Conscious to his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve’s nod with less than his usual ease. Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel: apparently she did not admire Lawrence’s ladies: she spoke to her cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion and curly dark hair, and they laughed together. What ensued between them was not difficult to follow. She made him a request, he rolled plaintive eyeballs at her, the lady carried her point, the gentleman left the box. Then one saw it coming she leaned forward till the diamonds in her plenitude of fair hair sparkled like a crown of flame, and beckoned Lawrence to join her.

He cursed her impertinence. Apart from leaving Isabel, he did not want to talk to Mrs. Cleve: he had forgotten her existence, and it was a shock to him to meet her again. Good heavens, had he ever admired her? That white blanc-mange of a woman in her ruby-red French gown, cut open lower than one of Yvonne’s without the saying of Yvonne’s wiry slimness? Remembering the summerhouse at Bingley Lawrence blushed with shame, not for his morals but for his taste: he was thankful to have gone no further and wondered why he had gone so far. He had not yet realized that during three months among women of a different stamp his taste had imperceptibly modified itself from day to day.

But she had been his hostess. Impossible to refuse: and with a vexed word of apology to Laura he went out. “Dear me, what an opulent lady!” said Laura with lifted eyebrows. “Who’s your friend, Lulu?”

Lucian drily named her. “Queen’s Gate, and Sundays at the Metropole. They’re shipping people, which is where the diamond ta-ra-ras come from. Oh yes, there’s a husband, quite a nice fellow, crocked in the Flying Corps. No, I don’t know who the chap is she’s got with her. Some dusky brother. Not Cleve.” He fell silent as Lawrence appeared in the opposite box.

It was an odd scene to watch in dumbshow. Mrs. Cleve shook hands, and Lawrence was held for more than the conventional moment. He remained standing till she pointed to her cavalier’s empty chair: then dropped into it, but sat forward leaning his aim along the balcony, while she, drawn back behind her curtain, was almost drowned in shadow except for an occasional flash of diamonds, or an opaque gleam of white and dimpled neck. An interlude entirely decorous, and yet, so crude was the force of Philippa’s personality, one would have had to be very young, or very innocent, to overlook her drift.

“Well, my darling,” said Laura, “and what do you think of Madeleine Wild?” She did not wish Isabel to watch Mrs. Cleve. “Is she as nice as your Salisbury Rosalind?”

“Angelical!” said Isabel. “And isn’t it luck for me, Royalty coming tonight? I’ve never seen any one Royal before. It’s one of those evenings when nothing goes wrong.”

Was not Isabel a trifle too guileless for this wicked world? She prattled on, Selincourt and Laura lending an indulgent ear, Selincourt, like any other man of his type, touched by her innocence, Laura faintly irritated: and meanwhile Isabel through her black lashes watched, not the Duchess of Cumberland’s rubies, but those two in the opposite box. Between it and her stretched a beautiful woodland drop-scene, the glitter of the stalls, and the murmur of violins humming through the rising flames of the Feuerzauber . . . presently the Fire Charm eddied away and the lights went down, yet still Lawrence sat on though the interval was over. Across the semi-dark of a “Courtyard by Moonlight” it was hard to distinguish anything but the silhouette of his hand and arm, and Mrs. Cleve’s fair hair and immense jewelled fan. What were they saying to each other in this public isolation where anything might be said so long as decorum was preserved?

Selincourt gave a little laugh as the curtain rose. “An old flame,” he whispered to Laura, not dreaming that Isabel would understand even if she heard.

“What’s an old flame?” asked Isabel, examining him with her brilliant eyes.

“Feuerzauber,” said Selincourt readily. “It means fire spell. It’s often played between the acts.”

“Lucian, Lucian!” said his sister laughing.

“I don’t know much about music,” said Isabel. “Was it well played?”

“Ah! I know a lot about music,” said Selincourt, looking at her very kindly. “No, it was rottenly played. But some fellers can’t tell a good tune from a bad one.”

Lawrence did not return till the middle of the third act, and offered no apology. He looked fierce and jaded and his eyes were strained. “Past eleven,” he said, hurrying Laura into her coat while the orchestra played through the National Anthem, for which Selincourt stood stiffly to attention. “No time for supper, our train goes at 11:59, I hate first nights, the waits between the acts are so infernally long.” Laura’s eyebrows, faintly arched, hinted at derision. “Oh, it dragged,” said Lawrence impatiently. “Let’s get out of this.”

It was a clear autumn night: the air was mild, and stars were burning overhead almost as brightly as the lamps in Shaftesbury Avenue. What a chase of lamps, high and low, like fireflies in a wood: green as grass, red as blood, or yellow as a naked flame! What a sombre city, and what a fleeting crowd! Isabel had never seen midnight London before. Coming out into the hurrying street roofed with stars, she was seized by an impression of a solitude lonelier than any desert, and dark, like the terror of an eerie sunset or a dry storm on the moor.

“These taxis are waiting for us,” Lawrence had come up behind her and his hand was on her arm. “Will you bring your sister, Selincourt? Miss Isabel, will you come with me?”

“Oh but !” said Laura, startled. She was responsible to Val for Isabel, and she was not sure that either Val or Isabel would welcome this arrangement.

“Thank you,” said Isabel, obediently getting into the second cab.

“Better come, dear,” said Selincourt with a shrug, and Laura yielded, for it would have been tiresome to make Isabel get out again, and after all what signified a twenty minutes’ run? Yet after the Cleve incident she did not quite like it. Nor did Selincourt; Hyde’s overbearing manner set his teeth on edge; but the gentle Lucian would sooner have faced a loaded rifle than a dispute. He agreed with Laura, however, that her fair Arcadian was a trifle too innocent for her years.

Alone with Isabel, Lawrence took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick fair hair, so thick that it might have been grey, while the deep lines round his mouth began to soften as though fatigue and irritation were being wiped away. “Thank heaven that’s over.”

“I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” said Isabel smiling. “Thank you, Captain Hyde, for giving me such a delightful treat! If I weren’t sleepy I should like to begin again.”

“Oh, don’t get sleepy yet,” said Lawrence. He pulled up the fur collar of her coat and buttoned it under her chin. “I can’t have you catching cold, or what will Val say? You aren’t used to driving about in evening dress and we’ve a long run before us. And how I have been longing for it all the evening, haven’t you? I didn’t know how to sit through that confounded play. Yes, you can take in Selincourt and Laura but you can’t take me in. I know you must have hated it as much as I did. But it’s all right now.” Sitting sideways with one knee crossed over the other, his face turned towards Isabel, without warning he put his arm round her waist. He had determined not to ask her to marry him till he was sure of her answer, but he was sure of it now, intuitively sure of it . . . the truth being that under his impassive manner impulse was driving him along like a leaf in the wind. “I love you, Isabel, and you love me. Don’t deny it.”

“Don’t do that,” said Isabel: “don’t hold me.”

“Why not? no one can see us.”

“Take your arm away. I won’t have you hold me. No, Captain Hyde, I will not. I am not Mrs. Cleve.”

“Isabel!” said Lawrence, turning grey under his bronze.

“O! I oughtn’t to have said that,” Isabel murmured. She hid her face in her hands. “Oh Val I wish Val were here!”

“My darling,” they were among the dark streets now that border the river, and he leant forward making no effort to conceal his tenderness, “what is there you can’t say to me or I to you? You’re so strange, my Isabel, a child one minute and a woman the next, I never know where to have you, but I love the woman more than the child, and there’s nothing on earth you need be ashamed to ask me. Naturally you want to be sure. . . . But there was nothing in it except that I hated leaving you, there never has been; I can’t discuss it, but there’s no tie, no do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then, dearest darling of the world, what are you crying for?”

“I’m not crying.” She tried to face him, but he was too old for her, and mingling in his love she discerned indulgence, the seasoned judgment and the fixed view. Struggling in imperfect apprehensions of life, she was not yet master of her forces they came near to mastering her. In his eyes it was natural for her to be jealous. But she was not jealous. That passion can hardly coexist with such sincere and cool contempt as she had felt for Mrs. Cleve. What had pierced her heart and killed her childhood in her was terror lest Lawrence should turn out to have lowered himself to the same level. She knew now that she loved him, and too much to care whether he was Saxon or Jew or rich or poor, but he must he must be what in her child’s vocabulary she called “good,” or if not that he must at least see good and bad with clear eyes: sins one can pardon, but the idea of any essential inferiority of taste was torture to her. And meanwhile Lawrence wide of the mark began to coax her. . “My own,” his arm stole inside her coat again, “there’s nothing to get so red about! Come, you do like me confess now you like me better than Val?”

“No, no,” Isabel murmured, and slowly, though she had not strength to free herself, she turned her head away. “If you kiss me now I never shall forgive you.”

“I won’t, but why are you so shy? My Isabel, what is there to be afraid of?”

“You,” Isabel sighed out. He was gratified, and betrayed it. “No, Lawrence, you misunderstand. I am not not shy of you . . .” Under his mocking eyes she gave it up and tried again. “Well, I am, but if that were all I shouldn’t refuse . . . I should like you to be happy. Oh! yes, I love you, and I’d so far rather not fight, I’d rather ” she waited a moment like a swimmer on the sand’s edge, but his deep need of her carried her away and with a little sigh she flung herself into the open sea “let you kiss me, because I don’t want anything so much as to make you happy, and I believe you would be, and besides I I should like it myself. But I must know more. I must know the truth. She Mrs. Cleve

“I’ve already given you my word: do you think I would lie to you?”

“No, I don’t; they say men do, but I’m sure you wouldn’t. I don’t believe you ever would deceive me. But there have been other women, haven’t there, since your wife left you?” Lawrence assented briefly. At that moment he would have liked to see Mrs. Cleve hanged and drawn and quartered. “Other women who were who with whom

“Must you distress yourself like this? Wouldn’t it do if I promised to lay my record before Val, and let him be judge?”

“Would you do that?”

“If you wish it.”

“Wouldn’t you hate it?”

Lawrence smiled.

“And I should hate it for you,”, said Isabel. “No: no one can judge you for me and no one shall try. I know you better than Val ever would. No, if you’re to be humiliated it shall be before me and me only.” She brought the colour into his face. “There have been others, Lawrence?”

“My dear, I’ve lived the life of other men.”

“Do all men live so?”

“Pretty well all.”

“Does Val?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “His facilities are limited!”

“He did once might again?”

“Couldn’t we confine the issue to ourselves?”

“Are you afraid of my misjudging Val? I never should: my dearest darling Val is a fixed standard for me, and nothing could alter the way I think of him.”

“Don’t challenge luck,” Lawrence muttered.

“I’m not, it’s true. I’m surer of Val than I am of myself, or you, or the sun’s rising tomorrow. All I want is to cheek you by him.”

“Val is genuinely religious and a bit of an ascetic. I have no doubt that his life is now and will continue to be spotless. But that it was always so is most unlikely. Army subalterns during the war were given no end of a good time. And quite right too, it was the least that could be done for us: and the most, in nine cases out of ten: personally I had no use for munition workers in mud-coloured overalls, but I still remember with gratitude the nymphs who decorated my week end leaves.”

Isabel shivered: the hand that he was holding had grown icy cold.

“There, you see!” said Hyde with his saddened cynicism. “You will have it all out but you can’t stand it when it comes. You had better have left it to Val: not but what I’d rather talk to you, but I hate to distress you, and you’re not old enough yet, my darling, to see these trivial things yes, trivial to nine-tenths of the world: it’s only the clergy, and unmarried women, and a small number of hyper-sensitives like Val, who attach an importance to them that they don’t deserve. But you’re too young to see them in perspective. Try to do it for my sake. Try to see me as I am.”

“Well, show me then.”

But what he showed her was not himself but the aspect of himself that he wished her to see a very different matter. “I’m too old for you. I’m the son of a Jew, and a Houndsditch Jew at that. But I’m rich what’s called rich in my set and when I marry I shan’t keep my wife dependent on me. Ah! don’t misunderstand me yours is a rich manysided nature, and you’re too intelligent to underrate the value of money. It means a wide life and lots of interests, books, pictures, music, travel, mixing with the men and women best worth knowing. You’re ambitious, my dear, and as my wife you can build yourself up any social position you like. Farringay’s not as big as Wharton, but on my soul it’s more perfect in its way. I’ve never seen such panelling in my life, and the gardens are admittedly the most beautiful in Dorsetshire. There are Sèvres services more precious than gold plate, and if you come to that there’s gold plate into the bargain. Can’t I see you there as chatelaine, entertaining the county! You’ll wear the sapphires my mother wore; the old man couldn’t have been more happily inspired, they’re the very colour of your eyes. And there’ll be no price to pay, for since I’m a Jew and a cosmopolitan, and not a country squire, you’ll keep your personal freedom inviolate. You’ll give what you will, when you will, as you will. Any other terms are to my mind unthinkable a brutalizing of what ought to be the most delicate of things. Heavens, how I hate a middleclass English marriage! Ah! but I’m not so accommodating as I sound, for you won’t be a grudging giver; you’re not an ascetic like Val, there’s passion in you though you’ve been trained to repress it, you’ll soon learn what love means as we understand it in the sunny countries. . . . Isabel, my Isabel, when we get away from these grey English skies you won’t refuse to let me kiss you. . .”

Isabel had ceased to listen. Without her own will a scene had sprung up before her eyes: an imaginary scene, like one of those romantic adventures that she had invented a thousand times before but this was not romantic nor was she precisely the heroine. A foreign hotel with long corridors and many rooms: a door thoughtlessly left ajar: and through it a glimpse of Lawrence her husband holding another woman in his arms. It was lifelike, she could have counted the buds embroidered on the girl’s blouse, their rose-pink reflected in the hot flush on Hyde’s cheek and the glow in his eyes as he stooped over her. And then the imaginary Isabel with a pain at her heart like the stab of a knife, and a smile of inexpressible self-contempt on her lips, noiselessly closed the door so that no one else might see what she had seen, and left him. . . . It would all happen one day, if not that way, some other way; and he would come to her by and by without explanation she was convinced that he would not lie to her smiling, the hot glow still on his face, a subdued air of well-being diffused over him from head to foot and then? The vision faded; her clairvoyance, which had already carried her far beyond her experience, broke down in sheer anguish. But reason took it up and told her that she would speak to him, and that he would apologize and she would forgive him and that it would all happen again the next time temptation met him in a weak hour.

Faithful? it was not in him to be faithful: with so much that was generous and gallant, there was this vice of taste in him which had offended her that first morning on the moor and again at night in Laura’s garden, and which now led him to make love to her when she was under his protection and while the scent of Mrs. Cleve’s flowers still clung to his coat. And what love! if he had simply spoken to her out of his need of her, one would not have known how to resist, but it was he who was to be the giver, and what he offered was the measure of what he desired a lesson in passion and a liberal allowance. . . .

“O no, no, no, I can’t!” Isabel cried out, turning from him. “Yes, I love you, but I don’t trust you, and I won’t marry you. I’m too much afraid.”

“Afraid of me?”

“Afraid of the pain.”

“What pain?”

“And the wickedness of it.” Lawrence, frozen with astonishment he had foreseen resistance, but not of this quality let fall her hand. “Yes, we’ll part now. We can part now. I love you, but not too much to get over it in a year or so; and you? you’ll forget sooner, because I’m not worth remembering.”

“Forget you?”

“Oh! yes, it’s not as if you really cared for me; you wouldn’t talk to me of money if you did. But I suppose you’ve known so many. . . . Val warned me long ago that you had not a good name with women.”

“Val said that? Val!”

“And now you’re angry with Val; I repeat what I oughtn’t to repeat, and make mischief. Lawrence, this isn’t Val’s doing; it isn’t even Mrs. Cleve’s: it’s my own cowardice. I daren’t marry you.”

“But why not?”

“You’re not trying to be good.”

“The language of the nursery defeats me, Isabel.”

She flushed. “That means I’ve hurt you.”

“Naturally.”

“I can’t help it.” That was truer than he realized, for she could hardly help crying. She could not soften her refusal, because she was so shaken and exhausted by the strain of it that she dared not venture on more than one sentence at a time.

“I’m very sorry.”

“But as my wife you could be as ‘good’ as you liked?”

“You would not leave me strength for it.”

“I should corrupt you?”

“Yes, I think you would deliberately tempt me. . . . I think you have tonight.”

“Do you care for no one but yourself?” he flung at her in his vertigo of humiliation and anger.

“No: I care for God.”

“For God!” Lawrence repeated stupidly: “what has that to do with your marrying me?”

He heard his own bêtise as it left his lips, and felt the immeasurable depth of it, but he had not time to retract before every personal consideration was wiped from his mind by a cry from Isabel in a very different accent “Lawrence! oh! look at the time!”

She pointed to the dial of an illuminated clock, hanging high in the soft September night. It was eight minutes to twelve. “What time did you say our train went?”

They were in Whitehall. Lawrence caught up the speaking tube. “Waterloo main entrance and drive like the devil, please, we’re late.”

“I thought we had plenty of time?”

“So we had: so much so that I told the man to drive round and round for a bit.”

“And have we still time?”

“No.”

“We shan’t lose the train?”

“Unless it’s delayed in starting, which isn’t likely.”

“Will the others go on and leave us?”

“Hardly!”

“You don’t mean that Laura won’t get home till tomorrow? Oh!”

“No. But don’t look so frightened, no one will blame you the responsibility is mine entirely.”

Isabel’s lip curled. It was for Laura that she felt afraid and not for herself, and surely he might have guessed as much as that! “Did you do it on purpose?”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon. That was stupid of me.”

“Very,” said Lawrence with his keen sarcastic smile.

At Waterloo he sprang out, tossed a sovereign to the driver, and made Isabel catch up her skirts and run like a deer. But before they reached the platform it was after twelve and the rails beyond were empty. Selincourt and Laura were waiting by the barrier, Selincourt red with impatience, Laura very pale.

“Are you aware you’ve lost the last train down?” said the elder man with ill-concealed anger, as Lawrence, shortening his step, strolled up in apparent tranquillity with Isabel on his arm. “What on earth has become of you? We’ve been waiting here for half an hour!”

“We were held up in the traffic,” said Lawrence deliberately. Isabel turned scarlet. The truth would have been insupportable, but so was the lie. “Although it was no fault of mine, Laura, I’m more sorry than I can say. Will you let me telephone for my own car and motor you down? I could get you to Chilmark in the small hours long before the first morning train.”

Laura hesitated: but Selincourt’s brow was dark. The streets that night had not been unusually crowded, ample time had been allowed to cover any ordinary delay, and Isabel was cruelly confused. In his simple code Hyde had committed at least one if not two unpardonable sins he had neglected one of the ladies in his care if he had not affronted the other.

“That wouldn’t do at all,” he said with decision. “You’ve been either careless or unlucky once, Lawrence. It might happen again.”

It was a direct challenge, and cost him an effort, but it was not resented. “It would not. From my soul I regret this contretemps, Lucian. Do you settle what’s to be done: you’re Laura’s brother, I put myself unreservedly in your hands.”

“My dear fellow!” the gentle Lucian was instantly disarmed. “After all we needn’t make a mountain out of a molehill they’ll know we’re all right, four of us together!”

“At all events it can’t be helped,” said Mrs. Clowes, smiling at Lawrence with her kind trustful eyes, “so don’t distress yourself. My sweet Isabel too, so tired!” she took Isabel’s cold hand. “Never mind, Val won’t let your father worry, and we shall be home by ten or eleven in the morning. It is only to go to an hotel for a few hours. Come, dear Lawrence, don’t look so subdued! It wasn’t your fault, so you mustn’t trouble even if

“Even if what?”

“Even if Bernard locks the door in my face,” she finished laughing. “He’ll be fearfully cross! but I dare say Val will go down and smooth his ruffled plumage.”