perfect horror of her. It's as if she had a sort of intuition. She was so unhappy about it that we had to send the child away."

His forehead was drawn into a frown of worry and perplexity.

"I don't see how she's to grow up. It makes me feel so awfully responsible. The world isn't an entirely pretty place, you know, and it seems such a cruel shame to bring a child like that into it. Doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Somehow I think you'll understand her, Kitty."

"Yes, Robert, I understand."

She came to him. She laid her hand on the sleeve of his coat, and stood by him. Her eyes were shining through some dew that was not tears.

"What is it, Kitty?"

"Will you marry me soon?" she said. "Very soon?" she whispered. "I—I can't wait." She hid her face against his arm.

He thought it was the motherhood in her that was moved, that pleaded, impatient for its hour.

"Why should we wait? Do you suppose I want to?"

"Hush!" she said. "They're coming."

They came a little solemnly, as beseemed a festival. Janet, in her long white pinafore, looked more than ever the spiritual thing she was. Her long brown hair hung down her cheeks, straight and smooth as a parted veil, sharpening her small face, that flickered as a flame flickers in troubled air. Beside her little Barbara bloomed and glowed, with cheeks full-blown, and cropped head flowering into curls that stood on end in brown tufts, and tawny feathers, and little crests of gold. They took their places, pensively, at the table.

They had beautiful manners, Robert's children; little exquisite, gentle ways of approaching and of handling things. They held themselves very erect, with a secure, diminutive distinction. Kitty's heart sank deeper as she looked at them. Even Barbara, who was so very young, carried her small perfections intact through all the spontaneities of her behaviour.

All through tea-time little Barbara, pursued by her dream, talked incessantly of castles in the sand. And when she was tired of talking she began to sing.

"Darling," said Jane, "we don't sing at tea-time."

"I do," said little Barbara, and laughed.

Jane laughed too, hysterically.

Then the spirit of little Barbara entered into Jane, and made her ungovernably gay. It passed into Kitty, and ran riot in her blood and nerves. Whenever Barbara laughed Kitty laughed, and when Kitty laughed Robert laughed too. Even Janet gave a little shriek now and then. The children thought it was all because they had had strawberries and cream for tea, and were going down to the sea to build castles in the sand.

All afternoon, till dinner-time, Kitty laboured on the sands, building castles as if she had never done anything else in her life. The Hankins watched her from their seat on the rocks in the angle of the Cliff.

"We were mistaken. She must be all right. How pretty she is, too, poor thing," said Mrs. Hankin to her husband.

"How pretty she is, how absolutely lovable and good," said Robert to himself as he watched her, while Barbara, a tired little labourer, lay stretched in her lap. She was sitting on a rock under the Cliff, with the great brow of it for a canopy. Her eyes were lowered, and hidden by their deep lids. She was smiling at the child who leaned back in her arms, crushing a soft cheek against her breast.

He threw himself down beside her. He had just finished a prodigious fortress, with earthworks and trenches extending to the sea.

"Kitty, Kitty," he said, "you're only a child yourself, like Janey. She's perfectly happy building castles in the sand—so are you. You're a perfect baby."

"We're all babies, Robert, building castles in the sand. And you're the biggest baby of the lot."

"I don't care. I've built the biggest castle."

"Look at Janet," said Kitty. "She'll be grown up before any of us."

The child sat on a rock with Jane. But, from the distance that she kept, she looked at her father and Kitty from time to time. All afternoon Janet had clung to Jane. But when bed-time came Robert took her aside and whispered something to her. Going home she walked by Kitty, and put her hand in hers.

"Daddy said I'm to be very kind to you."

"Did he? That's very kind of daddy."

"Daddy's always kind to people. Especially when they've not been very happy. Really and truly I'm going to be kind. But you won't mind if I don't love you very soon, will you?"

"Of course I won't. Only don't leave it too late, darling."

"Well, I don't know," said Janet thoughtfully; "we've lots of time."

"Have we?"

"Heaps and heaps. You see, I love Auntie Janey, and it might hurt her feelings."

"I see."

"But I'm going to give you something," said Janet presently.

"I don't want you to give me anything that belongs to Auntie Janey."

"No," said Janet; "I shall give you something of my own."

"Oh! And you can't tell me what it's going to be?"

"I must think about it." The little girl became lost in thought. "Barbara likes kissing people. I don't."

"So I see. It won't be kisses, then?"

"No; it won't be kisses. It will," she reiterated, "be something of my own."

She dropped Kitty's hand.

"You won't mind if I go to Auntie Janey now?"

Kitty told Janey about it afterward, as they sat alone in the lounge before dinner.

"You mustn't mind, Kitty dear," said Jane. "It only means that she's a faithful little soul. She'll be just as faithful to you some day."

"Some day."

"Don't sigh like that, Kitty."

"She's like Robert, isn't she?"

"Very like Robert."

She brooded.

"Janey," she said, "let me have him to myself this evening."

All evening she had him to herself, out on the Cliff, in the place where nobody came but they.

"Well," he said, "what do you think of them?"

"I think they're adorable."

"Funny little beggars, aren't they? How did you get on with Janet?"

She told him.

"That's Janet's little way. To give you something of her own." He smiled in tender satisfaction, repeating the child's phrase.

"It's all right, Kitty. She's only holding herself in. You're in for a big thing."

She surveyed it.

"I know, Robert. I know."

"You're tired? Have the children been too much for you?"

She shook her head.

"You're not to make yourself a slave to them, you know."

She looked at him.

"Was I all right, Robert?"

"You were perfect."

"You said I was only a child myself."

"So you are. That's why I like you."

She shook her head again.

"It's all very well," she said, "but that isn't what you want, dear—another child."

"How do you know what I want?"

"You want somebody much nicer than I am."

He was silent, looking at her as he had looked at Barbara, enjoying her absurdity, letting her play, like the child she was, with her preposterous idea.

"Oh, Robert, you do really think I'm nice?" She came nearer to him, crying out like a child in pain. He put his arm round her, and comforted her as best he could.

"You child, do you suppose I'd marry you if I didn't think you nice?"

"You might. You mightn't care."

"As it happens, I do care, very much. Anyhow, I wouldn't ask you to be a mother to my children if I didn't think you nice. That's the test."

"Yes, Robert," she repeated, "that's the test."

They rose and went back to the hotel. From the lawn they could see the open window of the children's room. They looked up.

"Would you like to see them, Kitty?"

"Yes."

He took her up to them. They were asleep. Little Barbara lay curled up in the big bed, right in the middle of it where her dreams had tossed her. Janet, in the cot beside her, lay very straight and still.

Robert signed to Kitty to come near, and they stood together and looked first at the children and then into each other's faces. Kitty was very quiet.

"Do you like them?" he whispered.

Her lips quivered, but she made no sign.

He stooped over each bed, smoothing the long hair from Janet's forehead, folding back the blanket that weighed on Barbara's little body. When he turned, Kitty had gone. She had slipped into her own room.

She waited till she heard Robert go away. The children were alone in there. The nurse, she knew, was in Jane's room across the passage. Jane was probably telling her that her master was to be married very soon.

She looked out. The door of Jane's room was shut; so was the door of the children's room through which Robert had gone out. The other, the door of communication, she had left ajar. She went softly back through it and stood again by the children's beds. Janet was still sound asleep. Her fine limbs were still stretched straight and quiet under the blanket. Her hair was as Robert's hand had left it.

Kitty was afraid of disturbing Janet's sleep. She was afraid of Janet.

She stooped over little Barbara, and turned back the bedclothes from the bed. She laid herself down, half her length, upon it by Barbara's side, and folded her in arms that scarcely touched her at first, so light they lay on her. Then some perverse and passionate impulse seized her to wake the child. She did it gently, tenderly, holding back her passion, troubling the depths of sleep with fine, feather-like touches, with kisses soft as sleep.

The child stirred under the caressing arms. She lay in her divine beauty, half asleep, half awake, opening her eyes, and shutting them on the secret of her dream. Then Kitty's troubling hand turned her from her flight down the ways of sleep. She lay on her back, her eyes glimmered in the lifting of their lids; they opened under Kitty's eyes that watched them, luminous, large and clear. Her mouth curled under Kitty's mouth, in drowsy kisses plucked from the annihilated dream. She drew up her rosy knees and held out her arms to Kitty's arms and smiled, half awake and half asleep.

Kitty rose, lifting the child with her from the bed. She held her close, pressing the tender body close to her own body with quivering hands, stroking the adorable little face with her own face, closing her eyes under the touch of it as she closed them when Robert's face touched hers. She was aware that she had brought some passionate, earthly quality of her love for Robert into her love for Robert's child.

She said to herself, "I'm terrible; there's something wrong with me. This isn't the way to love a child."

She laid the little thing down again, freed her neck from the drowsy, detaining arms, and covered the small body up out of her sight. Barbara, thus abandoned, cried, and the cry cut through her heart.

She went into her own room, and threw herself on her bed and writhed there, torn by many pangs. The pang of the heart and the pang of the half-born spirit, struggling with the body that held it back from birth; and through it all the pang of the motherhood she had thwarted and disowned. Out of the very soil of corruption it pierced, sharp and pure, infinitely painful. It was almost indiscernible from the fierce exultation of her heart that had found fulfilment, and from the passion of her body that yet waited for its own.