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"Somebody's been putting it into his head," he muttered, still half-amused, but now half-angry also.

And, with his usual rapidity of judgment, he darted unhesitatingly to a conclusion. He identified the hand in the business; he recognised whose more subtle thoughts Harry Dennison had stumbled over and mauled in his painful devices. But to none is it given to be infallible, and want of doubt does not always mean absence of error. Forgetting this commonplace truth, Willie Ruston slapped his thigh, leapt up from his chair and, standing on the rug, exclaimed,

"Loring – by Jove!"

It was clear to him. Loring was his enemy; he had displaced Loring. Loring hated him and Omofaga. Loring had stirred a husband's jealousy to further his own grudge. The same temper of mind that made his anger fade away when he had arrived at this certainty, prevented any surprise at the discovery. It was natural in man to seek revenge, to use the nearest weapon, to counter stroke with stroke, not to throw away any advantages for the sake of foibles of generosity. So, then, it was Loring who bade him not go to Dieppe, who prayed him to not to "absorb" Mrs. Dennison in Omofaga, who was ready, notwithstanding his hatred and distrust, to see him the lover of Marjory Valentine sooner than the too engrossing friend of Mrs. Dennison! What a fool they must think him! – and, with this reflection, he put the whole matter out of his head. It could wait till he was at Dieppe, and, taking hold of the great map by the roller at the bottom, he drew it to him. Then he reached and lifted the lamp from the table, and set it high on the mantlepiece. Its light shone now on his path, and with his finger he traced the red line that ran, curving and winding, inwards from the coast, till it touched the blue letters of the "Omofaga" that sprawled across the map. The line ended in a cross of red paint. The cross was Fort Imperial – was to be Fort Imperial, at least; but Willie Ruston's mind overleapt all difference of tenses. He stood and looked, pulling hard and fast at his pipe. He was there – there in Fort Imperial already – far away from London and London folk – from weak husbands and their causes of anxiety – from the pleasing recreations of fascinating society, from the covert attacks of men whose noses he had put out of joint. He forgot them all; their feelings became naught to him. What mattered their graces, their assaults, their weal or woe? He was in Omofaga, carving out of its rock a stable seat, carving on the rock face, above the seat, a name that should live.

At last he turned away, flinging his empty pipe on the table and dropping the map from his hand.

"I shall go to bed," he said. "Three months more of it!"

And to bed he went, never having thought once during the whole evening of a French lady, who liked to get amusement out of her neighbours, and had stayed in town on purpose to have some more talks with Harry Dennison. Had Willie Ruston not been quite so sure that he read Tom Loring's character aright, he might have spared a thought for Mrs. Cormack.

CHAPTER XIII
A SPASM OF PENITENCE

Tom Loring had arranged to spend the whole of the autumn in London. His Omofaga articles had gained such favourable notice that his editor had engaged him to contribute a series dealing with African questions and African companies (and the latter are in the habit of producing the former), while he was occupied, on his own account, at the British Museum, in making way with a treatise of a politico-philosophical description, which had been in his head for several years. He hailed with pleasure the prospect of getting on with it; the leisure afforded him by his departure from the Dennisons was, in its way, a consolation for the wrench involved in the parting. Could he have felt more at ease about the course of events in his absence, he would have endured his sojourn in town with equanimity.

Of course, the place was fast becoming a desert, but, at this moment, chance, which always objects to our taking things for granted, brought a carriage exactly opposite the bench on which Tom was seated, and he heard his name called in a high-pitched voice that he recognised. Looking up, he saw Mrs. Cormack leaning over the side of her victoria, smiling effusively and beckoning to him. That everyone should go save Mrs. Cormack seemed to Tom the irony of circumstance. With a mutter to himself, he rose and walked up to the carriage. He then perceived, to his surprise, that it contained, hidden behind Mrs. Cormack's sleeves – sleeves were large that year – another inmate. It was Evan Haselden, and he greeted Tom with an off-hand nod.

"The good God," cried Mrs. Cormack, "evidently kept me here to console young men! Are you left desolate like Mr. Haselden here?"

"Well, it's not very lively," responded Tom, as amiably as he could.

"No, it isn't," she agreed, with the slightest, quickest glance at Evan, who was staring moodily at the tops of the trees.

Tom laughed. The woman amused him in spite of himself. And her failures to extract entertainment from poor heart-broken Evan struck him as humorous.

"But I'm at work," he went on, "so I don't mind."

"Ah! Are you still crushing – ?"

"No," interrupted Tom quickly. "That's done."

"I should not have guessed it," said Mrs. Cormack, opening her eyes.

"I mean, I've finished the articles on that point."

"That is rather a different thing," laughed she.

"I'm afraid so," said Tom.

"I wish to heaven it wasn't!" ejaculated Evan suddenly, without shifting his gaze from the treetops.

"Oh, he is very very bad," whispered Mrs. Cormack. "Poor young man! Are you bad too?"

"Eh?"

"Oh, but I know."

"Oh, no, you don't," said Tom.

Suddenly Evan rose, opened the carriage door, got out, shut it, and lifted his hat.

"Good-bye," said Mrs. Cormack, smiling merrily.

"Good-bye. Thanks," said Evan, with unchanged melancholy, and, with another nod to Tom, he walked round to the path and strode quickly away.

"How absurd!" said she.

"Not at all. I like to see him honest about it. He's hard hit – and he's not ashamed of it."

"Oh, well," said Mrs. Cormack, shrugging the subject away in weariness of it. "And how do you stand banishment? Will you get in?"

"Yes, if you won't assume – "

"Too great familiarity, Mr. Loring?"

"Oh, I was only going to say – with my affairs. With me – I should be charmed," and Tom settled himself in the victoria.

He had, now he came to think of it, been really very much bored; and the little woman was quite a resource.

She rewarded his ironical gallantry with a look that told him she took it for what it was worth, but liked it all the same; and, after a pause, asked,

"And you see Mr. Dennison often?"

"Very seldom, on the contrary. I don't know what he does with himself."

"The poor man! He walks up and down. I hear him walking up and down."

"What does he do that for?"

"Ah! what? Well, he cannot be happy, can he?"

"Can't he?" said Tom, determined to understand nothing.

"You are very discreet," she said, with a malicious smile.

"I'm obliged to be. Somebody must be."

"Mr. Loring," she said abruptly, "you don't like me, neither you nor Miss Ferrars."

"I never answer for others. For myself – "

"Oh, I know. What does it matter? Well, anyhow, I'm sorry for that poor man."

"Your sympathy is very ready, Mrs. Cormack."

"You mean it is too soon – premature?"

"I mean it's altogether unnecessary, to my humble thinking."

"But I'm not a fool," she protested.

Tom could not help laughing. The laugh, however, rather spoilt his argument.

"Have it your own way," he conceded, conscious of his error, and trying to cover it by a burlesque surrender. "He's miserable."

"Well, he is."

There was a placid certainty about her that disturbed Tom's attitude of incredulity.

"Why is he?" he asked curiously.

"I have talked to him. I know," she answered, with a nod full of meaning.

"Oh, have you?"

"Yes, and he – well, do you want to hear, or will you be angry and despise me as you used?"

"I want to hear."

"What did I use to say? That the man would come? Well, he has come. Voilà tout!"

"Oh, so you say. But Harry doesn't think such – I beg pardon, I was about to say, nonsense."

"Yes, he does. At least, he is afraid of it."

"How do you know?"

"I tell you, we have talked. And I saw. He almost cried that he couldn't go to Dieppe, and that somebody else – "

Tom suddenly turned upon her.

"Who began the talk?" he demanded.

"What do you say?"

"Who began?"

"Oh, what nonsense! Who does begin to talk? How do I know? It came, Mr. Loring."

Tom said nothing.

"You look as if you didn't believe me," she remarked, pouting.

"I don't. He's the most unsuspicious fellow alive."

"Well, if you like, I began. I'm not ashamed. But I said very little. When he asked me if I thought it good that she and – the other – should be together out there and he here – well, was I to say yes?"

"I think," observed Tom, in quiet and deliberate tones, "that it's a great pity that some women can't be gagged."

"They can, but only with kisses," said Mrs. Cormack, not at all offended. "Oh, don't be frightened. I do not wish to be gagged at all. If I did – there is more than one man in the world."

Tom despised and half-hated her; but he liked her good-nature, and, in his heart, admired her for not flinching. Her shamelessness was crossed with courage.

"So you've made him miserable?"

"Well, I might say, I, a wicked Frenchwoman, that it is better to be deceived than to be wretched. But you, an Englishman – ! Oh, never, Mr. Loring!"

Tom sat silent a little while.

"I don't know what to do," he said, half in reverie.

"Who thought you would?" asked Mrs. Cormack, unkindly.

"I believe it's all a mare's nest."

"That means a mistake, a delusion?"

"It does."

"Then I don't think you do believe it. And, if you do, you are wrong. It is not all a – a mare's nest."

She pronounced the word with unfamiliar delicateness.

Tom knew that he did not believe that it was all a mare's nest. He would have given everything in the world – save one thing – and that, he thought, he had not got – to believe it.

"Then, if you believed it, why didn't you do something?" he asked rather fiercely.

"What have you all done? I, at least, warned him. Yes, since you insist, I hinted it. But you – you ran away; and your Adela Ferrars, she looks prim and pained, oh! and shocked, and doesn't come so much."

It was a queer source to learn lessons from, and Tom was no less surprised than Adela had been a day or two before at Dieppe.

"What should you do?" he asked, in new-born humility.

"I? Nothing. What is it to me?"

"What should you do, if you were me?"

"Make love to her myself," smiled Mrs. Cormack. She was having her revenge on Tom for many a scornful speech.

"If you'd held your tongue, it would all have blown over!" he exclaimed in exasperation.

"It will blow over still; but it will blow first," she said. "If that contents you, hold your tongue."

Then she turned to Tom, and laid a small fore-finger on his arm.

"Mark this," said she, "he does not care for her. He cares for himself; she is – what would you say? an incident – an accident – I do not know how to say it – to him."

"Well, if you're right there – " began Tom in some relief.

"If I'm right there, it will make no difference – at first. But, as you say, it will blow over – and sooner."

Tom looked at her, and thought, and looked again.

"By Jove, you're not a fool, Mrs. Cormack," said he, almost under his breath.

Then he added, louder,

"It's the wisdom of the devil."

"Oh, you surpass yourself," she smiled. "Your compliments are magnificent."

"You must have learnt it from him."

"Oh, no. From my husband," said Mrs. Cormack.

The carriage, which during their talk had moved slowly round the circle, stopped again.

Mrs. Cormack turned to Tom. He was already looking at her.

"I don't understand you," said he.

"No? Well, you'll hardly believe it, but that does not surprise me."

"I'm not sure you don't mean well, if you weren't ashamed to confess it," said Tom.

For the first time since he had known her, she blushed and looked embarrassed. Then she began, in a quick tone,

"Well, I talked. I wanted to see how he took it; and it amused me. And – well, our dear Maggie – she is so very magnificent at times. She looks down so calmly – oh! from such a height – on one. She had told me that day – well, never mind that; it was true, I daresay. I don't love truth. I don't see what right people have to say things to me, just because one may know they are true."

"So you made a little mischief?"

"Well, I hear that poor man walking up and down. I want to comfort him. I asked him to come in, and he refused. Then I offered to go in – he was very frightened. Oh, mon Dieu!" and she laughed almost hysterically.

This very indirect confession proved in the end to be all that Mrs. Cormack's penitence could drive her to, and Tom left her, feeling a little softened towards her, but hardly better equipped for action. What, indeed, could be done? Tom's sense of futility expressed itself in a long letter to Adela Ferrars. As he had no suggestions for present action, he took refuge in future promises.

"It will be very awkward for me to come, but if, as time goes on, you think I should be any good, I will come."

And Adela, when she read it, was tempted to send for him on the spot; he would have been of no use, but he would have comforted her. But then his presence would unquestionably exasperate Maggie Dennison. Adela decided to wait.

Now, by the time Tom Loring's letter reached Dieppe, young Sir Walter and Willie Ruston were on the boat, and they arrived hard on its heels. They took up their abode at a hotel a few doors from where the Seminghams were staying, and Walter at once went round to pay his respects.

Ruston stayed in to write letters. So he said; but when he was alone he stood smoking at the window and looking at the people down below. Presently, to his surprise, he saw the same old gentleman whom Adela had noticed in the Casino.

"The Baron, by Jove!" he exclaimed. "Now, what brings him here?"

The Baron was sauntering slowly by, wrapped in a cloak, and leaning heavily on a malacca cane. In a moment Willie Ruston was down the stairs and after him.

Hearing his name cried, the Baron stopped and turned round.

"What chance brings you here?" asked Willie, holding out his hand.

"Oh, hardly chance," said the Baron. "I always go to some seaside place, and I thought I might meet friends here," and he smiled significantly.

"Yes," said Ruston, after a pause; "I believe I did mention it in Threadneedle Street. I went in there the other day."

By the general term Threadneedle Street he meant to indicate the offices of the Baron's London correspondents, which were situate there.

"They keep you informed, it seems?"

"I live by being kept informed," said the Baron.

Ruston was walking by him, accommodating his pace to the old man's feeble walk.

"You mean you came to see me?" he asked.

"Well, if you'll forgive the liberty – in part."

"And why did you want me?"

"Oh, I've not lost all interest in Omofaga."

"No, you haven't," said Ruston. "On the contrary, you've been increasing your interest."

The Baron stopped and looked at him.

"Oh, you know that?"

"Certainly."

The Baron laughed.

"Then you can tell me whether I shall lose my money," he said.

"Do you ever lose your money, Baron?"

"But am I to hear about Omofaga?" asked the Baron, countering question by question.

"As much as you like," answered Ruston, with the indifference of perfect candour.

"Ah, by the way, I have heard about it already. Who are the ladies here who talk about it?"

Willie Ruston gave a careful catalogue of all the persons in Dieppe who were interested in the Omofaga Company. The Baron identified the Seminghams and Adela. Then he observed,

"And the other lady is Mrs. Dennison, is she?"

"She is. I'm going to her house to-morrow. Shall I take you?"

"I should be charmed."

"Very well. To-morrow afternoon."

"And you'll dine with me to-night?"

Ruston was about to refuse; but the Baron added, half seriously,

"I've come a long way to see you."

"All right, I'll come," he said. Then he paused a moment, and looked at the Baron curiously. "And perhaps you'll tell me then," he added.

"Why I've come?"

"Yes; and why you've been buying. You were bought out. What do you want to come in again for?"

"I'll tell you all that now," said the Baron. "I've come because I thought I should like to see some more of you; and I've been buying because I fancy you'll make a success of it."

Willie Ruston pulled his beard thoughtfully.

"Don't you believe me?" asked the Baron.

"Let's wait a bit," suggested Ruston. Then, with a sudden twinkle of his eye, his holiday mood seemed to come back again. Seizing the Baron's arm, he pressed it, and said with a laugh, "I say, Baron, if you want to get control over Omofaga – "

"But, my dear friend – " protested the Baron.

"If you do – I only say 'if' – I'm not the only man you've got to fight. Well, yes, I am the only man."

"My dear young friend, I don't understand you," pleaded the Baron.

"We'll go and see Mrs. Dennison to-morrow," said Willie Ruston.

CHAPTER XIV
THE THING OR THE MAN

"Well?"

It was the morning of the next day, Mrs. Dennison sat in her place in the little garden on the cliff, and Willie Ruston stood just at the turn of the mounting path, where Marjory had paused to look at her friend.

"Well, here I am," said he.

She did not move, but held out her hand. He advanced and took it.

"I met your children down below," he went on, "but they would hardly speak to me. Why don't they like me?"

"Never mind the children."

"But I do mind. Most children like me."

"How is everything?"

"In London? Oh, first-rate. I saw your husband the – "

"I mean, how is Omofaga?"

"Capital; and here?"

"It has been atrociously dull. What could you expect?"

"Well, I didn't expect that, or I shouldn't have come."

"Are the stores started?"

"I thought it was holiday time? Well, yes, they are."

She had been looking at him ever since he came, and at last he noticed it.

"Do I look well?" he asked in joke.

"You know, it's rather a pleasure to look at you," she replied. "I've been feeling so shut in," and she pushed her hair back from her forehead, and glanced at him with a bright smile. "And it's really going well?"

"So well," he nodded, "that everything's quiet, and the preparations well ahead. In three months" (and his enthusiasm began to get hold of him) "I shall be off; in two more I hope to be actually there, and then – why, forward!"

She had listened at first with sparkling eyes; as he finished, her lips drooped, and she leant back in her chair. There was a moment's silence; then she said in a low voice,

"Three months!"

"It oughtn't to take more than two, if Jackson has arranged things properly for me."

Evidently he was thinking of his march up country; but it was the first three mouths that were in her mind. She had longed to see the thing really started, hastened by all her efforts the hour that was to set him at work, and dreamt of the day when he should set foot in Omofaga. Now all this seemed assured, imminent, almost present; yet there was no exultation in her tone.

"I meant, before you started," she said slowly.

He looked up in surprise.

"I can't manage sooner," he said, defending himself. "You know I don't waste time."

He was still off the scent; and even she herself was only now, for the first time and as yet dimly, realising her own mind.

"I have to do everything myself," he said. "Dear old Carlin can't walk a step alone, and the Board" – he paused, remembering that Harry Dennison was on the Board – "well, I find it hard to make them move as quick as I want. I had to fix a date, and I fixed the earliest I could be absolutely sure of."

"Why don't they help you more?" she burst out indignantly.

"Oh, I don't want help."

"Yes, but I helped you!" she exclaimed, leaning forward, full again of animation.

"I can't deny it," he laughed. "You did indeed."

"Yes," she said, and became again silent.

"Apropos," said he. "I want to bring someone to see you this afternoon – Baron von Geltschmidt."

"Who?"

"He was the German capitalist, you know."

"What! Why, what's he doing here?"

"He came to see me – so he says. May I bring him?"

"Why, yes. He's a great – a great man, isn't he?"

"Well, he's a great financier."

"And he came to see you?"

"So he says."

"And don't you believe him?"

"I don't know. I want your opinion," answered Ruston, with a smile.

"Are you serious?" she asked quickly. "I mean, do you really want my opinion, or are you being polite?"

"I don't think you a fool, you know," said Willie Ruston.

She flashed a glance of understanding, mingled with reproach, at him, and, leaning forward again, said,

"Has he come about Omofaga?"

"That you might tell me too – or will you want all Omofaga if you do so much?"

For a moment she smiled in recollection. Then her face grew sad.

"Much of Omofaga I shall have!" she said.

"Oh, I'll write," he promised carelessly.

"Write!" she repeated in low, scornful tones. "Would you like to be written to about it? It'll happen to you, and I'm to be written to!"

"Well, then, I won't write."

"Yes, do write."

Willie Ruston smiled tolerantly, but his smile was suddenly cut short, for Mrs. Dennison, not looking at him but out to sea, asked herself in a whisper, which was plainly not meant for him though he heard it,

"How shall I bear it?"

He had been tilting his chair back; he brought the front legs suddenly on to the ground again and asked,

"Bear what?"

She started to find he had heard, but attempted no evasion.

"When you've gone," she answered in simple directness.

He looked at her with raised eyebrows. There was no embarrassment in her face, and no tremble in her voice; and no passion could he detect in either.

"How flat it will all be," she added in a tone of utter weariness.

He was half-pleased, half-piqued at the way she seemed to look at him. It not only failed to satisfy him, but stirred a new dissatisfaction. It hinted much, but only, it seemed to him, to negative it. It left Omofaga still all in all, and him of interest only because he would talk of and work for Omofaga, and keep the Omofaga atmosphere about her. Now this was wrong, for Omofaga existed for him, not he for Omofaga; that was the faith of true disciples.

"You don't care about me," he said. "It's all the Company – and only the Company because it gives you something to do. Well, the Company'll go on (I hope), and you'll hear about our doings."

She turned to him with a puzzled look.

"I don't know what it is," she said with a shake of her head. Then, with a sudden air of understanding, as though she had caught the meaning that before eluded her, she cried, "I'm just like you, I believe. If I went to Omofaga, and you had to stay – "

"Oh, it would be the deuce!" he laughed.

"Yes, yes. Well, it is – the deuce," she answered, laughing in return. But in a moment she was grave again.

Her attraction for him – the old special attraction of the unknown and unconquered – came strongly upon him, and mingled more now with pleasure in her. Her silence let him think; and he began to think how wasted she was on Harry Dennison. Another thought followed, and to that he gave utterance.

"But you've lots of things you could do at home; you could have plenty to work at, and plenty of – of influence, and so on."

"Yes, but – oh, it would come to Mr. Belford! Who wants to influence Mr. Belford? Besides, I've grown to love it now, haven't you?"

"Omofaga?"

"Yes! It's so far off – and most people don't believe in it."

"No, confound them! I wish they did!"

"Do you? I'm not sure I do."

She was so absorbed that she had not heard an approaching step, and was surprised to see Ruston jump up while her last sentence was but half said.

"My dear Miss Valentine," he cried, his face lighting up with a smile of pleasure, "how pleasant to meet you again!"

There was no mistaking the sincerity of his greeting. Marjory blushed as she gave him her hand, and he fixed his eyes on her in undisguised approval.

"You're looking splendid," he said. "Is it the air or the bathing or what?"

Perhaps it was both in part, but, more than either, it was a change that worked outwards from within, and was giving to her face the expression without which mere beauty of form or colour is poor in allurement. The last traces of what Lord Semingham meant by "insipidity" had been chased away. Ruston felt the change though he could not track it.

Marjory, a bad dissembler, greeted him nervously, almost coldly; she was afraid to let her gaze rest on him or on Mrs. Dennison for long, lest it should hint her secret. Her manner betrayed such uneasiness that Ruston noticed it. Mrs. Dennison did not, for something in Ruston's face had caught her attention. She had seen many expressions in his eyes as he looked at her – of sympathy, amusement, pleasure, even (what had pleased her most) puzzle, but never what she saw now. The look now was a man's homage to beauty – it differs from every other – a lover hardly seems to have it unless his love be beautiful – and she had never yet seen it when he looked at her. She turned away towards the sea, grasping the arm of her chair with a sudden grip that streaked her fingers red and white. Marjory also saw, and a wild hope leapt up in her that her task needed not the doing. But a moment later Ruston was back in Omofaga – young Sir Walter being his bridge for yet another transit.

"How's Mr. Dennison?" asked Marjory, when he gave her an opportunity.

"Oh, he's all right. You'd have heard, I suppose, if he hadn't been?"

It was true. Marjory recognised the inappropriateness of her question, but Mrs. Dennison came to the rescue.

"Marjory wants a personal impression," she said. "You know she and my husband are great allies!"

"Well," laughed Ruston, "he was a little cross with me because I would come to Dieppe. I should have felt the same in his place; but he's well enough, I think."

"I was going down to find Lady Semingham," said Marjory. "Are you coming down this morning, Maggie?"

"Maggie" was something new – adopted at Mrs. Dennison's request.

"I think not, dear."

"I am," said Ruston, taking up his walking stick. "I shall be up with the Baron this afternoon, Mrs. Dennison. Come along, Miss Valentine. We've been having no end of palaver about Omofaga," and as they disappeared down the cliff Mrs. Dennison heard his voice talking eagerly to Marjory.

She felt her heart beating quickly. She had to conquer a strange impulse to rise and hurry after them. She knew that she must be jealous – jealous, she said to herself, trying to laugh, that he should talk about Omofaga to other people. Nonsense! Why, he was always talking of it! There was a stronger feeling in her, less vague, of fuller force. It had come on her when he spoke of his going to Africa, but then it was hard to understand, for with all her heart she thought she was still bent on his going. It spoke more clearly now, stirred by the threat of opposition. At first it had been the thing – the scheme – the idea – that had caught her; she had taken the man for the thing's sake, because to do such a thing proved him a man after her pattern. But now, as she sat in the little garden, she dimly traced her change – she loved the scheme because it was his. She did not shrink from testing it. "Yes," she murmured, "if he gave it up now, I should go on with him to something else." Then came another step – why should he not give it up? Why should he go into banishment – he who might go near to rule England? Why should he empty her life by going? But if he went – and she could not persuade herself that she had power to stop his going – he must go from her side, it must be she who gave him the stirrup-cup, she towards whom he would look across the sea, she for whom he would store up his brief, grim tales of victory, in whose eyes he would see the reflection of his triumphs. Could she fill such a place in his life? She knew that she did not yet, but she believed in herself. "I feel large enough," she said with a smile.

Yet there was something that she had not yet touched in him – the thing which had put that look in his eyes, a thing that for the moment at least Marjory Valentine had touched. Why had she not? She answered, with a strong clinging to self-approbation, that it was because she would not. She told herself that she had asked nothing from her intercourse with him save the play of mind on mind – it was her mind and nothing else that her own home failed to satisfy. She recalled the scornful disgust with which she had listened to Semingham when he hinted to her that there was only one way to rule a man. It seemed less disgusting to her now than when he spoke. For, in the light of that look in his eyes, there stood revealed a new possibility – always obvious, never hitherto thought of – that another would take and wield the lower mighty power that she had disdained to grasp, and by the might of the lower wrest from her the higher. Was not the lower solidly based in nature, the higher a fanciful structure resting in no sound foundation? The moment this spectre took form before her – the moment she grasped that the question might lie between her and another – that it might be not what she would take but what she could keep – her heart cried out, to ears that shrank from the tumultuous reckless cry, that less than all was nothing, that, if need be, all must be paid for all. And, swift on the horror of her discovery, came the inevitable joy in it – joy that will be silenced by no reproofs, not altogether abashed by any shame, that no pangs can rob utterly of its existence – a thing to smother, to hide, to rejoice in.

Yet she would not face unflinchingly what her changing mind must mean. She tried to put it aside – to think of something, ah! of anything else, of anything that would give her foothold.

"I love my husband," she found herself saying. "I love poor old Harry and the children." She repeated it again and again, praying the shibboleth to show its saving virtue. It was part of her creed, part of her life, to be a good wife and mother – part of her traditions that women who were not that were nothing at all, and that there was nothing a woman might take in exchange for this one splendid, all-comprehending virtue. To that she must stand – it was strange to be driven to argue with herself on such a point. She mused restlessly as she sat; she listened eagerly for her children's footsteps mounting the hill; she prayed an interruption to rescue her from her thoughts. Just now she would think no more about it; it was thinking about it that did all the harm. Yet while she was alone she could not choose but surrender to the thought of it – to the thought of what a price she must pay for her traditions and her creed. The payment, she cried, would leave life an empty thing. Yet it must be paid – if it must. Was it now come to that? Was this the parting of the roads?