It was a week after the garden party.  A persistent rain was drenching the trees in the garden, and turning the gravel path into miniature torrents.  The atmosphere in the low, panelled rooms was damp and chilly.  Katrine, in a flannel shirt of her favourite rich blue, was busy with account books at the centre table.  Grizel, in a white gown, and a red nose, was miserably rubbing her hands together, and drumming her small feet on the floor.

“Katrine!”

“Yes.”

“I’m cold.”

Katrine glanced over the rim of the grocer’s book.

“Naturally!  Who wouldn’t be?  A muslin gown, this morning!  If you’d an ounce of sense, you’d go upstairs and change it at once.”

Grizel’s face fell, like that of a small disappointed child.  She shivered, and her nose looked redder than ever.

“I was hinting,” she sighed softly, “for a fire.”

“I know that, my dear, perfectly well, but you are not going to get it.”

“If you were a kind, polite hostess-”

“No, I shouldn’t, because in an hour’s time the rain will stop, and the room would be close and stuffy all day.  Besides, we are going out.  If you will be quiet for ten minutes, I shall have finished these books, and we’ll go out shopping.  So you’ll have to change.”

Grizel stared, a glimmer of interest struggling with dismay.

“What are you going to buy?”

“Vegetables for dinner, and bacon, and pay the books.”

“You expect me to walk out in a torrent for that!  I won’t go.  I won’t change my frock either.  I’ll go to bed.”

There was not the least note of offence in Grizel’s voice.  It preserved its deep note of good-nature, but it sounded obstinate, and her little face was fierce in its militance.  Katrine, unabashed, went on checking off figures.

“Nonsense.  It will do you good.  Rain is good for the complexion.  Your face looks tartan, and your nose is red.”

“I like it red,” said Grizel serenely.  She sat another moment nursing her cold hands.  “And I won’t buy cabbages either,” she added defiantly.  “It’s no use trying to brace me, for I won’t be braced.  I’ll go upstairs, and complain to Martin.”

That threat roused Katrine to whole-hearted attention.  She shut the little red book-the butcher’s book, this time, swept it and its companions into a neat pile, and sprang to her feet.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Nobody interrupts Martin when he is at work.  We are forbidden even to knock at the door for anything short of a fire or an earthquake.  It might spoil his work for the whole morning.”

Grizel stared at her thoughtfully.

“That reminds me,” she soliloquised slowly.  “I promised to help him, and it’s four whole days, and I’ve never been near!  It’s my duty to go at once, and I’ll tell him my brain can’t work unless I’m warm.  We’ll light a fire and roast, while you swim home with the cabbage.  Why on earth didn’t I think of that before?”

She smiled into her hostess’s face with an easy assurance which brought a spark into the dark blue eyes.  Katrine was honestly trying not to be angry.  Before now she had had experience of Grizel in a perverse mood, and knew that it was not by force that one could move her from her purpose.  She adopted an air of resignation, and approached the bell.

“Very well, then, you shall have your fire, and you can read comfortably beside it, or write letters, while I’m away.  And I’ll tell Mary to bring you a cup of chocolate.  You are a spoiled baby, Grizel; when you’ve taken it into your head to do a thing, one might as well give in first as last.”

“Yes,” agreed Grizel calmly.  “I’m going to Martin.”

She rose in her turn and strolled towards the door, while Katrine stood helpless, her hand on the bell.

“Grizel!”

“Yes.”

“Don’t go!”

There was a look on her face, a tone in her voice, which arrested Grizel’s attention.  Half-way across the room she paused, and studied her hostess with those eyes which looked so lazy, but which saw so uncommonly well.  There was dread as well as annoyance on Katrine’s face.

“What will happen if I do?  What is it you are afraid of?”

“He’ll be furious.  Terribly angry.”  But in her heart Katrine knew that this was not her fear.  Her fear was lest Martin should not be angry.

Grizel considered, a slow smile curving her lips.

“But that,” she said, “would be amusing.  Much more amusing than buying cabbages.  I’d like to see Martin angry!”

She turned and continued her way.  From her position by the bell Katrine could watch her progress up the staircase, could note the grace of the slim white form.  “Her nose is red!” chanted the inner voice.  “Her nose is red!” Amongst a medley of disagreeable reflections the thought appeared to stand out in solitary comfort.  It was hardly more than a week since Grizel had arrived, eight days to be exact, yet to Katrine standing alone in the dark old room, it appeared that the whole structure of life had in that time undergone a radical change.  It was not a change which could be registered in facts; the days had been spent in ordinary happenings, tea parties in neighbouring gardens, drives through the country lanes, small dinner parties, a day on the river.  There was no single incident on which she could lay a finger and declare that here or there stood the dividing mark between past and present.  The change was in the air; impalpable yet real; Katrine’s sensitive nature felt it in every fibre, inhaled it with every breath.  Behind the peaceful, smiling exterior she divined a smouldering passion.  The atmosphere was flecked with fire; it flamed beneath the most trivial words, the most trivial deeds.  From an ice-bound solitude she looked on, understanding with a keenness of vision, as new as it was bitter.  During the last days her mind had been incessantly occupied reviewing the past, searching it in the light of the present.  Juliet, Grizel, and herself had been schoolmates at a French boarding-school.  Grizel had accompanied her on a short visit to the married couple in the autumn after their marriage.  That was the first time that Martin had seen her, and even in the midst of his bridegroom’s joy, he had been attracted, impressed.  Then came two long, black years, at the end of which, taking her courage in both hands, she had enquired if Martin would object if Grizel came down for a few days.  The mysterious storehouse of the brain had registered the moment, so that she could still see her brother’s face before her, as he lifted it from his book- the young, drawn face, with the haggard eyes.  Something approaching a light of interest dawned in the wan depths.

“Grizel Dundas?” he queried slowly; and after a pause.  “Certainly!  Why not?  I’d like to see her!”

So Grizel had come.  Memory again registered the fact that it was in response to one of her sallies that Martin had laughed for the first time:  an honest, wholesome laugh.  She had come again the next year, and had been warmly welcomed.  Then had followed an interval.  Lady Griselda’s health had begun to fail, she was much abroad, and when at home, disinclined to spare her niece.  It was not until the fifth year of Martin’s widower-hood that Grizel again visited The Glen, but since then every six or seven months had brought about more or less fleeting visits.  Questioning herself, Katrine realised that while at the beginning she herself had been the one to suggest a fresh invitation, for the last two years Martin had taken the initiative, while she, with an instinctive unwillingness, had sought excuses.

Could it be that subconsciously she had divined this ending; had known that slowly, surely, Martin’s heart was passing into Grizel’s keeping?  She had held fiercely to the remembrance of Juliet; to the ideal of lifelong faithfulness; held to it the more fiercely as doubt grew, but now it was no longer doubt, it was certainty.  Martin loved Grizel with the love of a full-grown man, compared with which that pretty idyll of the past had been child’s play.  And Grizel?  Who could say!  That she would not marry while her aunt lived had for years been an accepted fact, but Lady Griselda’s days were numbered.  In a few months the question of Grizel’s future position would be decided, and then- Katrine’s mind had a flashlight realisation of two alternatives, Martin refused, despairing, Martin accepted, aglow.  For one black moment of involuntary selfishness, each seemed equally obnoxious.  Then with a stifled sob, she shut the door, and buried her face in her hands.

Throughout the silent house travelled the sound of an imperative rap.

“Who’s there?”

The sharp, impatient voice was enough to quell the courage of an ordinary intruder.  Grizel chuckled, and knocked once more, a trifle more loudly than before.

“Who’s-there?”

“Me!”

It was the tiniest of squeaks, and the irate author, shouting back an imperious “Go away!” settled himself to his task, but the knock sounded yet again, and in a fury of impatience he dashed to the door and stood scowling upon the threshold.

“What the-”

“Devil-” concluded Grizel calmly, “but it isn’t.  It’s me.  Let me in, Martin!  It’s a choice between you and buying cabbages in the rain.  Katrine says so, and I should catch my death of cold.”

But the change in the man’s face was startling to behold.  The scowl had vanished, had been wiped out of being at the first swift glance, and with it the fret, and the tire.  The deep-set eyes glowed upon her, the hands stretched out.

“Grizel!  Come in!  Come in!  I was just thinking.  Wishing-”

Grizel floated past into the forbidden room, her glance as easily avoiding his as her hands escaped his grasp.  There was nothing curt or forbidding in the evasion, she seemed simply oblivious of anything but a friendly warmth of manner; engrossed in an interested survey of the study itself.  Her eyes roved round the book-lined walls, and rested brightening upon the old-fashioned hearth.  The fire was laid.  In a basket on one side of the hearth reposed a pile of resined logs.  A copper vase obviously contained coal.

“Martin!” she cried eagerly, “let’s light up!  I’ve been perished all morning.  Katrine says I’m unsuitably dressed.  I am, but I never dress to suit rooms.  I heat them to suit me!  Would you think the room unbearably stuffy if we had a fire?”

“Not a bit of it!  I often do.  Sitting at a desk is chilly work.”

He was already on his knees, posing logs scientifically over the paper and wood, balancing small pieces of coal on the top.  In an incredibly short time a cheerful blaze was illuminating the room, and Grizel, kicking off small brown shoes, was crinkling her toes before the fire.  Martin drew forward a second chair and seated himself beside her, in apparent forgetfulness of the papers scattered over the desk.

“What a shame that you should be so chilled!  Why haven’t you had a fire downstairs?”

“Katrine preferred exercise.  She recommended a flannel shirt, and an expedition to buy cabbages.  British and bracing.  Can you imagine me, Martin, buying cabbages, in the rain, in a flannel shirt?”

He looked at her; an eloquent glance.  There were two feelings warring in his breast, indignation against his sister for her callousness and lack of consideration, and a rush of protective tenderness towards the sweet martyr so abused, for it is one of the injustices of life that the woman who smiles and looks beautiful will always take precedence in a man’s heart over the assiduous purchaser of cabbages.  For a moment sympathy engrossed Martin’s mind, then he smiled; a somewhat difficult smile.

“It is hardly your metier!  Still, if it happened that you were in Katrine’s position; if it came in your day’s work-”

“If the garden were properly managed you would not need to buy cabbages!  I’d dismiss the gardener!” pronounced Grizel briskly, and once again a dangerous moment had come, and gone.  She cowered over the fire, holding out her hands, hitching her shoulders to her ears.  Her nose was still red; if Katrine had been present she would have told herself that no man could possibly admire a woman with a red nose, but Martin had not so much as noticed the fact, and if he had, would have felt it to be a wonderful and beautiful thing that Grizel’s nose could be red, like that of an ordinary mortal.  It would have appeared to him the most endearing of traits.

“I wonder,” he said thoughtfully.  “I wonder Grizel, how you would stand poverty!  Comparative poverty, I mean, of course.  You have never realised the meaning of money.  You have wanted a thing, and it has been yours.  You have not adapted yourself to circumstances, circumstances have been made to adapt themselves to you.  It is the fashion to decry the power of riches, but in the case of a woman like yourself, young, and strong, and beautiful, and sane, it is folly to pretend that they are not a valuable asset.  You have been happy-”

“Yes!” assented Grizel thoughtfully.  “Yes!” She stared into the fire, her small face very grave.  “I like money; so much money that one need not have the thought of it always before one.  It would seem to me debasing to be always considering costs, planning and contriving.  It would hold one’s thoughts down.  And I have never felt burdened by responsibility.  That’s what they say, you know,-the dear, serious folks,-they call wealth a burden and responsibility, but I’ve loved to be able to give and to help.  I’ve my own little way about giving...”  (The listener smiled.  When had Grizel not her own way!) “The public charities must be supported, of course, that’s mechanical; a mere signing of cheques, but the interesting part is to get hold of private cases, and see them through!  Will you be shocked, Martin, when I tell you that my particular forte is helping people who have failed through-their own fault!  Not misfortune, but drink, gambling, other things, of which they might have kept free, but-didn’t!  It’s a kind old world; every one is ready to help the unfortunate, but when a man has had a chance, and thrown it away, when it’s `nobody’s fault but his own,’ then,” she shrugged her slight shoulders, “he goes into outer darkness!  People have `enough to do’ helping those who `deserve it,’ and so I do the other thing!  My old Buddy has never limited me as to money; the only time when she is annoyed, is when I’ve not spent enough.  I have quite a battalion of lost causes dependent on me now.  It would hurt to give them up.”

There was a moment’s silence, then: 

“And have you no idea?” asked Martin tentatively.  “None at all, whether in the end ?”

Grizel laughed.  It was rare indeed that she was serious for more than a minute at a time.

“Not-one!  Isn’t it odd?  Like a position in a feuilleton.  Never once has the subject been mentioned between us.  I have had, as I said, command of unlimited money since I left school, but she dreads the idea of death; it must never be mentioned in her presence, or anything approximately suggesting it.  For the last few years she has been, of course, increasingly irresponsible, but before that we lived always as if the present would last for ever...  She has never even alluded to the time when I should be alone.”

“But surely there must have been,-I know, Grizel, that there have been men,-many men!”

“Ah!” cried Grizel deeply, and chuckled with reminiscent enjoyment.  “Just so.  There was one, a bold one, who questioned her point blank on her intentions.  He lived; he came out of the room alive, but that was as much as one could say.  He got the best dressing down of his life, but that was all he did get.  And he didn’t trouble me any more.”

“Cur!  But they were not all so mercenary?”

“No.”  Grizel looked thoughtful once more.  “Certainly not.  I like men.  They are nice things; not really mercenary unless they’re obliged.  But it’s a difficult position to saddle yourself with a wife who may turn out a colossal heiress, or on the other hand-a pauper!  It complicates the position, and in one way or other is pretty well bound to lead to trouble.  The man who would appreciate the one, is bound to object to t’other, and it’s such a contrary world, that the t’other it would almost certainly be...  When you are making a choice for life, you ought to understand where you are.  You see, Martin,” she turned towards him with a smile, “it would not be fair!”

“And-” he said hoarsely, “was that the reason why you never ?”

Grizel put her head on one side, and stared thoughtfully into the blaze.

“Partly.  Mostly.  Yes!  And my old Buddy.  She won’t live long, and I owe her so much.  But mostly the idea of playing the game.  Most of the men I have met have positions to maintain, and expect their wives to lend a hand.  They can’t afford a love marriage, and I’m proud in my own little way.  I shouldn’t like to turn out a disappointment.”

“There are some men who are old-fashioned enough to prefer to provide for their own wives, who would dread the fortune even more heartily than others do the lack of it.”

“There are.  I realise that.  Bless their dear hearts!  But not the majority!  There’s an heir to a Dukedom hovering round now, Martin; not compromising himself, you understand, but by steady attention to business laying the foundation of a claim.  If the old Buddy died and left me her heir, he’d tell me that he had forborne to intrude, had valiantly subdued his impatience, etc., etc., I never want the money quite so badly as when I imagine that interview!  I’m not spiteful as a rule, but I shall think fate treats me hardly if I never have a chance of scorching that young man...  Well! we’ll see !”

“You want then,-you will be disappointed if you don’t get the money?”

She turned her eyes full upon him, distended in the widest of stares.

“Well, I should just farther think I should!  T-errifically disappointed!  Squelched.  Flum-macked.  Laid out flat.  For the hour, that is.  I couldn’t go on being worried, for all the fortunes on earth.  It will be a case of adapting myself to a new sort of happiness-c’est tout!  That’s easily done.”

The joy of the lover, the keen, appraising interest of the artist, were both eloquent in Martin’s glance as he considered her eloquent face.

“Yes!  One cannot imagine Grizel less than happy and content.  And yet to an ordinary nature, your life during these last years, for all its luxuries, would have seemed a poor thing.  You have made your happiness by managing to love a very unlovable character.  It’s a big feat, Grizel; a very big feat!”

Grizel rubbed her nose, a slow, thoughtful rub with a raised forefinger.  The homely movement seemed ridiculously out of character with the ethereal form and the transparent hand, on which the firelight woke the gleam of flawless diamonds.

“Can a `feat’ be something for which you have never tried?  I never try to love any one.  Either I love ’em, or-I don’t bother!  Disliking, hating,-it’s too much trouble!  I wipe ’em out...  Same way with things; therefore, as a logical conclusion nothing remains but what I do like.  Therefore,-logical inference again!-one must be happy, because there’s nothing to make one un-happy.  Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?”

Martin’s lip curled.

“I wonder,” he said.  “I wonder what Katrine would say if you propounded that theory to her?  I fancy, poor girl, that the very opposite of your programme would come nearer to her outlook on life.  She finds it as difficult to be happy as you do to be miserable.  And yet-she’s had her chance!”

“Martin, she has not!  What chance has she had?  Tucked away in this dark old house, with you shut up in your study all day, and in your moods all night?  My old Buddy loves me; it’s not an ordinary form of loving perhaps, but she does!  I’m more to her than the whole world.  And I’ve had my fling...  Poor old Katrine has had no love, and no fling, nothing but duty, and brotherly affection, and home-made clothes.  It’s enough to make any woman snap.  I’m glad she is discontented.  I’ll make her more discontented still, before I’ve done.  She’s pot-bound, like your stale old ferns, and needs uprooting, and shaking, and planting in fresh, strong earth.  Then she’ll bloom, and you, poor bat! will be amazed at what a fine big bloom it is.  It isn’t a sign of greatness, Martin, to blink in the sun, because one is too lazy too move, and is content to bask, and be stroked, and lick up cream.  That’s me!  Katrine is bigger; it needs more to fill her life, but she’s only just beginning to grow.  You don’t know, Martin, how sweet a woman Katrine is going to be!”

Martin smiled; a smile of serene, unshakable conviction.  He knew his sister.  She was a good girl, well meaning, if a little difficult by nature; he, of all people on earth, would be the last to deny Katrine’s good points, but-to compare her with Grizel, to account to her a greatness of nature above that of the sweetest, kindliest, most loving of women,-that was a flight of fancy beyond even his well-trained powers!

“And who,” queried Grizel, with sudden energy, “is Katrine thinking of, when she sits smiling into space, and giving silly answers to obvious questions, and putting horrid sugar into my tea,-tell me that, if you can!  It is your profession in life to study men and women, and analyse their thoughts.  What do you make of the mystery of the woman upon your hearth?”

Martin smiled superior.

“There is none.  She is thinking of the grocer, and determining to hurl another complaint at his head, because he will insist upon sending us sandy grit, instead of honest West Indian sugar, or of the butcher, whom she suspects of frozen meat, or-or of the Y.W., who has left smudges on the plates...  Nothing more romantic, I assure you.”

“Blind bat of a man! that’s all you know.  I’ll take to novel-writing myself at this rate.  If this is the insight and inner vision of `one of the most popular of our young writers’ there’s room for Grizel Dundas!  I have not been in the house a week, but I know two things-Some one is making love to Katrine, and-Katrine enjoys the process!  By a process of elucidation I know also that it is not the doctor with the beard, nor the curate with the smile, nor the Caldecote squire who rides the white horse, nor the squeaky person who sings.  It isn’t this neighbourhood which holds the treasure.  She has an air of calmness and detachment in partaking of your rural joys.  Not a flicker of `Will he come?’ ...  Methinks my friend, he lives afar!”

The smile broadened upon Martin’s lips.  Women, the most sensible of women, had a way of searching for sentimental reasons for the most prosaic happenings; it was an interesting trait, and from the altitude of a man’s sound common-sense, attractive enough.  It pleased him to hear Grizel imagining love stories with Katrine as heroine, without foundation as they were.

“Can’t you go a little further and discover his name and address?  It would be interesting to know.”

“Jim.  India,” replied Grizel with a promptness which startled her hearer into attention at last.  The face which confronted him was full of triumph, and a malicious delight in his discomfiture.  He stared discomfited, amazed, subtly aggrieved.

“Jim, India!  There is no Jim!  She knows no one there, not a soul, except Jack Middleton and Dorothea.  What put it into your head to fancy such a thing?  Has she ?”

“There is a Jim, and the Middletons know him.  Dorothea wrote about some commissions, and Katrine showed me the note-wanting my advice.  There was a reference to one `Jim,’-she’d forgotten that, quite a colourless reference, but when I questioned, she blushed!” Grizel covered her cheeks with her hands, in eloquent gesture.  “Oh, such a blush!  I looked away, but I thought:  `Why should one blush at a name?’ and after that I went on thinking.  It’s Jim, India-Martin, you may take my word for it, though how, and why, and when, I have no more idea than you have yourself.  There’s a new interest in her life; any one with two eyes can see that, and she writes huge, huge letters...”

“To Dorothea!  She’s done that for years.  I’ve often wondered what she finds to say.”

Grizel rolled eloquent eyes to the ceiling.

“I have been young,” she declaimed dramatically, “and now am old, yet have I never seen a woman staring into space, smirking, and looking silly, considering how she can best turn a sentence, to another woman!  I tell you that which I do know and, Martin dear, it’s not disloyalty...  I wouldn’t have breathed a word, if it had not been for the hope of helping both.  Keep your own eyes open, and act!  Katrine’s conscience is of the good, old-fashioned, Nonconformist type which urges her on to do the thing she most dislikes, out of a deluded idea that it must needs be right!  She’s quite capable of playing suttee with her life. Don’t let her do it!”

“How can I help it?  I know nothing.  I am not consulted.  I believe the whole thing is imagination.  If there had been anything real she would surely have confided in you.”

“Me?  I’m the last person,-the last person in the world-”

The words were spoken on the impulse of the moment, and apparently regretted as soon as they were pronounced.  Grizel flushed; obviously, unmistakably, even in the glow of the firelight.  She flushed, and pushing back her chair rose hurriedly to her feet.

“Whew!  That fire!  Katrine was right,-it does get close.  And I believe it is going to clear.-I’ll go and see.”

“Why are you the last? Why?”

Martin had followed her, was questioning with a new light in his eyes- eager, curious, anticipatory.  On her way towards the door her progress was blocked by his tall form.

“Why the last, Grizel?” he repeated urgently.  “Tell me!  I want to know.  Why should Katrine ?”

Never before had he seen a trace of embarrassment break the lazy serenity of Grizel’s mien.  The sight of it, and the possibility of an intoxicating explanation of her statement, fired his blood.  For the last two years he had been fighting against this love, fighting it as a forbidden thing, a thing of which to be ashamed, but lately, subtly, the mental position had changed.  Life was forcibly pushing him from one standpoint after another, proving its untenability, sending him forth to find fresh fields.

“Why should Katrine ?” he cried, and at that moment the door opened and Katrine herself stood upon the threshold.

Her face was pale, her eyes grave and gentle, the picture of her as she appeared at that moment dwelt in Martin’s mind, and brought with it a startled recognition of his sister’s charm, then in a flash, she stiffened; the softness passed from the eyes, and was replaced by a chilly scorn.  This was a love scene upon which she had intruded,- Grizel flushed, protesting, Martin flushed, appealing, and her own name “Katrine” bandied upon his lip-no doubt to be waved aside, as an obstacle blocking the way.

It was in a voice icily bereft of expression that she delivered her message: 

“I have just taken a message for you, Grizel.  They have rung up to say that Lady Griselda is worse.  You are wanted at home at once.”