BOOK FOUR

BOOK OF STORMS AND OF THREATENING STORM.
THE ELEMENT OF LOVE

CHAPTER I

PLANS AND DREAMS AND PROMISES

Three women were counting the years now. The years were rolling up—curtain by curtain, like mists from a distant hillside; and behind them the ultimate prospects for which Lady Burdon waited, Mrs. Espart waited, and Aunt Maggie waited began to be revealed. Mrs. Espart had conveyed to Lady Burdon her ambition—formulated long ago—with regard to Dora and Rollo. Lady Burdon reckoned the union as very desirable and gave its consummation a first place among her aspirations for her Rollo. Aunt Maggie saw the hour of her revenge approaching so that its years might now be estimated on the fingers of one hand.

So near the desirable ends were approaching that the women began to name dates for their arrival. Youth, with only a few years lived and so enormous an experience gained in those years (as youth believes), cannot endure the thought of planning ahead for a space that is a fair proportion of its whole lifetime. Five years is a monstrous, an insupportable period to youth that has lived but four times five or less. Age, with fewer years to live than have been lived, and with the knowledge of how little a decade has to show, will plan for five years hence with nothing near so much of sighs and groanings as youth will suffer if it must wait five months.

The women began to name dates. Those very close friends, Lady Burdon and Mrs. Espart, spoke of dates frequently. Mrs. Espart and Dora had already "come into the family" as Mrs. Espart smilingly expressed it, when, at Lord Burdon's death, and on being acquainted with her dear friend's intention to let the Mount Street house on a short lease and retire to Burdon Old Manor, she had offered herself as lessee. The offer had been most gratefully, most gladly accepted. The great town house was made over to Mrs. Espart for a seven years' term and thus, in Mrs. Espart's phrase, "remained in the family"—ready for Rollo and Dora, as the ladies plotted.

And now they were naming dates. "When Rollo is twenty-four," Lady Burdon said to Mrs. Espart, come over from Abbey Royal to lunch at the Manor one day, "look, dear, he is just on twenty now. You know my plans. Next year he is to go to Cambridge. His illness has thrown him back. But next year will be time enough. Three years at Cambridge, then, and that will bring him almost to twenty-three. Then I wish him to go abroad—to travel for a year. That is so good for a young man, I think. Then when he comes back he will be ready to settle down and he will come back just the age for that tradition of ours—celebrating comings-of-age at twenty-four instead of twenty-one. That would be so splendid for the wedding, wouldn't it?"

"Splendid!" Mrs. Espart agreed. "Splendid! That old Mr. Amber of yours was trying to tell me the other day how that twenty-four tradition arose. But, really, he mumbles so when he gets excited—!"

"Oh, he's hopeless," Lady Burdon agreed. Her tone dismissed his name as though she found his hopelessness a little trying, and she went back to "Yes, splendid, won't it be? When I look back, Ella, everything has gone wonderfully. From the very beginning, you know—the very beginning, I planned a good marriage for Rollo. It was so essential. To be your Dora—well, that makes it perfect; yes, perfect!"—and Lady Burdon stretched out her hands and gave a happy little sigh as though she put her hands into a happy future and touched her Rollo there.

"And I for Dora," Mrs. Espart said. "From the very beginning, too, I arranged great matches for Dora in my mind. That it should be your Rollo,"—she gave a little laugh at her adaptation of the words—"that it should be your Rollo—why, really, perfect is the word!"

They were silent for a space, enjoying the beauty of the hillside that the thinning years were disclosing.

"You've never said anything to Rollo?" Mrs. Espart asked.

"Oh, no—no, not directly, anyway. It will come about naturally, I feel that. They are so much together. And in any case Dora—Dora is so wonderfully beautiful, Ella. I couldn't conceive any man not falling in love with her. In a year or so's time, developing as she is—why, you'll change your mind perhaps—when they're all worshipping her!"

She laughed, and her laugh was very reassuringly returned. "But it is Rollo she will marry," Mrs. Espart smiled. "With her it is as you say with him—it will come naturally. In any case—well, she is being brought up as I was brought up. She is dutiful. You find so many girls encouraged in independence nowadays. Nothing is so harmful for a girl ultimately, I think."

Lady Burdon nodded her agreement. "How happy Rollo will be!" she said, and spoke with a little sigh so caressingly maternal and with eyes so fondly beaming that Mrs. Espart put out a hand to touch her and told her, "I love your devotion to Rollo, Nellie."

"He is everything to me," Lady Burdon said softly. "Everything!"

"I know he is. Why, you look different again when you speak of him even! Do you know, you were looking wretchedly ill when I came this morning, I thought."

"I had slept badly." Lady Burdon looked hesitatingly at her friend as though doubtful of the expediency of some further words she meditated. Then, "I had my nightmare," she said; and at the question framed on Mrs. Espart's lips went on impulsively: "Ella, I've never told you about my nightmare. I think I shall. It worries me. Do you know, just after we came into the title a girl came to see me and said she was the former Lord Burdon's wife."

"No! What happened?"

"Oh, nothing, of course—nothing serious. I sent her away. She said she would bring proofs; but I never saw her again."

"You wouldn't, of course. One of those creatures, I suppose," and Mrs. Espart curled her lip distastefully and added: "I suppose some young men will do those things—no doubt that's what it was; but it's rather disgusting, isn't it? And how very horrible for you! But, Nellie, where does the nightmare come in?"

"With the girl," Lady Burdon said and gave a little uneasy movement as though even the recollection worried her. "With the girl. I dream of her whenever—that's the odd thing—whenever something particular happens. See her just as I saw her then and say 'I am Lady Burdon,' and she says 'Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?' Then I get that dreadful nightmare feeling—you know what it is—and say 'I hold!' and she says 'No, you do not—Nay, I hold!' It's too silly—but you know what nightmares are. And it only comes when something particular happens—or rather is going to happen. The night before we heard of old Lady Burdon's death, that was once. Then the night before we came down here for that stay when Rollo met his friend Percival and we began to come regularly. Then the night my husband died." She stopped, smiled because Mrs. Espart was smiling at her indulgently, as one smiles at another's unreasonable fears, but went on, "and now last night!"

Mrs. Espart laughed outright: "Why, what a hollow moan, Nellie!—'and now last night!' I'd no idea you were such a goose. You've let the silly thing get on your silly nerves."

"Only because things have always happened with it."

Her concern, however foolish, was clearly so genuine that Mrs. Espart changed banter for sympathetic reassurance. "Why, Nellie, really you must be more sensible! Why, dreaming it last night proves how silly it is. What's happened to-day? Look, I'll tell you what's happened to-day, and it's something to settle your wretched girl and your omens once and for all. She nightmared you last night and to-day we've settled how happy we are all going to be with our young folk married! There! Tell her that with my compliments if she ever comes again!"

Her air was so brisk and stimulating that Lady Burdon was made to laugh; and her facts were so convincing that the laugh was followed by a little sigh of happiness, and Lady Burdon said: "Why, Ella, it's funny, isn't it, how in this life some things do go just as one wishes, for all that people say to the contrary?"

That was to be proved. Down at "Post Offic," while the ladies planned, a date was also being named.

"But when? When?" Percival was saying to Aunt Maggie. "I'm eighteen—eighteen, but you still treat me like a child. I ought to be doing something. I'm just growing up an idler that every one will soon be despising. But when I tell you, you ask me to wait and say I've no need to be anxious and that I shall be glad I waited when I know what it is you are planning for me."

"You will be, Percival," Aunt Maggie said.

But he made an impatient gesture and cried again: "But when? When? That satisfied me when I was a boy. It doesn't now. I'm not a boy any longer. That's what you don't seem to see."

That indeed he was boy no more was written very clearly upon him as he stood there demanding his future—not for the first time in these days. He was past his eighteenth birthday: his bearing and his expression graced him with a maturer air. The mould and the poise of head and body that as a child had caused a turning of heads after him were displayed with a tenfold greater attraction now that they adorned the frame of early manhood. There was about the modelling of his countenance that air of governance that is the first mark of high breeding. The outlines and the finish of his face were extraordinarily firm, as though delicate tools had cut them in firm wax that set to marble as each line was done. The chin was rounded from beneath and thrown forward; and to that firm upward round the lower jaw ran in a fine oval from where the small ears lay closely against the head; deeply beneath the jaw, cut cleanly back with an uncommon sweep, was set the powerfully modelled throat that denotes rare physical strength. The eyes were widely opened, of a fine grey—unusually large and of a quality of light that seemed to diffuse its rays over all the brow. The forehead was wide, with a clear, sound look. Outdoor life had tinted the face with the clean brown that only a fine skin will take; the hair was of a tawny hue and pressed closely to the scalp. He was of good height and he carried his trunk as though it were balanced on his hips—thrown up from the waist into a deep chest beneath powerful shoulders. He held his arms slightly away from his sides in the fashion of sailors and boxers whose arms are quick, tough weapons. After all this and of it all was a gay, alert air, as though he were ever poised to spring away at the call of the first adventure that came whistling down the road. His face was not often in repose. Ardent life was forever footing it merrily up and down his veins, delighting in motion and in its strength, and his face was the mirror of its discoveries.

Just now, voiced in his "I'm growing up an idler that every one will soon be despising," it was discovering restrictions that his brow mirrored darkly. "It's not fair to me, Aunt Maggie," he said. "I ought to be doing something for myself. I must be doing something for myself. But you put me off like a child. You tell me to wait and won't even tell me what it is. You tell me to wait—when? when?"

Aunt Maggie said pleadingly: "Soon, Percival, soon."

"No, I've heard that—I've heard that!" he cried. "I want to know when."

She named her date. "When you are of age, dear. When you are twenty-one."

He cried: "Three years! Go on like this for three years more!"

He swung on his heel and she watched him go tremendously down the path and through the gate.

CHAPTER II

FEARS AND VISIONS AND DISCOVERIES

Percival took the highroad with the one desire to be alone—to walk far and to walk fast. The prodding of his mind that goaded him, "I'm growing—I'm losing time—I'm settling into a useless idler!" that tortured him he was in apron-strings and likely to remain there, produced a feverish desire to use all his muscles till he tired them. His feet beat the time—"I must do something—I must do something!" and he swung them savagely and at their quickest. It was not sufficient. He was extraordinarily fit and hard; the level road, despite he footed it at his fiercest, could scarcely quicken his breathing. A mile from "Post Offic" he struck off to his right and breasted the Down, climbing its steepness with an energy that at last began to moisten his body and to give him the desired feeling that his strength was being exercised. "I must do something!" he spoke aloud. "I must—I can't go on like this—I won't!" and taxed his limbs the harder. If he must feel the chains that bound him in idleness, let him at least make mastery of his body and rebuke it till it wearied.

At the crest of Plowman's Ridge he paused and drew breath and turned his face to the wind that ever boomed along here and that had come to be an old friend that greeted his ears with its jovial, gusty Ha! Ha! Ha!

Far below him he could see "Post Offic" with its garden running to the wood. From his distance it had the appearance of a toy house enclosed by a toy hedge, the toy trees of the wood rigid and closely clipped like the painted absurdities of a child's Noah's Ark. As he looked, a tiny figure came from the house and went a pace or two up the garden and seemed to stand and stare towards him up the Ridge. Aunt Maggie, he was sure, and had a sudden wave of tenderness towards her, looking so tiny and forlorn down there. He remembered with a prick at heart that, even in the heat of his anger in the parlour half-an-hour ago, he had noticed how small she looked as she stood pathetically before him, gently replying to his impatience. He thought to wave to her with his handkerchief, but knew she could not see him. He remembered—and another prick was there—that she had said, seeking, no doubt, to win a moment from his violence, "Do you see my eyeglasses, dear? I'm getting so shortsighted, Percival." He flushed to recollect he had disregarded her words and had threshed ahead with his "It's not fair to me—not fair to me, keeping me here doing nothing!" He had been unkind—he was unkind—and she was so small, so gentle, so loving, so tender to his every mood.

But that very thought of her—how small she was, how gentle—that had begun to abate his warring mood, returned him suddenly to its conflicts. That was just it!—so small, so gentle, so different from him in every way that she could not understand his situation and could not be reasoned with. No one understood! No one seemed to realise how he was growing, and how blank the future, and hence what he was growing. They all laughed at him when he spoke of it.

They all laughed! Mr. Purdie laughed—Mr. Purdie had laughed and said, "Oh, you're not a man yet, Percival!" and had given his absurd, maddening chuckle.

"His silly, damned chuckle!" cried Percival to old friend wind at the top of a wilder burst of resentment against the world in general and for the moment against Mr. Purdie in particular.

Rollo laughed—Rollo had laughed and declared: "Oh, don't start on that, Percival! That'll be all right when the time comes."

"When the time comes! Good lord! The time has come," Percival told old friend wind. "It's slipping past every day. All very well for old Rollo—all cut and dried for him. For me! I'm to be idling here when he goes to Cambridge, am I? And idling like a great lout when he comes back!"

Lady Burdon laughed—they all laughed, thinking him foolish, not realising. Ah, they would laugh in another way—and rightly so—when they did realise, when they saw him standing among them idle, useless, helpless, dependent on Aunt Maggie. They would all laugh—they would all despise him then. Everybody....

As he came to that thought—visioned some distorted picture of himself, overgrown, hands in pockets in the village street, and all his friends going contemptuously past him—there came a sudden change in old friend wind that for a moment left him vacant, then somehow changed his thoughts anew. Old friend wind, that had been buffeting him strongly in keeping with his turbulent mood, dropped, and he was in silence; then came with a different note and bringing a scent he had not apprehended while it went rushing by. Nothing odd that he should be responsive to this change. The wind on Plowman's Ridge was old friend wind to him, and everybody who is friends with the wind knows it for the live thing that it is—the teller of strange secrets whispered in its breezes, the shouter of adventures thundered in its gales. Who lies awake can hear it call "Where are you? Oh, where are you?"—who climbs the hill to greet it, it welcomes "Welcome—ho!" Sometimes, to those who are friends with it, it comes lustily booming along in high excitement ("This way! This way! There's the very devil this way!"); sometimes softly and mysteriously tiptoeing along, finger on lip ("Listen! Listen! Listen! Hush—now here's a secret for you!").

In this guise it came to him now—dropped him down from the turbulence of spirit to which it had contributed, caught him up and led him away upon the cloudy paths of the scent it gave him. The fragrance it bore in this its whispering mood stirred, in that quick and certain manner that scents arouse, associations linked with such a fragrance. There was in the scent some hint of the perfume that was always about Dora; and immediately he was carried to thought of her....

She to see him idler! She to pass him by contemptuously! His mental vision presented her before him as clearly as if she were here beside him on the Ridge. He saw her perfect features, with their high, cold expression; the transparent fairness of her skin; that warm shade of colour on either cheek that, as though she saw him watch her, deepened with their strange attraction even as he visioned her. He visioned her clearly. He could have touched her had he stretched a hand. And he was caused—he knew no reason for it—a slight trembling and a slight quickening of his breath.

She to see him idler! ... In rebuke of such a thought he released his mind to wild and undisciplined flights that showed himself the champion of tremendous feats—of arms, of heroism, of physical prowess—performing them beneath the benison of her eyes, returning from them to receive her smiles....

For a considerable space he stood lost among these clouds. They had drifted upon him suddenly. He found them delectable. Then he began to find them strange and puzzling—scenes that were meaningless, sensations that could not be determined. It is to be remembered of him that, though he was now advanced to the period when the sap is up in youth and quickening in his veins, he did not pursue the life nor was he of the nature that encourages the amorous designs. A sluggish habit of mind and body is the soil to nurture these: he was alert and braced, eager and sound from foot to brain—a thing all fibre and fearless, whose only quest was what should give him the challenge of movement, of light, and ring back tough and true when he taxed it. No room was here, then, for the disturbances that sex throws up; and yet these very qualities that such disturbance could not undermine conspired to arouse him very mightily when he should turn him to enquire what this disturbance was, and discovering, should launch himself upon it.

He was near to the brink of that launching now. Dora with her rare beauty always had exercised upon him a feeling different from any he commonly knew; he never yet had troubled to suppose that it was caused by any emotion outside his normal life. She had astonished him by her grace of form and feature on that day when he had discovered her to be Snow-White-and-Rose-Red of the fairy book. Thereafter she had remained to him a delicately beautiful object—set apart from the ordinary fashion of persons he knew; not to be treated quite as he treated them; a very dainty thing, making him aware of the contrast that his own sturdy figure, strong limbs, brown face, and hard young hands presented. As a boy he had always been caused a manner of awe in her presence; as he grew older the awe went back to the sheer admiration that she had caused in him at their first meeting. Out of her company, in the long months that frequently separated her visits, he rarely thought of her; though sometimes—and he had no reason for it—he would find her pretty figure in his mind or in his dreams. When he reëncountered her, the admiration sprang afresh; he liked to watch her face, to stand unnoticed and expect, then see, her cold smile part her lips, or those strange shades of colour deepen and glow upon her cheeks; he liked in little unobserved ways to protect her as he had protected her that day in the muddy lane; it caused him a strange rapture to have her thank him for any service.

III

These were his relations to her through the years. He never had thought to analyse them nor question why he so regarded her—never till now. Now for the first time as he stood on Plowman's Ridge he mused among the misty tangle of the sensations that old friend wind had brought, lost and astray among the visions presented to his mind by estimate of how Dora would consider his idle plight—now for the first time he suddenly questioned himself what she was to him.

He was all unused to the sensations in which, by an effort recalling himself from his musings, he found himself suffused. They were all—that slight trembling and that slight quickening of his breath that possessed him—foreign to his nature, and he made a sharp movement as though they were tangible and visible things that he would shake from about him. Useless!—they had him wrapped.... Quicker his trembling, and his breath quicker. What was she to him? Up sprang the answer, answering with a triple voice that demanded his acknowledgment. Up sprang the answer, causing him a physical thrill as though indeed there burst at last from within him some essence that had been too long held and now was loosed like fire through his veins. With a triple voice, clamouring he should recognise it! What was she to him? Her face and figure stood in all their beauty before his mental eye—that was one voice and he trembled anew to hear it. What was she to him? Memory of a light speech of Rollo on the previous day came flaming to his mind: "And mother, I believe, has a plot with Mrs. Espart that I shall marry Dora then and settle down"—that was a second voice and stung him so that he knit his brow. What was she to him? Of them all—of all who would laugh and have him in scorn when he was taskless idler—bitterest, most intolerably goading, that she should hold him so—that was the third voice and drew from him a sharp intake of the breath as of one that has touched hot iron.

What was she to him? In triple voice he had the answer, demanding his acknowledgment, clamouring for his recognition. By a single word he signed the bond. None was by to listen, and yet he flushed; there was none to overhear, and yet he spoke scarcely above a whisper. He just breathed her name—"Dora!"

An intense stillness came about him. He stood enraptured, all his senses thrilled. Out of the stillness, echo of his whisper, seemed to come her name of Dora! Dora! Dora! floating about him as petals from the bloomy rose. He raised his face to their caress and was caught up in sudden ecstasy—believed he was with her, touching her; and saw and felt her stoop towards him, bringing her perfume to him as the may-tree stoops and sheds its fragrance when first at dawn the morning breathes in spring.

So for a space he stood etherealised—awed and atremble; youth brought suddenly through the gates and into the courts of love where the strong air at every tremulous breath runs like wine to the brain, to the heart like some quick essence. For a space he stood so; then was aware that old friend wind was up again and drumming Ha! Ha! Ha! upon his ears as one that mocks.

What was she to him? The answer, now he had it, stirred to wilder tumult the feelings that had brought him turbulently breasting up the Ridge. He looked again towards "Post Offic," toylike below, and had no tender thought for it—bitter vexation instead, as of the captive who goes to fury at the chains that bind him.

That he should submit to be thus chained, thus apron-stringed! That Dora should laugh! That she should know him idler! Goading thoughts—maddening thoughts, and he flung himself, bruising himself, against them as the captive against his prison walls. That she should laugh! It should not be! It was not to be endured! He threw up his head in determination's action, his hands clenched, his body braced, resolve upon his angry brow.

Ha! Ha! Ha! drummed old friend wind—Ha! Ha! Ha!

He gave a half cry and turned and strode away along the Ridge, taking the direction that led him from home, and exerting himself under new impulse of the desire to rebuke his body and haply ease his mind.

CHAPTER III

A FRIEND UNCHANGED—AND A FRIEND GROWN

An hour at that pace brought him above Great Letham, clustered below. He paused irresolutely. From among the roofs, as it were, a crawling train emerged. He watched it worm its way along the eastward vale, then abruptly turned his back upon it as upon a thing more fortunate than he—not bound down here, as he was bound. Brooding upon the landscape, he suddenly became aware of a thin wisp of smoke that pointed up like a grey finger from the valley beneath him. It mounted in a steady, wand-like line from the belt of trees that marked Fir-Tree Pool, and its site and its appearance braced him to an alert attention. It had signalled him before. Only one person he had ever known lit a fire down there: only one hand in his experience contrived a flame which gave quite that steady, grey finger. He remembered Japhra showing him how to get the heart of a fire concentrated in a compact centre; he remembered Ima laughing at the sprawling heap, burning in desultory patches, that had come of his first attempt at imitation.

"If only it is Japhra!" he said aloud; and he struck down the Ridge-side for a straight line across country to where the smoke proposed that Japhra might be.

More than a year had passed since last the van had visited the district. Even Stingo, met sometimes over at Mr. Hannaford's, could give him no better news of it than that Japhra had not taken the road with Maddox's these two seasons. The disturbed state of mind that now vexed Percival could be soothed in no other way, he suddenly felt, than by the restful atmosphere that Japhra always communicated to him. Japhra would not laugh at him. Japhra would understand how he felt. Japhra would advise in that quiet way of his that made one see things as altogether different from the appearance they seemed to present. If only it were Japhra!

It was Japhra!

As Percival came quickly through the trees that enclosed the water he caught a glimpse of the yellow van. As he emerged he heard Japhra's voice: "Watch where he comes!" and he pulled up short and cried delightedly: "You knew! You were expecting me!"

Clearly they had known! Not surprise, but welcome all ready for him, was in Japhra's keen little eyes that glinted merrily, and on Ima's face, that was flushed beneath its dusky skin, her lips parted expectantly. Even old Pilgrim, the big white horse that drew the van, had its head up from its cropping and looked with stretched neck and seemed to know. Even tiny Toby, that was Dog Toby when the Punch and Judy show was out, was hung forward on his short legs like a pointer at mark, and now came bounding forward in a whirl of noisy joy.

Japhra was astride of a box, a piece of harness between his legs, a cobbler's needle in his right hand, and the short pipe still the same fixture in the corner of his mouth. Ima was on one knee, about to rise from the fire whose smoke had signalled.

"You knew! You were expecting me!" Percival cried again, and went eagerly to them as they rose to greet him, his hands outstretched.

"Father knew thee before I heard thy footsteps," Ima told him. "The fire crackled at my ears or I had known."

She seemed to be excusing herself, as though not to have heard were short of courtesy; and Japhra, who had Percival's hand, gave a twist of his face as if to bid him see fun, and teased her with: "Thou didst doubt, though, Ima, for look how I had to bid thee 'watch where he comes.'"

Percival thought she would toss her head and protest indignantly as when he used to tease her when they had trifled together. Instead, her eyes steadily upon his face, "Nay, for I knew it was he," she replied simply.

He no more than heard her. At a later period he found that the words had gone to the backwaters of his mind, where trifles lie up to float unexpectedly into the main stream. Years after he recalled distinctly her tone, her words, and the look in her eyes when she spoke them.

Now he laughed. "You two can hear the world go round, I believe." He turned to Japhra: "But how on earth you could tell—"

"Footsteps are voices, little master, when a man has lived in the stillness."

Percival laughed again—laughed for pure happiness to hear himself still given that familiar title, and for pure happiness to be again with Japhra's engaging ideas. "You're the same as ever, Japhra—the same ideas that other people don't have."

"Ah, but 'tis true," Japhra answered him. "Footsteps have tongues, and cleaner tongues than ever the mouth holds. Look how a man may oil his voice to mask his purpose—never his feet. Thine called to me, how eagerly they brought thee."

"Eagerly!—I should think they did! You're just the one I want. I've not seen you for a year—more. Eagerly—oh, eagerly!"

Japhra's bright eyes showed his delight. "And we were eager, too. We have spoken often of little master, eh, Ima? Not right to call him that now, though. Scarcely reckoned to see him so grown. Why, thou'rt a full man, little master—there slips the name again!"

He twinkled appreciatively at Percival's protest that to no other name would he answer, and he went on: "A full man. Ten stone in the chair, I would wager to it. What of the boxing?"

"Pretty good, Japhra. The gloves you gave me are worn, I can tell you."

"That's well. Never lose the boxing. It is the man's game. Ay, thou hast the boxer's build, ripe on thee now as I knew would be when I saw it in thee as a boy. The man's game—never lose it."

"I'm keener than ever on it," Percival told him. "I'm glad you think I've grown. I've got a punch in my left hand, I believe." His spirits were run high from his former despondency, and he hit with his left and sparkled to see Japhra nod approvingly and to hear him: "Ay, the look of a punch there."

"Yes, I've grown," he said. "You've not changed, Japhra—not a scrap."

Japhra nodded his head towards the fir trees. "Nor are the old limbs yonder. They stay so till the sap dries, then drop. Nary change. Only the young shoots change. What of Ima?"

She had turned away while they talked. She was back at the fire, and Percival turned towards where she stood, about to lift from its hook the cooking pot that hung from the tripod of iron rods. As he looked, she swung it with an easy action to the grass. The pot was heavy: she stooped from the waist, lifted and swung it to the grass with a graceful action that belonged to her supple form, and, as the steam came pouring up and was taken by a puff of breeze to her face, went back a step and looked down at her cooking from beneath her left forearm, bare to the elbow, raised to shield her eyes.

III

That was Percival's view of her. She had put up her hair, he noticed, since last he saw her. It was dressed low on the nape of her neck; evening's last gleam delighted in its glossy blackness against her olive skin. Beneath the arm across her face he saw the long lashes of her eyelids almost on her cheeks, as she stood looking downwards. Her mouth was long, the lips, blending in a dark red with her brown colouring, lying pleasantly together in the expression that partners the level eye and the comfortable mind. She was full as tall as Percival—very slim in the build and long in the waist that was moulded naturally from her hips to spread and cup her bosom, and therefore taller to the eye. She wore a blouse of dark red cloth; her skirt was of blue, hung short of her ankles, and pressing her thighs disclosed how alert and braced she stood. She wore no shoes nor stockings, and her feet, slender and long, appeared no more than to rest upon the short grass that framed them softly.

"What of Ima?"

"Ima?—Ima has grown, though," Percival said. "Why, she's simply sprung up!"

"Ay, grown," Japhra agreed. "Grown fair," he added, watching her.

Percival said, "Yes, she is pretty." The vision of Dora's high fairness came to his mind, challenged and rebuked his favour of another of her sex, and returned him swiftly to the stress that had brought him down here for comfort and that the first reëncounter with Japhra had caused to be overshadowed. His eyes lost their brightness. He remained looking dully at Ima, not seeing her; and presently started and flushed to realise that he was hearing a repeated question from Japhra.

"What ails, master?"

"Ails? I heard you the first time, Japhra. I was thinking. I'm troubled—sick. That's what ails."

His face flushed with the same cloudy redness that the beat of rising tears drives into the faces of children. On the Ridge he had put against his trouble the stiffness that was of the bone of Burdon character. Down here was sympathy—and he was very young; it sapped the stubbornness.

"That's what I'm here for," he said thickly. "To tell you, Japhra."

Japhra had a keen look to meet the misty countenance that was turned to him.

"Food first, then," he said, and gave a twinkle and a sniff at the savour from Ima's cooking that made Percival smile in response. "Naught like a meal to take the edge off trouble. There'd be few quarrels in the world if we all had full bellies always."

"Well, food first, then," Percival agreed, making an effort; and he raised his voice: "What's Ima got for us?"

She turned at the sound of her name and smiled towards him, and the smile caused beauty to alight upon her face as a dove with a flashing of soft wings comes to a bough. He saw it. Her beauty abode in her mild mouth and in her seemly eyes. Her parted lips discovered it to step upon her face; her raised eyes released it, starry as the stars that star the forest pool, to star her countenance.

CHAPTER IV

IMA'S LESSONS

She had odd ways, Percival found—oddly attractive; sometimes oddly disconcerting. She did not at first contribute to the conversation while they ate. She was very quiet; and that, and the way in which, as he noticed, she kept her eyes upon him, was in itself odd. Dusk was veiling the camp as they took the stew she had prepared. They had the meal on the grass near the van, and Percival, not eating with great ease in the squatting pose, noticed how erect she sat, as though her back were invisibly supported—her plate on her lap, the soles of her bare feet together.

He deferred his trouble, as Japhra had proposed, till the meal should be done. He was interested to know where the van had been all these months; and when he questioned Japhra, "We have had the solitary desires, Ima and I," Japhra told him. "The solitary desires, master, whiles thou hast been growing. A sudden wearying of Maddox's and all the noisy ones. North to Yorkshire, we have been; west to Bristol's border; deeper west to Cornwall. The road has had the spell on us—calling from every bend and ever keeping a bend ahead, as the road will to those who are of it. Summers we have passed the circus on its tour and laid a night with old Stingo and then away, urgent to move quicker and lonelier. Trouble has worsened in the circus crowd."

"What, between Stingo's men and Boss Maddox's?"

"Ay," said Japhra. "Boss Maddox is the biggest showman in the west these days. He rents the pitches at all the fairs before the season begins; and the Stingo crowd, who must take what he gives, he puts in the worst places. His hand is heavy against them. One fine day the sticks will come out and there'll be heads broken, as happened on the road back in '60. I was in that and carry the mark of it on my pate to this hour. Pray I'll be there when this one falls."

"I'd like to be with you, Japhra."

Japhra showed his tight-lipped smile: "Well, a camp fight with the sticks out and the heads cracking is a proper game for a man, master. Thou'dst be a handy one at it, I warrant me."

Ima broke in with her first contribution to their talk. She said quickly: "Shame, Father. Not for such as he—fights and the rough ways."

But she was silent again and without reply when Percival sought to rally her for this opinion of him; and Japhra twinkled at him and said: "There's one would like to meet thee, though—sticks or fists"; and went on, when Percival inquired who: "Thy friend Pinsent. Thy name of Foxy for him has stuck to him and he has not forgiven thee. A fine fighter he has grown—boxed in some class rings for good purses in the winter months, and in the summer is a great attraction at the fairs. Boss Maddox is fond of him. Boss Maddox has fitted him with a booth of his own and he gets the crowds—deserves 'em, too. But 'Foxy' has stuck to him—and suits him. He hates it; and's not forgotten where he owes it."

Percival laughed. "Well, if he's done so well, I ought to be proud to have given him something to remember me by. He could wallop me to death, of course."

"There's few of his weight he could not hand the goods to," Japhra agreed. He looked estimatingly at Percival and added: "One that could keep the straight left in his face a dozen rounds'd serve it up to him, though. Foxy has no bowels for punishment. I have watched him."

And again Ima broke in. "Ah, why dost talk so?" she addressed her father. "He is nothing for such ways—fights and the fighting sort."

This time Percival would not let her opinion of him escape without challenge. "Why, Ima!" he turned to her, "that's the second time you've said that. Seems to me you think I ought to be wrapped in cotton-wool."

His voice was bantering, but had a note of impatience. The events of the day had not made him in humour to take lightly any estimate of himself that seemed to reflect on his manliness.

She noticed it. Her voice when she answered him had a caressing sound as though she realised she had vexed him and would beg excuse. "Nay, only that thou art not for the rough ways—such as thou," she said; and, mollified, he laughed and told her: "Well, you never used to think so, anyway. You've changed, you know, Ima, changed a lot since I last saw you."

"And should have changed," Japhra announced. "Scholar with lesson books, she has been these winter months."

Percival thought that very quaint. "Scholar, Ima; have you?" he asked her, and saw the blood run up beneath her dusky skin. "I can't imagine you at lessons!"

"Nor those who taught me," she replied; and paused and added very gravely, speaking in her gentle voice, "Yet have I learnt—and still shall learn."

Percival asked: "Learnt what?"

Odd her ways—oddly attractive, oddly disconcerting; speaking steadily and more as if it were to herself and not to listeners that she spoke. "Learnt to sit on a chair," she told him, "and to sit at a table nicely; to wear shoes on my feet, and stockings; to go to church and sing to God in heaven; to talk properly as house folk talk; to sleep in a bed; to wear a hat and stiff clothes; to abide within doors when the rain falls and when the stars alight in the sky—these have I learnt."

Percival was tempted to laugh, but her gravity forbade him. "How terrible it sounds—for you! But why, Ima, why?"

She did not answer the question. She smiled gently at him and went on with the same air of speaking to herself: "Lessons from books, also. Figures and the making of sums; geography—as capes and bays and what men make and where; of a new fashion of how to hold the pen stiffly in writing; of nice ways in speaking—chiefly that I should say 'you' when I would say 'thou'—that is hardest to me; but I shall learn."

Something almost pleading was in her voice as she repeated, "I shall learn;" and Percival turned for relief of his puzzlement to Japhra: "Why, whatever's it all for, Japhra?"

Japhra gave his tight-lipped smile. "Woman's reasons—who shall discover such?" But Ima made a motion of protest, and he went on: "Nay, the chance fell, and truly I was glad she should have woman's company—and gentle company. In Norfolk where we pitched the winter gone by was a doctor I had known when we were young—he and I. He shipped twice aboard a cattle boat with me, having the restlessness on him in those days. Now I found him stout and proper, but not forgetful of an indifferent matter between us. He brought his lady to the van, and she conceived a fancy for Ima, holding her a fair, wild thing that should be tamed. Therefore took Ima to her house and to her board, and taught her as she hath instructed thee. Thus was the manner of it; as to the wherefore—why, woman's reasons, as I have said," and he smiled again.

Ima got abruptly to her feet. The meal was ended, and she began to collect the plates. Her action plainly rebuked the further questions with which Percival was playfully turning to her. He offered instead to help her with her washing of the dishes, but she told him: "Nay, maid's work this. Abide thou with father, and talk men's talk." In the action of moving away she turned to Japhra and added her earlier plea: "So it is not of boxing and the rough ways."

CHAPTER V

JAPHRA'S LESSONS

Japhra took up Ima's words when she had left them. "Nay, but the boxing is my business," Japhra said, filling his pipe. "I'm for the boxing again this summer. Money's short and old Pilgrim yonder has full earned his rest and must have another take up his shafts. Another horse is to be bought, wherefore a sparring booth again for me."

Percival asked: "When are you going?"

"To-morrow. I pick up the circus by Dorchester. My lads are waiting me. Ginger Cronk, I have—thou mind'st Ginger?—and Snowball White, a useful one. Stingo seeketh another for me. A good lad, I must have, if the money's to be made, for Foxy Pinsent hath a brave show that will draw the company—two coloured lads and four more with himself."

Percival was silent. "I wish I could go with you," he said presently: "And you're going to-morrow, you say?—to-morrow?"

"At daybreak, master."

"Ah!" Percival gave a hard exclamation as though feelings that were pent up in him escaped him. "Now I had found you again, I hoped I was going to see you often for a bit. My luck's right out," and he gave a little laugh.

Japhra lit his pipe. "So we come back to thy trouble," he said.

His voice and a motion that he made invited confidence. Percival watched through the dusk the glow from his pipe, now lighting his face, now leaving it in shadow. He had longed to tell Japhra; he found it hard.

After a moment: "Hard to tell!" he jerked.

"How to bear? That is the measure of a grief."

"Impossible to bear!"

"Tell, then."

"There's little to be told. That's it! That's the sting of it—so little, so much. A man must do something with his life, Japhra!"

"Ay, that must he, else life will use him, breaking him."

"Why, that's just it! That's what will happen to me! I'm a man—they think I'm not; there, that's the pith of it!" He was easier now and in the way of words that would express his feelings. He went on: "Look, Japhra, it's like this—" and told how he was growing up idler, how Aunt Maggie answered all his protestations for work for his hands to do by bidding him only wait—and he ended as he had begun: "A man must do something with his life!"

He stopped,—aware, and somehow, as he looked through the dusk at Japhra, a little ashamed, that his feelings had run his voice to a note of petulance. He stopped, but a space of silence came where he had looked for answer. Evening by now was full about the camp. Night that evening heralded pressed on her feet, and was already to be seen against the light in the windows of the van where Ima had lit the lamp. From the pool was the intermittent whirring of a warbler; somewhere a distant cuckoo called its engaging note that drowsy birds should not make bedtime yet. In the pines a song-thrush had its psalm to make; at intervals it paused and the air took a night-jar's whirr and catch and whirr again. Old Pilgrim cropped the grass.

Percival said: "What are you thinking of, Japhra?"

"Of life."

"What of life?"

"How hot it runs."

"Meaning me—I'm in a vile temper, I daresay you think."

"How hot it runs, master—how cold it comes and how little the profit of it."

Percival said heavily: "What is the use of it, then?"

Japhra bent forward to him and Percival saw the little man's tight-lipped, firm-lined countenance with the tranquil strength of mind that abode in the steady aspect of the bright eyes, deep beneath their strong brows.

"The use?" Japhra said. "Nay, that is the wrong way of estimate. For thee in thy mood, for all men when life presses them, inquire rather what is the hurt of it. How shall so small a thing as life, a thing so profitless, that soon becomes so cold, returneth to earth and is nothing remembered nor required—how shall so small a thing offend thee and make shipwreck of thy content? Thus shouldst thou judge of it."

"Some men are not soon forgotten, Japhra."

"Ay, master, and what men? They that have seen how small a thing is life and have recked nothing of it."

"How have they done great things, then?—fought battles, written books?"

"Why, master, how wrote Bunyan in chains or Milton in blindness?"

"They didn't mind."

"Even so. Profitless they knew life to be, and cared not how it tasked them."

"But, Japhra, that's—that's all upside down. Are there two things in a man, then—life and—?"

Japhra said: "So we come to it—and to thee. Truly there are two things: life which is here in the green leaf, and gone in the dry; and the spirit which goeth God knows where—into the sea that ever moves, the wind that ever blows, the sap that ever rises—who shall say? But knoweth not death and haply endureth forever if it were mighty enough—as Milton, as Bunyan. Look at me, master, for that is the plain fact of it and the balsam for all thy hurts."

He stopped and drew slowly at his pipe with little puffs that floated to Percival like grey thistledown dropping through the night.

"Go on," Percival said. "Go on, Japhra."

"Why, there thou hast it," Japhra told him. "Lay hold on thy spirit—let that be thy charge; and of what cometh against thee take no heed save to rebuke it as a boxer rebuketh the cunning of him that is matched against him. So was the way of Crusoe, of old Bunyan's Pilgrim, and of the Bible men, and that is why I call them the books for a fighting man. Here's my way of it, master—there's force in the world that moves the tides and blows the winds and maketh the green things grow. Out of that force I unriddle it we come, and back to it return. In some the spirit is utterly swallowed up in life, and at death crawleth back suffocated and befouled and only fit to come again in some rank growth—so much a lesser thing than when it came springing to a human breast that the force of the world whence it came is by so much lessened and can give birth to a flower less and a toadstool more."

"And then there's the other way about," said Percival, attracted by this argument.

"Ay, truly the other way about, master. The way of the mighty men in whom the spirit rebuketh life and increaseth, and at death goeth shouting back—so quickening the force of the world that, just as the cup spilleth when much is added, so there be mighty storms when great men die—thunders and rushing winds, great lightnings and vast seas."

Percival drew a long breath. "Why, it's a fine idea, Japhra—fine."

"Look at a case of it," Japhra said. "My Bible in the van there hath one. I have it by heart. Look when Christ died. Never a man than He cared less how life tasked Him; and at His death—when there went shouting back the spirit that He had increased beyond the increase of any man—look thou what came: 'And behold the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth quaked; and the rocks rent and the graves were opened.' And again: 'And it was about the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened.'"

He stopped; and Percival breathed long and deep again: "Fine, Japhra—fine. I never thought of it like that. Fine—I think I see."

"Surely thou dost, master; or any man that giveth thought to it. Take it to thine own case—that is my word to thee. Reck nothing how life assaileth—hold on only to thy spirit. Thou wouldst be doing something and art irked by the bonds that hold thee—never fear but that in its time the thing will come. I have seen men—I know the fashion of them. Thou art of the mould and mind to which adventures come. See to it thou art ready for them when they arrive—trained as the boxer is against the big fight."

Percival said heavily: "What's the prize, Japhra?" Now that the application of this engaging view was pressed to his own case he had a dark vision of what it required of him. "What's the prize?"

"Why, content! Look, little master, here's happiness, here's content—and content is all the world's gold and all its dreams. Whatever cometh against thee, whether through the flesh or through the mind, get thou the mastery of it. How? Every man according to his craft. The philosophers, the reckoners—theirs to judge bad against good and find content that way. That was old Crusoe's manner of it. Thou art the fighting type—the Ring for thee."

Percival got abruptly to his feet. At the same moment Ima opened the door of the van and stood above them—held, as it were, upon the light that streamed from the interior.

"The Ring for thee," Japhra repeated, "there to meet and conquer all thy vexations. Make a boxer of thy spirit. Step back through the ropes then and take up the champion belt marking thee thine own man, thine own master: a proud and jewelled thing to wear—content."

Ima's voice broke in upon them. "The champion belt?" she said. "What, is it still boxing, thy talk?"

Japhra turned his face up to her and the lamplight showed the twinkling with which he met the reproach in her voice. "Why, it is my trade," he said, "and thine. In two days thou'lt be taking the money at the door of my booth."

"Not his trade, though," she answered.

Percival said: "Japhra, would I be a likely one for your booth, do you think?"

He was holding out his hand in the action of farewell. Japhra got up and took it and held it. "Why, if I get as proper a build as thine for my third lad I will put a polish to it that would vex Foxy Pinsent himself. Keep up the boxing, master. Art thou going?"

Percival said abruptly, "Yes, I'm going." He released the hand and went away a step. "I'm going. I've a longish way home and things to do before bedtime. You'll be gone at daybreak?"

"At dawn, little master."

"On the Dorchester road?"

"Ay, to Dorchester."

"All the luck with you, Japhra. I'm better for seeing you." He spoke jerkily as though his throat were full and speech difficult. He stopped abruptly, and half turned away; then, recollecting Ima, went back to the van and stretched up his hand to where she stood: "Good night, Ima."

She stooped down to him. The action brought her face into the darkness and he noticed how her wide eyes, as she stooped, seemed actually to light it. "Farewell!" she said.

It was perhaps that he had so obviously only attended to her as an afterthought that her throat, for all the sound her word had, might have been as full as his. Some thought of the kind—that he had been churlish to her—crossed him. He said more kindly: "I say, though! your hand is cold, Ima."

She withdrew her fingers, giving him no reply. But as he turned away and went a step, "What of thy way home?" she cried, and cried it on a sudden note as though it went against her will.

"By the Ridge," he told her. "By Plowman's Ridge and then along."

She answered him: "Yes, I am cold. I will warm me to the Ridge with thee—if thou wilt suffer me."

In the mood that was on him he had preferred to be alone. But under the same apprehension of having been churlish to her, "Why, that's jolly of you," he said.

III

She went within the van a few moments; and while he waited he had a last exchange with Japhra: "You've helped me, Japhra. But I shall disappoint you if I'm tried too hard. Content—I'll make a fight for it. But I shall not endure it very well if I am still to be idler." He gave a hard little laugh. "When it's a fight for mastery of myself I shall disappoint you, I believe."

Japhra told him: "I have seen men, master, and know the fashion of them. Thou wilt not disappoint me."

"You can't say that of any one—for certain."

"I say it of thee. Though thou failest a score times thine is the mould that comes again—for that I shall look. Listen to me, little master—that name clings: I cannot shake it from me. Listen to me. Thy type runneth hot through life till at last it cometh to the big fight. Send me news of that." He struck a match to relight his pipe and cupped the flame against his face. "Send only 'The Big Fight, Japhra,'" he said.

The flame of his match built up the dusky night in walls of immense blackness. In their heart Percival saw the kindly face with its tight lines and keen eyes. "I shall know the winner," Japhra said; and the cup of light within his hands shadowed and lit again his face as he nodded.

The Big Fight was drawing towards Percival. Aunt Maggie had the very date of it, and the articles reckoned and ready. When it rushed suddenly upon him and he was in its stress and agony, he remembered the lighted face, the confident nod and the message that was to be sent.

CHAPTER VI

WITH IMA ON PLOWMAN'S RIDGE

Ima had put on shoes and stockings when she reappeared from the van and joined Percival to accompany him to the Ridge. The two were come almost to the Down's skirt before they exchanged words. "I have things to do before bedtime," Percival had told Japhra; and as he walked he was too occupied by the thoughts of what he purposed—hunted by them as the tumult of his concerns had hunted him earlier in the day—to give attention to Ima who had come with him when he had preferred to be alone. She was perhaps aware of that. She followed the half of a pace behind the short, impatient steps that partnered—and signified—his mood, her eyes watching what of his face she could see and ever and again turning swiftly ahead, as though she feared he might catch her at it and feared that might offend him; so a dog that knows itself unwanted may be seen, wistful at its master's heels—with little wags of a timid tail and with beseeching glances; eager to communicate some succour to this angry mood; afraid to hazard what may further vex.

Yet he was pleasant when presently he spoke to her.

They stepped from a dense lane about whose mouth and overhead the arching brambles trailed as though to curtain a sanctuary from trespass by outer dust and breeze and light. Before them the Down ran smooth and grey to where, beneath the moon, it took a silver rim along the line of Plowman's Ridge. A harsher scent was here than briar and wild rose breathed within the lane and jealously entwined to hold there; the breeze came with a swifter touch to the face; the light challenged the eyes that the gloom had rested.

Together their effects aroused Percival's senses from his thoughts to his companion.

"Warmer now, Ima?" he asked.

"Warmer now, little master," and she smiled and added: "unseemly to call thee that, now thou hast grown so."

He moved with her to a gate that faced the Down. "Let's rest a bit," he said. "Why, we've both grown, Ima, since the last time I saw you. You've grown. You've put up your hair—properly grown up. I shall have to treat you with terrible respect."

She did not respond to his light tone. Her eyes that looked quietly at him had a grave air. "I am a gipsy girl to thee," she said. "I am not for thy respect—such as me. For ladies that." And before he could answer her she went on: "What of that little lady thou hast told me of—Snow-White-and-Rose-Red as thou didst name her to me?"

He did not notice a changed tone—to be described as stiff—in her voice. It did not occur to him that in the matter of his respect she made comparison between herself and her whom she named with his fond name for her; he was only surprised and only grateful to have that name spoken to him.

"Why, she's grown," he said. "Fancy you remembering her, Ima!"

Eagerness was in his voice. "I am cold again," she told him, and drew away. "Let us go up the Down."

He did not follow her movement or her words, but pursued his own "—remembering that I called her that, anyway," he said.

If it had been her purpose to dismiss the subject, at least she earned herself his full attention by the swiftness with which she turned upon him and by the swiftness of her reply. "It is thee I remember," she answered him. "Not her—or any such. Thou wast my friend when we played boy and girl together. All thou hast done with me, all thou hast told me, point me the way to thee as remembered marks along the road point to a camping-place—no more, and of themselves nothing."

She had his attention; but he attributed the quickness of her speech and her odd thought and simile only to the general oddness of her ways. "Well, you needn't go back to those days in future," he told her. "We're friends now just as much as then."

She shook her head and smiled. "Nay, after this day I must needs go farther back," she said, her voice smooth again. "Thou dost not understand—playmate days I seek. I lie in my bed on the fine nights with the van door wide, and watch the stars and play I walk among them—from star to star and round about among the stars, high to the van's roof and low to where the trees and hills stretch up to them: thou with me as when first I knew thee—in that wise I seek thee; not thus"—she broke off and changed the note of her voice. "What talk is this?" she smiled. "Childish fancies—they are not for thee," and she moved away and he followed her up the Down.

"Ima, they're pretty fancies, though," he said. "And, you know, you'll lose them all if you aren't careful—if you go making yourself stiff and proper with those extraordinary lessons of yours. What are they for, those lessons? They'll spoil you, Ima. They'll make you quite different. All that kind of thing is for—for the others—for what you'd call fine ladies."

"Even so," she said; and pronounced the words as if—though to his mind they explained nothing—everything was explained by them; and said no more until the crest of Plowman's Ridge was reached.

He was willing enough for his own part to relapse into his own thoughts. He went so deeply into them that, coming to the Ridge and involuntarily pausing there, he was twice told by her "Here I return," before he was aroused to her again. Bemused, he stared at her a moment as one stares that is aroused from sleep, and his mind jumped back in confusion to the last words that had passed between them. "Well, if you were so anxious for the lessons, why did you give them up when the winter was over?"

She answered him—sadness in her voice rather than reproach—"We have done that talk long since. Thou dost not heed me. It is that I am going that I am telling thee."

He knew he had been careless of her again, and sought to laugh it off. "Well, it is why you stopped your lessons that I am asking thee," he mimicked her. "Woman's reasons, Ima?"

She threw out her hands towards him in a gesture of appeal. "Ah, do not toy me woman's reasons," she said. "Think me less light than that—if thou thinkest of me. Not woman's reasons bade me back to the van when winter broke. Not woman's reasons. I knew me there were green buds in the ditches beneath the dead wet leaves. I had discovered them to the sun and the breezes many years—turning back the leaves and smelling the smell they have. How could I stay beneath a roof when I had thoughts of such?"

She drew a deep and tremulous breath of the mild night air as though she inhaled the scents of which she spoke, and he watched her gaze across the eastward vale with those starry eyes that, as she went on, never the lids unstarred, and she said: "Thoughts of such—of green buds in the ditches beneath the moulding leaves that waited for me to uncover them and knew me when I came; of the first cloud of dust along the road—dust, ah! of tiny sprigs on every bough that I might run to see; of busy birds stealing the straws and coming for the bits of cloth and wool they know I place for them; of early light with all the trees and fields wet and aglisten; of gentle evenings when the new stars come dropping down the sky; of the road—the road, ah!—I sitting on the shafts; of the cool brooks, and leading Pilgrim in and hearing him suck the water and hearing him tear the grass; of the running stream about my feet and the soft grass that sinks a little—these bade me back."

She turned to him and said in the low voice in which she had been speaking: "Not women's reasons these." She changed her voice to one that cried: "Remember me that if I am not like fine ladies I cannot help be what I am with these things speaking to me. Now I am going," and she went swiftly from him and was a dozen paces gone before he called her back.

III

"Ima!" While she spoke he had envisaged what she told, setting its freedom and its elemental note to his own desires as one sets music that stirs the breast. Shaking himself from the spell, "Ima!" he called, and went to her. "Don't go like that. Say good-by properly."

She stopped short and put her hand to her side as though his call had launched a shaft that struck her. She did not turn—as though she dared not turn—until he was close up to her, touching her. Then she turned, and he saw her eyes amazingly lit, and as they met his, saw the light pass like a star extinguished. It was as if she had expected much and had found nothing; and it was so pronounced that he said: "Ima! Why, what did you think I was going to say?"

There was a wild rose in the bosom of her dress that she had plucked as they came through the lane. She bent her head to it and put her hands to it in the action of one that seeks to cover lack of words by some occupation. She drew the flower from her breast and placed it in his coat, pinning it there.

"That's right," he smiled. "I'll keep that to remember you by. What did you think I was going to say? You seemed as though you expected something—then as if you were disappointed. What was it?"

She was very careful in settling the flower. Then she dropped her hands and looked up at him. "I asked nothing," she said. "How should I be disappointed?"

"Asked! No! I saw it in your eyes."

She answered swiftly, almost as one speaking in menace of offending words: "What in mine eyes?"

"Why, what I tell you. As though you expected something and were disappointed."

"No more?" she inquired, and repeated it—"No more?"

"No more—no. But I want to know why—or what?"

She gave a gentle laugh and relaxed her attitude that had been strained, in keeping with her voice. She seemed to have feared he had derived some secret that she had; and she seemed glad and yet a little sad her eyes had not betrayed her. She gave a gentle laugh and threw her hands apart as if to show how small a thing was here.

"Why, little master, there is nothing in that," she said. "The eyes light for that the heart runneth to peep through them as a child to the window."

He laughed at the pleasant fancy: "Well, what did your heart run to see?"

"Nay, I have not done," she told him. "Look also how one may see a child run happily past the window—from the van I have seen it: so sometimes the heart but passeth across the eyes with a glad face, singing from one happy thought to where another waits. I think my heart passed so and thou didst catch the gleam."

He heard her take in a quick breath as her words ended. Then, "Suffer me to go now," she said. "Keep my pretty flowers;" and turned and went swiftly from him down the slope; and was dim where the moonlight faded; and was gone in the further darkness.

CHAPTER VII

ALONE ON PLOWMAN'S RIDGE

She was as quickly gone from Percival's mind as from his sight. Now that he was free and alone—as he had wished to be alone—he faced about with an abrupt movement and began to set homewards at a swift pace along the Ridge; simultaneously his mind returned to his own business.

He had reached a sudden determination while he talked with Japhra; he found his mind carried forward to the scenes of its prosecution, and he was made to breathe deeply and to walk fast as he visioned them. A conflict possessed him and tore at him as he went. Before he got to bed that night he would have from Aunt Maggie what she purposed for his future—he would have it in definite words—he would not be put off by vague generalisations—he would accept nothing in the nature of "next year will be time enough to decide"—nay, nor "next month," nor "next week"—he would have it definitely, clearly, unmistakably now. That was his determination; thence arose the conflict. He assured himself as he walked that let him but know Aunt Maggie's intentions, and however cruel, however impossible, however unendurable they might be, he would follow wise Japhra's advice—would meet in the ring as if it were a physical antagonist the passionate impulse to reward all kind Aunt Maggie's love by violent refusal to obey her—would meet and would defeat it there.

He threw up his head as he so thought and had his fists clenched and his jaw set. The action made him conscious of old friend wind. At this the pitch of his heat, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" shouted old friend wind in his ears. "Accept idleness if Aunt Maggie so desires, will you?—and the laughter and contempt, eh? Ha! Ha! Ha!"

He put down his head again. The wind was getting up; it took some buffeting.

He began to reason now that he should have argued with Japhra when Japhra laid down the law of self-discipline and moral conduct.

"You can't make one rule to cover everything!" he said aloud, driving along against the wind. "A man must do something with his life!" he cried.

He suddenly realised that he was dallying; he suddenly knew that he was weakening. He was persuading himself that the hour of the fight would fall when he questioned Aunt Maggie; he suddenly realised that the battle was already begun.

The knowledge brought him to a dead halt. His thoughts had fallen in train with his steps: he had the feeling that he was being beaten while he walked—only could be master of himself while he stood still and centred all his faculties on defeating the impulses that goaded him as they had goaded him earlier in the day. As the sufferer on a sick-bed tosses wearily through the sleepless night and comes from weariness to savage groans and curses that rest is not to be found nor a cool position discovered, so he lashed in spirit to find a stable thought that would support him amid the tumult that possessed him. He strove to image Aunt Maggie with gentle eyes; he could command no more than a glimpse before she was presented to him again as not understanding—not understanding!—unkind, unkind! He directed his mind at Japhra and strove to see how small a thing, how childish, how petty was his trouble; in a moment, "Preposterous! preposterous!" shouted the tumult. "A small thing to others? Easy for them to think that. Let them apply it to their own concerns! How can they judge what is your affair alone? If you are struck, can they feel your pain? If you are starving, can they measure your hunger?" And again, with greater cunning: "Why, what a damnable philosophy is this that calls upon a man to suffer any rebuke, and smile and submit, and declare it is a small thing, unworthy of notice, and cover himself with sophistries as that life is too big, the sea too deep, the hills too high, for such an affair to cause affront! What, is that a man's part, do you think? A man's part—or a coward's?"

"Not the right way to put it!" Percival struggled. "A false way to look at it!"

And his adversary, with deeper cunning yet: "Is it fight you would, as Japhra bade you? You did not explain all the circumstances to him. A man must do something with his life—he admitted that. Is it fight you would? Why, fight then! Choose your own life. Make your own life. For that a man should fight! Get into the world and prove yourself a man! You are no better than a baby here—worse than a baby; you're a lout. What sort of a lout will you be in another year or so? What will they think of you then? Ah, go on; make this precious ring-business of your life. Rebuke yourself—your natural desires, your rightful ambitions; win your fight as Japhra bade you win it, and then when all laugh at you or ignore you for a contemptible lout—then tell them, tell all the village what a rare prize you have really won—tell it to Rollo, tell it to Dora!"

The poor boy cried aloud: "Oh, these infernal thoughts! These infernal thoughts! If only I could get them out of my head—think of something else!" He was going mad over it, he told himself. His head ached—ached. It would all come right—there was no cause for all this worrying. He had often thought about it before—never till now, till to-day, this wild, maddening, throbbing fury of trouble. What was it? What was it that caused these feelings and all this pain—why, why was he so taxed and tormented? If only he could get it out of his mind, could think of something else till he got home! There would be the jolly, jolly little supper with Aunt Maggie awaiting him; after it they would talk quietly, happily together, and he would tell her how he really must be doing something, and she would understand and everything would be put right. If only he could get it out of his mind—if he went back now as he was, why, he was not in a fit state of mind to go near her—and why? why? why this sudden difference, this sudden, maddening, throbbing state that goaded and tortured like a wild live thing within his brain? why?

III

More reasoned thoughts these—at least a consciousness of his condition and an attempt to plumb its cause. More reasoned thoughts—and they brought him suddenly to a calmer moment and there to the answer he sought: Dora.

He was not far in person from the very spot where earlier in the day the vision of her had come to him and he had breathed her name and had her name come floating about him—Dora! Dora! Dora! soft as rose petals fall, sweet as they. He was not far in person from that spot—realising her in spirit he was aswoon again in that vision's ecstasy; and suddenly knew what reason urged his burning mood, and suddenly discovered why he burned to do. She the sweet cause of all this new distress!—hers the dear fault that life was now thus changed!

Further than that he might not go—nor cared to seek. It was not his—nor ever belongs to youth suddenly under the sex attraction—to know a new ichor was mingled with his blood, causing it to surge and boil and test the very fibre of his veins. Not his to know a sap that had been storing in his vigour was now released whence it had stored—touching new strengths that had not yet been felt; flushing the brain in cells not yet aroused; and crying, and crying to be relieved; and causing in his strength a tingling vibrancy, as a willow rod that has been bent springs upright and vibrates when its constraint is cut. Not his to know, nor care to seek, how love manifested itself within him, nor what love was, nor why he loved, nor if, indeed, love were this sudden thing. He only knew that what had served his boyhood could not suffice now Dora filled his mind; he only knew that in all the world to bring to Dora's eyes the light of admiration was his sole desire; he only knew that to have her hold him in contempt—even in slight regard—was to endure an outrage unendurable; he only knew he was possessed to challenge mighty businesses—of arms, of strength, of courage, of riches—that he might win her smile.

He had the new thoughts now for which he had cried while the tumult of right and wrong conduct vexed him. She filled his mind, suffused his being, stood with her exquisite face before his eyes. Peace in the guise of ardour came where conflict in passion's flame had burned. "If only I could see her before I go home!" he thought.

The recollection came of a hot day earlier in the week when, at lunch with Dora and Rollo at the Old Manor, they had conspired to abuse the sultry weather. "But the evenings are worth it," Dora had said. "In London it is different;" with her mother she had just come from London for a few days at Abbey Royal before she went, for her last term, to the "finishing" school near Paris. "In London it is different—of ten more stifling at night than in the day. But here! Here the evenings are worth it. Always after dinner I stroll in the garden—and love it."

If only he could see her before he went home! He looked at his watch beneath the moonlight. Almost nine o'clock it told him. That would be about her hour. He could strike across to Abbey Royal in fifteen minutes if he ran. There was just the chance!—just the chance of a glimpse of her, the first glimpse since this new and adorable sense of her had come to be his. He might even speak with her—hear her voice. Hear her voice!—it was the utmost desire he had in all the world! There was just the chance!—if it failed, still he could see the home where she lived, see it with the new eyes that now were his—her home, the grounds her feet had trod, the gates her hand had touched, the flowers perhaps her dress had brushed or she had stooped to breathe.

There was just the chance!—along the Ridge, down to Upabbot, behind the church and so to her home. His mind leapt across his route, eager to urge his pace. He pocketed his watch and set towards the shrine that had his heart.

CHAPTER VIII

WITH DORA IN THE DRIVE

There was just the chance! "Ah, Chance be kind!" his prayer, but in the simpler form: "If only I can see her!" For he could not have told himself precisely what he desired of her. The new condition of mind and body that possessed him was too newly come for him clearly to understand towards what it impelled him. We speak of love as an intoxication. He was as it were beneath the first and sudden influence of a draught of wine more potent than the drinker knows—causing an elevation of the spirits, that is to say, a sharper note in the surroundings, something of a singing in the ears; a readiness for adventure, but not a clear notion as to the form of adventure required; a sudden comprehension that there is more tingling stuff in life than ever the dull round has revealed; but a sense that it is there and must be found rather than an exact knowledge of what it will prove to be. He only knew he wished to see her; that seemed the goal; he had no thoughts nor fancies to take him to what might lie beyond—then reached the Abbey gates and saw the drive, and saw her there, and stopped as if a hand suddenly rebuked him in the throat.

That he felt a surge run through his being and flame upon his face, that he felt suddenly abashed and could not dare to make his presence known—these marked his nearness to knowledge of his state.

The night was very clear. By now the full moon had disdained more trifling with the clouds that earlier had joined hands about her. Far to the west they trailed their watery burdens to the hills: she queened above them—queenly serene, aloof in the unbounded vault that all her empery of stars about her ruled and divided subject to her rule. The Abbey gates stood wide. Between their pillars little breezes came to him and brought to him the fragrance of the flowers that banked the drive on either hand. He saw they also stirred the dress and some light scarf that Dora wore.

Mystery was here. He knew not what—only that, conditioned by some new sense that caused him strangeness, he was upon the threshold of things as yet unknown.

He watched—afraid as yet. She was stooped above a cluster of pansies. While he looked, she plucked a blossom here and there, her hand now hovering above their shade and now caressed amid their bloom, and raised them to her face.

She turned then and came towards him; and he drew back a step. Mystery was here; not yet, not yet to challenge what it held!

She reached the gates and paused a moment. The little breezes that had brought the flowers to him stopped their play; her scarf's floating ends—gossamer and delicately painted—came softly to her sides. You might have said that the night airs had heralded her here, had taken form in her scarf's ends to attend her as she walked, and now awaited which way she should please to move.

Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! The childish appreciation of her, aroused in him years before, returned to him again. Snow-White-and-Rose-Red—that was she! As when a child he had been caused a childish wonder and a child's unspoilt delight at so rare a thing as she appeared to him, so now, seeing her for the first time with the new eyes that belonged to his new condition, he felt himself amazed and almost awed that beauty could have this degree. Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! All she had promised in her girlish years dowered her now in the burgeoning of her maidenhood—and dowered more than it had told, as all the beauty of the opening bud scarcely can hint the opened blossom's beauty; and dowered more than it had told by the increasing strangeness, as she grew, of this rare perfection of each feature in one face. Rare, strangely rare, the transparent fairness of her skin; rare, rare that almost crimson shade on either cheek, sharply defined, not blended, as it were frozen there; rare the dark pansy of her wide and stilly eyes; rare, most rare of all, transcending all, the high air with which she bore herself—that her chaste and faultless face maintained, with which her eyes looked and that her presence seemed to make.

He saw her dress. He saw her scarf to be some filmy veil about her shoulders and that beneath it all her throat was bare. He saw that it was turned about her throat in a loose fold that lay where her bosom was disclosed by the silk evening gown she wore, draped low, but maidenly discreet. At throat, at breast, at arms, at hands, he saw this filmy thing was challenged of its whiteness and seemed to take a shade.

She moved; he thought to speak. Mystery was here and held him on its threshold.

Watching her he had a sudden new conception of her quality. Later, when he had spoken to her, when he had left her, when he trod again each passage of their meeting, recalled her voice, her mode of speech, and how she bore herself, he recalled that conception and knew it was most proper to her, and thrilled to know it so.

As he looked, and afterwards as he remembered, he conceived the word that estimated all her beauty, all her quality and her degree—frozen. Frozen and thus invested with the strange rareness that frozen beauty has. Frozen and thus most proper that those flames upon her cheeks never could stain beyond themselves, as blood that will not run in snow; proper the quaint precision of the words she used, as icicles broken in a cold hand; proper the high pitch of her voice, curiously hard, without modulations, as winter sounds are hard.

Snow-White-and-Rose-Red—and frozen snow and frozen red. She was that in his new discovery of her: and was that better than he knew; caparisoned and trained for that.

III

She raised to her face the pansies he had seen her gather, caressed them a moment against her lips, then turned and went a few steps back. And then he spoke—stepped from the pillar's shadow and into mystery's doors and called her—"Dora!"

The little breezes ran among the flowers: "Bend! Bend! you sleepy things and blow her your caresses where she moves again!"—ran among the tree-tops high above the borders: "Salute! Salute! you sentinels, and show your joy, she comes!"—chased from her path a daring leaf or two—sprung to her person and bade her veil attend her—caught his low whisper and tossed it from her ears.

Tiny the stir; yet stiller all the voice he made. He waited; breathed her name again—"Dora!" and then she heard.

She gave the faintest start; turned, and said, "Why—Percival?" and then a little laugh, and then spoke "Percival!" again.

He went to her. "Did I frighten you? I'm sorry."

He went into the mystery that barred him at the gate. Her surprise caused the shades upon her cheeks to flame to sudden crimson, promoting her beauty to its most high effect. Her lips—also of her surprise—were lightly parted, alert, with the aspect of some nymph of the woods and glades, startled and poised to listen. Not yet, not yet his to know all the truth of what influence had him here. He only had known he wished to see her: he only knew now that he wished to stay and talk with her. He was in the mystery—not yet of it; but already, at this first contact with her presence, a glimmering, a suspicion arose—softened his voice, quickened his senses.

"I ought to have been frightened," she said. "I never heard you come. But I scarcely was startled. It is the most curious circumstance, but I happened to be thinking of you."

As icicles broken in a cold hand!

He did not cry, as love might have directed him—"Thinking of me! You!" Not yet, not yet the knowledge that would give that ardour. He only was boyishly pleased. He only said: "Were you, Dora? I'm awfully glad you were."

And she, no more aware of deeper things than he: "Well, they were not particularly nice thoughts I had of you," she said, and gave a little laugh that toned with the clear pitch of her voice. "Indeed, I was vexed with you."

He laughed back an easy laugh: "I wonder what I've done?"

"It is what you have not done, Percival—or did not do. I was at the Manor all the afternoon and had the dullest time that anybody could imagine. Your fault. Rollo was expecting you to tea, and was looking out for you all the time, and was the most ungracious person. To me, you know, it is ridiculous how he seems to dote upon you."

And Percival laughed brightly again. Happy, happy to be with her—alone, alone at this hour, in this still place! "Old Rollo!" he laughed. "Well, anyway, if I failed him, I've seen you."

She asked him. "But why have you come—so late?" and at that his laughter left him.

"I wanted to see you," he said. "I don't know why," and paused.

He did not know; but in declaring it to her, and in that pause, came a step nearer discovery. Some nameless reason held his speech, and, while she waited, fluttered in his eyes and communicated its influence to her also. In that pause suspicion came to both of some strange element that trembled in the air—fugitive, remote, but causing its presence to be known as a scent declares itself upon the breeze. She saw a tinge of redness kindle in his face. He saw the faintest trace of deepening colour in the shades upon her cheeks.

Not yet, not yet the truth! Transient the spell and quickly gone. Only, a little shaken by it, "You're going away soon, Dora," he said. "I think that's why I came."

Free of it: "But that's not a reason," she answered him lightly. "I am not going so suddenly—not till the end of the week."

"Saturday—it's the day after to-morrow."

"Ah, well, time goes so slowly here."

"Dull for you—I can imagine that. To this French school, are you going, Dora? I heard you telling Lady Burdon of it."

"It's not a school. No more school for me, and I am very thankful."

"Tell me what you do there."

She went into a sudden break of laughter. She had somewhere picked up a single vulgar phrase that consorted most strangely with her precise manner of speech. "Your coming here like this," she laughed, "and asking such very funny things!"—then used her phrase—"it tickles me to death."

The piquancy of it delighted him, and he laughed delightedly, and for some reason had a stronger sense of her rare beauty. Not yet, not yet the truth, but nearer yet, even as such truth advances by the strangest and most secret steps.

"Tell me, though, Dora!"

"Oh, how it can interest you I am puzzled to imagine! Pleasant enough things, then. There are twelve of us there, all English, I am glad to say. We never speak English, though—always French; and then there are German and Italian days; they make us laugh very much."

As icicles broken in the hand!

Her laughter had caused the shades on her cheek to glow. He gazed at her in sheerest admiration; felt a new stirring of his blood; felt his breath quicken. She was close, close to him. The little breezes that had attended her, and had gone as if asulk at his intrusion, came with a sudden little fury to win her back again, and smote him full with all the fragrance that she had, and tossed her scarf and tossed her skirt against him.

She drew back her skirt, using the hand that held the pansies she had gathered. The action brushed his hand with hers and with her flowers.

Not yet, not yet the truth, but almost come! He slipped his fingers about her wrist, holding her hand mid-breast between them. "Give me those flowers, Dora."

She slower in approaching it, but suspicious again of some strange element in the air, as a fawn that lifts a doubtful head to question a new thing in the breeze. "You have one buttonhole already," she told him, her voice not very easy.

He looked down at Ima's wild rose in his coat. "That's nothing," he said, and began to remove it whence it was pinned.

He was clumsy, for his hand trembled—the other still had hers. He was clumsy. Thoughts, thoughts, were at hammer in his brain—new to him, fierce to him and, as from iron in a forge, striking a glow that glowed within his eyes.

She saw the glow, saw how his hand shook. "It is well fastened," she said.

He broke off the rose at its head, jerked it aside and drew down the stalk. She suffered him to take her flowers, and very carefully then he placed them where the rose had been—hers! hers! That she had plucked! That she had held! He was at the truth and he looked at her.

She almost there.

The glow in his eyes was turned full upon her and she stepped back from it. The secret thing the night had was full about her and she had alarm of it. "I find it rather chilly standing here," she said, "—and late. I must be going in."

He watched her take the veil about her shoulders another turn about her throat, and watched her move away a pace. He started after her as though he burst through bonds that held him. He walked beside her, moving his tongue in his mouth as though it were locked from words and sought them; and he could hear his heart knock.

So, without words—in silence that shouted louder than speech—they came to where the drive bent towards the house. She paused, and he knew his dismissal.

His face was red, as a child reddens when control of tears is on the edge of breaking. His voice, when he spoke, had a strained note as the voice is caused to strain when only one thought can be spoken and a hundred press for speech. And strange—as between them—the words at last he found: "Dora, you'd hate a man—wouldn't you?—with nothing—who just poked along and did nothing?"

It was the door that should introduce her to the knowledge wherein he struggled. But she was only surprised, not recognising it; and surprised, relieved indeed. "Any one would," she said.

He flung wide the door. "Ah! Do you suppose I am going to?"

Love is an instinct and is played by instinct. Struggling in the knowledge, in the mystery, that had drawn him here and that now engulfed him, he scarcely yet was aware that he loved, but by instinct was put in command of all the cunning of the game. His question fronted her with personal issue between them; it is the first, the last, the essential strategy.

"Why, Percival!" she said and stopped—saw the door wide; and he saw the colour deepen where her colour lay. "Why, Percival, why ever should I suppose it of you?"

He could control his voice no more. The strained note went. He said thickly: "But you'll begin to think it. In time you're bound to—if I let you. And then scorn me. If I just idled here you're bound to scorn me. Any one would—you said it."

Nervous her breathing. "But you—you never could be like that, Percival. I've always thought of you as doing things. Every one thinks it. I have noticed how they do."

All the distress he had suffered earlier in the day was back with him now, joined in fiercest tumult with what caused his heart to knock. He cried "They soon won't!" and cried it on a bitter note that made her go an unthinking step towards what waited her. "Percival, they always will," she said. "I always will, Percival."

The redness went from his face. His own clear voice came back to him. All, all his being braced from storm to his control. He breathed "Dora! Will you?"

The stress that had been his was hers. She found no words; she only nodded—moved her lips for "yes" but made no sound. He had come slowly to the truth, by blundering ways that sometimes brought him near and sometimes went astray. She was suddenly come—and come, not of herself, but of as it were a flame that his voice as he spoke, his ardour as he bent towards her, seemed to communicate. She was suddenly come, was a degree bewildered, wanted even yet some further light. She only nodded.

"Dora, you are going for a long time. I heard you tell—"

She said very low: "For a year."

"Dora! A year!"

"I am to be a year away. It is the last time. It is to finish."

"A year! A year! Oh, Dora, a year!"

Her face was close to his, her lips a shade apart, her wide eyes lifted to him. Rare, rare he had thought her; perfect he knew her. That mystic thing the night had held, held them mute, magnetised, privy from all the world, alone. They stood so close the air he drew had first caressed her. They stood so close that her young bosom almost told him how she breathed. Slowly, as he were drawn to it, he stooped towards her; steadily, as she were held, she suffered his face to approach. Their lips touched, stayed for a space—smaller, infinitely less, than mind can conceive; wider, immeasurably more, as their joined spirits reckoned time, and rushed through time in bliss of ecstasy, than mind can reckon space.

And then he kissed her.

Crimson she flamed in the places of her colour—flaming and more flaming and deeper yet their flame. Their sharp limitations drove her driven white about them; from throat to flame and flame to brow as lily was her hue. She did not move nor speak, and he, amazed before her rareness, drew back a step. She might have been a statue, so still she stood. She might not have breathed, nor thought, so motionless her breast, her eyes so wide, so still her gaze. Only that glowing scarlet on her cheeks, only her skin's transparency—soft, deep, as if beneath it some jewel gave a secret light—declared her mortal and proclaimed she lived.

A space passed. She came from the trance in which she seemed to be. She gave a little sigh. As if she had been struck, not kissed; as if she had been robbed, not possessed. "Oh! Percival!" she said.

And he: "Oh! Dora!"

He sprung to her, took both her hands; clasped them in his and adored her with his eyes; bent his head to them and raised them to his lips.

"Oh, Dora, have I hurt you? Oh, Dora, I love you so!"

"Let me go in, Percival!"

He held her hands against his breast. "I could not help it! I could not help it! I love you, Dora! I've always loved you! I suddenly knew I'd always loved you!"

She spoke so low he scarcely could hear her voice: "Percival, let me go in!"

"Oh, Dora, have I hurt you? Dear, dear Dora, you are all the world to me. I love you so, I love you so!"

The faintest movement of her head gave him his answer and gave him ecstasy.

"I have not hurt you? You are not angry? I knew—or I would not have kissed you. Speak to me, dear Dora."

She only whispered: "Percival, I would like to go in. I am afraid."

He cried: "I know. You are so beautiful—so beautiful; not meant for me to love you."

"You are hurting my hands, Percival."

He kissed her hands again—fragile and white and cold and scented, like crushed, cold flowers in his grasp. He told her: "From the very first I loved you—but could not know it then. From that day when I first saw you! Look how I must have been born to love you—you'll not be frightened then. Snow-White-and-Rose-Red I called you. Smile, darling Dora, as you smiled when I told you in the muddy lane that day. Do you remember?"

She had no smile: still seemed aswoon, still scarcely breathed, as some bewildered dove—captured, past fluttering—which only quivers in the hands that hold it.

"If only you can sometimes think of me. You will understand then and think again perhaps, and know all my life is changed, and know that everything I do I shall do for you. I'll not see you again. I'll not be here when you come back."

At that he felt her fingers move within his hands.

"I cannot stay here now—now that I love you. I shall go."

He felt her tremble, and she breathed: "Oh, why? Oh, where?"

"How could I face you again and still be idling here? I don't know where, Dora. I only know why—because I love you so. Anywhere, anything to get me something that will give you to me!"

She whispered "Percival!" and stopped as though she had not strength for more. And he breathed "Dora!" as though he knew what she would say and by intensity of love would draw it from her.

She slowly drew her hands from his. She took them to her breast, and faltered again—again as she were wounded, afraid, struck, threatened, atremble at some fearful brink, robbed of some vital virtue: "Oh, Percival!" and caught her breath and said "Oh, Percival, what is it—this?"

"It is love!" he cried. "Dora, it is love!"

She gave a little sigh; she unclasped her hands; seemed to relax in all her spirit; suffered her hands, like cold white flowers floating earthwards, lovewards to float to his.

"Tell me!" he breathed.

Soft as her hands fell, "I always shall think of you," she told him.

He besought her "Tell me!"

She whispered "Always!"

In a man's voice, out of a sudden and terrible review of his condition—possessed of nothing, chained to do nothing—and of her high estate: "Others will love you!" he cried.

As they would nestle there and there abide, her fingers moved within his hands.

In a man's voice, full man as full love makes, "Tell me," he besought her.

Scarcely perceptible her answer came; scarcely her lips moved for it—faint as the timid breeze ventured to the innermost thicket, soft as the hushed caress of summer rain along the hedgerows, "I shall always love you," she breathed.

Shortly he left her.

CHAPTER IX

WITH AUNT MAGGIE IN FAREWELL

It was past eleven when Percival got back to "Post Offic." He had been absent seven hours. He felt himself removed by thrice as many years from the moment when he had flung away from Aunt Maggie to work off by active exercise the feelings aroused in him when, to his demands that he must be doing something with his life, she had prayed him only wait.

Day then, night now, and he as changed.

The mood he brought her was unlike any he had proposed should be his case. On Plowman's Ridge before he saw Japhra he had imagined for his return a petulant, a trying-to-be-calm scene in which he should repeat his purpose that an end must be made of the purposeless way of life in which she was keeping him. By Fir-Tree Pool, with wise Japhra propounding how a man must encourage his spirit and defeat his flesh, he had imagined himself gentle with dear Aunt Maggie; gently showing her what restlessness had him, persuading her to his ends, or, of his love for her, accepting her wishes. Now he was come back and neither case was his. Day then, night now, and he as changed. Now he had lived that hour with Dora in the drive; now he had kissed her; now had heard her breathe "I shall always love you." Gone every thought of petulant distress; gone Japhra's counsels—gone boyhood, manhood come!

The change was stamped upon his face, figured in his air. Aunt Maggie looked up eagerly as he entered. She had waited him anxiously. He stood a moment on the threshold of the room and looked at her with steady, reckoning eyes. She saw; and she greeted him fearfully. "Why, Percival, dear, how very late you are," she said.

He replied: "It took me longer to get back than I expected."

His tone matched his aspect and the look in his eyes. Aunt Maggie's voice trembled a little: "You must have been a long way, dear?"

"A good many miles," he said, and came forward and went to his place at the table where supper was laid, and sat down.

"Are you very tired, dear?—you look tired."

"No—no, thank you, Aunt Maggie."

His voice was absent—or stern; and absently—or sternly—he looked at her across the table.

She caught her breath and hesitated, and began pathetically to try by brightness to rally him from his mood.

"At least you must be terribly hungry," she smiled. "Here comes Honor with just what you like."

A tray tanged against the door, and was borne in by Honor, uncommonly grim of the face.

"Now wasn't that clever of Honor!" Aunt Maggie went on. "Five minutes ago—after waiting since seven—she said she knew you would be just in time if she began to cook the trout then; and here it is ready, and most delicious, I'm sure, just as you arrive."

Honor's actual words had been: "Time and tide wait for no dangerous delays, Miss Oxford, and I don't neither—not a single instant longer. I'll put these troutses on now which ought to have been on at ten minutes to seven, and I'll cook 'em, and cook 'em and cook 'em till I drop fainting on my own kitchen carpet and till they're nasty black cinders that will serve him right. Lost his way! lost his nasty bold temper! It's no good talking different to me, Miss, not if your voice was tinkling trumpets, it isn't!" She had burst in with her tray prepared to repeat her wrath to Percival's face, but caught the appealing look in Aunt Maggie's eyes, perceived that something was seriously amiss with Percival, and exchanged her heat for the affection he had won in her from the first moment, years before, of his arrival—the sweetest bundle of shawls—at "Post Offic."

"Cooked to a turn, Master Percival, dear," Honor said, uncovering before him the steaming dish.

"And only just caught," Aunt Maggie smiled. "Rollo brought them in just before supper time."

And Honor: "And want it you do, as I can see. Nasty pinched look you've got, Master Percival."

And Aunt Maggie: "And look at that beer, dear. You'd scarcely think it was a new cask, would you? As clear as crystal."

And Honor: "Ah, 'Pitch that cask about,' I says to the man when he delivered it. 'Pitch that cask about, my beauty, and you can pitch it back into your waggin', I says. 'Young master don't want to eat his beer with a knife and fork, not if you do,' I says sharp."

And Aunt Maggie: "You see what care we take of you, Percival, although you leave us all day long."

And Honor: "And now I'll just get your slippers down for you. Nothing like slippers when you're tired. And then you'll be to rights."

So these fond women, perceiving him amiss, strove, as women will, to heal him with their sympathy; and reckoned nothing—as is woman's part—that he nothing responded to their gentleness nor anything abated his set and brooding air. The world may be chased up and down to find men conspired to soothe a woman's brow and scarcely will disclose a single case. Men weary or wax impatient of such a task. But every household at some time shows women gently engaged against a bearish man. It is the woman's part—womanly as we say: using a rare word for a beautiful virtue.

At another time—in the days before that evening's magic, in the life that preceded his present only by that hour in the drive with Dora—Percival had long been won from moodiness by their solicitude for him. Not now! Those days were only a single hour gone; its events sundered them from the present by an abyss that had a lifetime's depth, a lifetime's breadth from marge to marge. New feelings were his and they enveloped him against old appeals as a suit of mail against arrows. New prospects held his eyes and they blotted out homelier visions as the changed scene of a play is dropped across an earlier background. He was not preoccupied and therefore unaware of the loving sentences addressed to him. His case was this—that he was a new man, and as a stranger, therefore, listening to affections that did not concern him. That he found himself insensible to their appeal was not that he loved Aunt Maggie less or had suffered abatement of the affection he had for hot-tongued, warm-hearted Honor. None of these. It was this only—that he loved another more; this only—that the fires of his love had sprung out in a new place and there burned with heat infinitely more fierce than the flame where formerly his affections had warmed their hands.

III

Such of his meal as he required—and that was what habit, not appetite, demanded—he ate in silence. To silence also Aunt Maggie went, shortly after Honor had left them. She attempted once or twice to continue to persuade him from his mood—protested that he was eating nothing; sought to rally him with little scraps of gossip, with questions touching his afternoon. Of no avail. Presently she clasped her hands together on the table before him, and only watched him, and only sought to discover from his face what thing it was his face betided, and only felt her fears increase.

When he was done he pushed back his chair and she dropped her eyes, for his were now upon her and had the steady, reckoning look she had observed—and feared—when he regarded her for that moment at his entrance. She could not endure the feeling that he watched her, and watched her so. "You will go to bed soon, Percival," she said. "You do look so tired."

He replied: "I am not tired. I have something to ask you first, Aunt Maggie;" and after a pause he went on: "Aunt Maggie, I was telling you this afternoon that I thought I ought to be doing something. Well, more than that I thought I ought to be doing something, and more than merely telling you—because I know I was in a great state about it and went off in a great state."

She answered, "Yes, Percival?"

"You said there was plenty of time for that."

"Yes, Percival."

"There isn't, Aunt Maggie." And he went on quickly: "there isn't plenty of time to think about what I am going to do. I am not a boy any longer. Even if I started to-morrow I should be starting late. Every one at my age is doing something."

His tone was firm and quiet but was kind. She said that which made it take a harder note.

"Percival, you need only wait," she said, "till you are twenty-one."

She saw his face darken in a change as swift and chill as sudden shadow along the sea. "Oh, that!" he cried. "That! I don't want to hear that any more or ever again! Is that all you have for me?"

She clasped and unclasped her hands on the table before her. He waited several moments for her answer. Then he said: "And what am I to do till then?"

She told him: "Only wait with me, Percival."

He said very quietly: "No, I will not wait. I will not stay with you. I am going away."

The stress that each suffered was broken out of them by his announcement. The thought of losing him, the thought of how a word, revealing her secret, would keep him, broke from her in her cry: "No, no, Percival! Oh, Percival, no!"

Her sudden voice and its anguish smote him to his depths in his own stress as a sudden cry in the night that shocks the heart. He uttered in a voice she had never heard—most hoarse, most atremble: "Oh, understand! For pity's sake try to understand. I am so that I will never sleep again—never again till I have earned my sleep. Oh, understand that I am a man!"

She saw his dear face, his handsome face, his face that she loved so and was to lose unless she spoke, all twisted up as though he writhed in pain. She cried: "Percival, don't look like that. I can keep you. I cannot let you go."

He looked at her with eyes that told his anguish of this scene and of his spirit. "You cannot keep me," he said. "I am going."

She breathed: "By telling you I can keep you."

He said: "Tell me, then."'

She began, her tongue heavy as a key is rusty that is to turn in a lock closed eighteen years; "Rollo—" she began, and stopped.

He had for a moment believed that she intended to tell him this matter affecting his future that he knew must be delusion—some wonderful plan, as wonderful as impossible, such as a woman leading Aunt Maggie's retired life might have—whose delusion, having it before him, he could at last show her. But at her "Rollo," disappointed, he broke out, "Oh, what has old Rollo to do with it?"

Her voice was making a stumbling effort to hold on at turning the key. But his "Old Rollo" caused her to halt, afraid, as one turning a key in very fact might halt and draw back at a footstep.

He saw her face go grey with the hue of ashes. "Aunt Maggie!" he cried, and got up quickly and went to her. "I don't mean to be unkind. I must go. I cannot stay. But I'm not going angry—not running away. I love you—love you, you know how I love you. Just think of it as going on a visit. It's no more than that. I'm going with old Japhra—that's not like going, being with him, is it?"

She just said: "When, dear?"

"Darling, in the morning. At daybreak."

She began to cry, and clung to him. But it was more than losing him had made that ashy hue in her face that had wrung his heart. It was realisation of a sudden thing that menaced her revenge—a thing suddenly arisen in its long, long path whose end she now was reaching. Thinking, when the hour came, the more dreadfully to strike Lady Burdon, she had deliberately made possible and had encouraged the friendship between Percival and Rollo. Had she gone too far? What when she told Percival and he saw it was "Old Rollo" he was to displace, "Old Rollo" upon whom he was to bring disaster—what if—?

She dared not so much as finish that question.

CHAPTER X

WITH EGBERT IN FREEDOM

In the morning when he came early to her room, she was easier and able only to suffer her distress at losing him. Thoughts had come to her, helping her; and helping her the more in that they were of a part with the fatalism which had assured her at Audrey's death-bed that nothing could go wrong in her scheme. His resolve to go away was surely, she thought, fate's contribution to her success. Always she had planned for twenty-one—when he should be of age, and qualified himself to avenge his mother. Last night, in agony at losing him, she had nearly robbed herself of that. Fate, in guise of her panic realisation of his affection for Rollo, had interfered to stop her. Last night she had thought it insupportable to be left without him. While she lay sleepless—and heard her darling pacing his floor in the next room—fate had again encouraged her heart by showing her that this was well, not ill—that this was fate working for her; well that he should now, in the last period, be separated from Rollo.

Thus supported she was saved from the uttermost extremity of the collapse that came upon her when fondly he kissed her as she lay in bed, left her, returned to press her to him again.—"Think of it as a visit, Aunt Maggie, only that. Just a visit to give these idle whacking great hands something to do"—and then was gone.

One or two—up thus early—who saw him go by and came to Aunt Maggie when it was noised that he had gone away, told her how stern he looked—how strange. Miss Purdie, early in her garden, had noticed it. "Oh, Miss Oxford, if I had known! Oh, to think he was going when I saw him! Oh, and I suspected something was wrong. There was something in his face I had never seen there before. I thought to myself 'Now what is the matter with you, I wonder?' And I stood and looked after him, and dropped one of my garden gloves and never knew I had lost it until I was back in the house and found I had only one to take off. Oh, when I think of all his sweet ways and his handsome face...."

Stern he looked and strange, and stern his thoughts and difficult. His plans ran to coming up with Japhra on the Dorchester Road and joining him. Beyond?—he could supply nothing beyond. His urgent desire went to being away from home, and for his own respect and for his mind's ease working to earn his food. Beyond?—he could see nothing beyond. His thoughts and all his heart and all his being went to his Dora, to her exquisite beauty, to the rapture of their kiss, to the divine ecstasy of her whisper, "I shall always love you;" beyond?—black, black beyond, most utter black, most utter hopeless; emptiness most utter, mock most shrill, most sharp.

He laughed, poor boy; and "Fool! Fool!" cried, "abject fool!" He groaned, poor boy, and "Dora! Dora!" cried, "oh! Dora!" He set his teeth, poor boy, and braced his strength; threw up his chin and clenched a fist, and "Somehow! Somehow!" cried, "Somehow!"

Most to be pitied then, poor boy, as old friend wind, in whose path now he came, knew and mocked, or might have known and surely mocked—buffeting him with "Ha! Ha! Ha!" tossing his "Somehow! Somehow!" from his lips and chasing it and tearing it as old friend wind had heard resolves and mocked and tossed and chased and torn them from end to end along its course since mankind first resolving came.

But he was helped by that strong "Somehow!" as by resolve mankind—and youth the most of all—is ever helped. More stern, not less, it made him, but launched a shaft of light into the darkness of that Beyond—showing the adventure, not the desert there; inspiring him that somehow stuff was to be found there that somehow he would wrest to himself, somehow shape and beat to win him fulfilment of all his hopes.

Thus he was in brighter mood when presently he brought the white riband of the Dorchester road into view, in mood bright enough to laugh when, striking towards the spot where he proposed to pick up the van, he saw on a gate there a lank figure, bundle over shoulder, that suggested to him it could be no one but Egbert Hunt. He laughed—then had a tender look in his eyes, for his thoughts, as he made along in the direction of gate and figure, went to Rollo.

III

On his way home, when he had left Dora on the previous night, he had called in at Burdon Old Manor to bid Rollo good-by. Lady Burdon had gone to bed. He found Rollo in the billiard room, Egbert Hunt marking for him, and it was what had passed between them that had emphasised the endearment in his tone when he had said "Old Rollo" to Aunt Maggie.

Tender his look when he recalled how "Old Rollo," hearing he was going away, had dropped his cue and stared at him in blank dismay, then questioned him, and then had listened with twitching mouth when he had cried, "Oh, Rollo, things are so steep for me, old man. I can't explain. I must get out of this, that's all!"

For the first time—and the only time—in all their friendship it had been Rollo's to play the supporter. "Why, Percival, dear, dear old chap," he had cried, "don't look like that. For God's sake, don't. Whatever's wrong I can help you. We are absolute, absolute pals. No one ever had such a pal as you've been to me—now it's my turn. Stay here with us a bit, old man. Yes, that's what you'll do. Let's fix that, old man. That will make everything right. Everything I've got is yours—you know that, don't you, old man?"

And when he had shaken his head and had explained that it was work—work for his hands he wanted, and was going to find with Japhra, Rollo had vented his feelings on Egbert Hunt with "What the devil are you standing there listening for, Hunt? Get out of this! Didn't I tell you to go? Get out!" And when they were alone, and when he had seen that Percival was not to be moved, had revealed his affection in last words that brought a dimness to Percival's eyes as he recalled them.

"Men don't talk about these things," Rollo had said, "so I've never told you all you are to me—but it's a fact, Percival, that I'm never really happy except when I'm with you. I've been like that ever since we met, and in all the jolly days we've had together. You know the sort of chap I am—quite different from you. I don't get on with other people. I've always hated the idea of going to Cambridge this October because it means mixing with men I shan't like and leaving you. You're everything to me, old man. It's always been my hope—I don't mind telling you now you're going—that when I settle down, after I come of age—you know what I mean—it's always been my hope that we'll be able to fix it up together somehow. I shall have business and things to look after—you know what I mean—that you can manage a damn sight better than I can. And I'll want some one to look after me—the kind of chap I am; a shy ass, and delicate. And you're the one, the only, only one. Just remember that, won't you, old man?..."

Percival was aroused from his warm recollection of it by the figure on the gate hailing him. Egbert Hunt it was. "Good lord!" Percival cried. "What on earth are you doing here—this time in the morning and with that bundle?"

"Coming with you," said Hunt.

"With me! Do you know where I'm going?"

Egbert Hunt pointed up the road where Japhra's van came plodding. "In that. Heard you tell Lord Burdon last night. Heard you say that Mr. Stingo's crowd was short of hands. The life for me. Fac'."

Percival stared at him—a grown man now, lanky, unhealthy, white of face.

"Does Rollo—does Lord Burdon know? Did he say you might go?"

"Told me to go to 'ell."

Percival laughed. "You'll find it that—you frightful ass."

"I'll be free," said Egbert darkly. "No man's slave I won't be any more. Every man's as good as the next where you're bound, I reckon. No more tyrangs for me. You're my sort, and always have been."

The van was up to them and pulled up with Japhra's surprised hail of greeting. Percival went to him where he sat on the forward platform. "Japhra, here's a hand for one of your crowd—a friend of mine. Is there work for him?"

Japhra looked at Egbert with unveiled belittlement. "There's work for all sorts," he said drily. "For him perhaps. Get up behind," he addressed Egbert. "I'll let old One Eye have a look at thee. He wants a hand."

Percival swung up beside Japhra and smiled good morning at Ima, who had come to the door. "Go on, Japhra."

"That's a poor lot, that friend of thine," said Japhra, clicking his tongue at Pilgrim. "How far dost thou come with us, little master?"

"All the way, Japhra."

Japhra looked at him keenly. "To Dorchester?"

"Farther than that. I'm going to be third lad in your boxing booth, Japhra. Go on; I'll explain."

CHAPTER XI

WITH JAPHRA ON THE ROAD

It was two years—near enough—before Percival came again to Burdon Village. Egbert Hunt found work with old One Eye who had the Wild West Rifle Range. Percival became "Japhra's Gentleman" (as the van folk called him), living with Japhra and Ima in the van, and earning his way in Japhra's booth.

A tough life, a quick life, a good life; and he "trained on," as they said in the vans of beast or man or show that, starting fresh, slipped into stride and did well. He trained on. Little room for trouble or for brooding thoughts. Up while yet the day was grey; stiff work in boots and vest and trousers in taking down the booth and loading-up, harnessing and getting your van away before too many kept the dust stirring ahead of you. Keen appetite for the breakfasts Ima cooked, eaten on the forward platform with the van wheels grinding the road beneath. The long, long trail to the next pitch,—now with Ima as she sat, one eye on the horse, the other on her needle, sewing, darning, making; now plodding alongside with Japhra, drinking his quaint philosophy, hearing his strange tales of men and countries, fights and hard trades he had seen. Now forward along the long line of waggons, now dropping back where they trailed a mile down the road; joining this party or that, chaffing with the brown-faced girls or walking with the men and listening to their tales of their craft and of their lives. Sometimes the road from pitch to pitch was short; then the midday meal would be taken at the new site and there would be an hour's doze before the booths were set up and business begun. Usually the journey took the greater part of the day—frequently without a halt—and work must begin immediately on arrival; the boxing booth built up—first the platform on which Percival and Japhra, Ginger Cronk and Snowball White paraded to attract the crowd—a thing of boards and trestles, the platform, that by sheer sweating labour must be made to lie even and stable whatever the character of the ground; three uprights at either end that sometimes must be forced into soil iron hard and sometimes must be coaxed to hold firm in marshy bog. The booth itself to be rigged then—the wooden framework that must be lashed and nailed and screwed; the wide lengths of canvas eyeletted for binding together; stakes for the ring to be driven in; seats to be bolted together and covered—and all at top, top speed with a mouthful of nails and screws and "Who in hell's got that mallet?" and "A hand here! a hand sharp! Blast her! she's slipped again!" and many a bruised finger and always a sweating back. And then sharp, sharp into the flannels, and out with the gloves; and parade till the booth was full; and spar exhibition rounds alleged to be for weighty purses; and fight all the challengers from the crowd four rounds apiece, any weight; and top-up with a stiff six rounds announced by Snowball White: "A sporting gentleman having put up a purse for knock-out or win on points match between Ginger Cronk, ten stun champion of the west,—who beat Curly Hawkins in eight rounds, knocked out Alf Jacobs after a desperate ding-dong o' fourteen rounds, defeated Young Philipps in five rounds, and Jew Isaacs in sixteen,—and Gentleman Percival, a lad with a future before him, whom you'll be proud to have seen, gentlemen, discovered this summer by Gipsy Japhra, the man who held the lightweight champion belt for four years in America and who has trained with all the great ring heroes, bare-knuckle men, gentlemen, of a glorious Prize Ring period of the past. You are requested to pass no remarks during the progress of this desperate encounter, but to signify appreciation in the usual manner. Gentlemen, Mr. Ginger Cronk, Mr. Gentleman Percival—TIME!—" And so on; and winding up with "a remarkable exhibition in which Gipsy Japhra, partnered by Gentleman Percival, will show the style and methods of the old P. R. gentlemen"—and then back to the platform again, to parade, to fill the booth, to fight—and so till the last visitor had left the fair to night and to its hoarse and worn-out workers.

A tough life, a quick life, a good life; ... and Percival trained on. At first he had been considerably tasked by the rough and tumble, ding-dong work in the boxing booth following the strenuous labour of the day, with no time lost between pitch and pitch. Aching limbs he had dropped on his couch when at last rest came, and tender face, bruised from six or seven hours' punching, that even the soft pillow seemed to hurt. But he trained on. In a few weeks it was tired to bed but unaching, unhurt—only deliciously weary with the wearyness of perfect muscles and nerves relaxed to delicious rest; early afoot, keen, and sound, and vigorous; brisk, ready smiling to jump into the ring for the last P. R. exhibition with old Japhra as for the first spar with Ginger Cronk or Snowball White. "Thou art the fighting type," wise Japhra had told him years before; and those exhibition rounds with the old man were each of them lessons that brought him to rare skill with his fists.

While they sat together before their turn Japhra would instruct what was to be learnt this time, and while they sparred "Remember!" Japhra would call, "Remember! Good! Good!—Weak! Weak!—Follow it! Follow it!—Speed's thy game!—Quick as thou canst sling them!—See how that hook leaves thee unguarded!—Again!—All open to me again!—Again!—ah, take it, then!" and clip! to the unprotected stomach, savage as he could drive it, would come old Japhra's left; and Percival go gasping, and Ginger Cronk to the spectators: "With that terrible punch, gentlemen, Gipsy Japhra knocked out Boy Duggan and took the championship belt at Los Angeles. Put your hands together, gentlemen, and give 'em a 'earty clap." When the round was ended Japhra would go over it point by point. When they sat or walked together, at meals or on the road, he was forever imparting his advice, his knowledge, his experience. He waas never tired of teaching ... and Percival trained on.

There came a day when "Thou must go slow with me," Japhra said after they had finished their round. "I have put skill to thy youth and strength. Thou must go slow with me or the folks will see nothing of the parts I am to show them." There came a day when he was given demonstration—if he had cared to recognise it for such—that the van folk knew him for a clever one with his fists. Foxy Pinsent supplied it.

In all the crowd of tough characters that made up Maddox's Royal Circus and Monster Menagerie with its attendant booths Foxy Pinsent alone gave him a supercilious lip or darkling scowl where others gave him smile and welcome. Foxy Pinsent had an old grudge against him—as Japhra had said—and lost no opportunity to rub it. The fact that "Japhra's Gentleman" was in the way of becoming a rival attraction to his own fame among the crowds that flocked to the fairs sharpened his spleen. The ever increasing bad blood between the two factions—Maddox's and Stingo's—gave him chance to exercise it.

Percival came hot to Japhra one day: "Damn that man Pinsent, Japhra. He's going too far with me. He's been putting it about the vans that I am too much the gentleman to go with a Maddox man—that I said in his hearing I refused to go with Dingo Spain to buy bread yesterday because I would not be seen in his company by decent people."

Japhra looked up at the angry face: "Let him bide. Let him bide."

"I'm not afraid of him."

"Nor I of adders, but I do not disturb their nests—nor lie in their ways."

On a day the reason came for Percival to cross the adder's way. Egbert Hunt knocked over a bucket in which one of Pinsent's negro pugilists was about to wash. The man used his fists, then his boots, on Hunt, sending him back brutally used. Percival sought out the black, outfought him completely, and administered a punishing that appeared to him to meet the case. Then came Pinsent.

"You've put your hands to one of my men, I hear—to Buck Osborn?"

"An infernal bully," said Percival.

"You've put your hands to one of my men!"

"And will again if he gives me cause!"

Foxy Pinsent came nearer, thin mouth and narrow eyes contracted in his ring expression. "Watch me, my gentleman; my lads' quarrels are mine. Watch out how you go your ways."

Percival glanced behind to see he had room: "You can leave that to me. I'll not have my friends knocked about."

"It's you in danger of the knocking about, my gentleman! That fine face of yours would take a bloody mark."

Percival slipped back his right foot six inches and glanced behind him again: "Try it, Pinsent."

Foxy Pinsent noticed the action. He moved his left fist upwards a trifle, then dropped it to his side and turned away with a laugh: "I don't fight boys; I thrash 'em."

"You know where to find me," Percival said.

III

So and in this wise he trained on to the tough, quick, good life; and in spirit developed as in body. The deeper he knew Japhra, the wider became his comprehension of life. He had failed once in the struggle with self, and that on the very night of Japhra's instruction of how that struggle should be fought: he was training on now not to fail again if ever the Big Fight should come. "What, art thou vexed again?" Japhra would say when sometimes he fell to brooding. "Get at the littleness of it—get at the littleness of it. It will pass. Remember what endureth. Not man nor man's work—only the green things that fade but come again Spring by Spring; only the brown earth that to-day humbly supports thee, to-morrow obscurely covers thee; only the hills yonder that shoulder aside the wind; only the sea that changeth always but changeth never; only the wind on our cheeks here, that to-day suffers itself to go in harness to yonder mill and to-morrow will wreck it and encourage the grass where it stood. Lay hold on that when aught vexeth thee; all else passeth...."

He trained on. Trifle by trifle and more and more he received and held, understood and stored for profit the little man's philosophy; trifle by trifle, more and more, developed qualities that made for the quality of self-restraint that ripened within him. Whatever his mood there was always peace and balm for him in the van. Many signs discovered to him that he was not merely an accepted part of Japhra's life and Ima's but a very active part; the little stir of welcome told him that—the little stir that always greeted him when he came on them sitting together.

They called him "Percival" now, at his desire. To Japhra he was still sometimes Little Master; to Ima never. But in Ima's ways and in her speech he noticed altogether a change in these days. The "Thou" and "Thee" and "Thine" of her former habit were gone: she never appeared now with naked feet, but always neatly hosed and shod. Gentle in her movements too, and seemly in her dress, Percival noticed, and he came to find her strange—a thing apart—in her rough surroundings; strange to them and remote from them when she sat plying her needle, attending to his hungry wants and Japhra's, or mothering some baby from a neighbour's van. He came to think her—contrasted thus with all the sights and sounds about her—the gentlest creature that could be; her voice wonderfully soft, her touch most kind when she dressed a bruise or nursed him, as once when he lay two days sick. She mended his clothes; made some shirts for him; passed all his things through her hands before he might wear them; and never permitted him clothes soiled, or lacking buttons, or wanting the needle.

He was leaving the van once to go into the town against which they were pitched. She called him back. The scarf he wore was soiled, she said, and she came to him with a clean one.

He laughed at her: "It's absolutely good enough."

"No, soiled," she said, and took it from his neck and placed the other.

He playfully prevented her fingers. "I'm like a child with a strict nurse—the way you look after me."

She replied, smiling but serious: "It is not for you to get into rough ways."

"They're good enough for me."

She shook her head. "You are not always for such."

CHAPTER XII

LETTERS OF RECALL

The first winter of this life Percival spent with Japhra in the van; the second took him, for the first time since he had broken away, back to "Post Offic." Ima left them, when the circus broke up in that first October, to go to her doctor friend in Norfolk, there to continue the education she had imposed upon herself. Egbert Hunt took her place, and the three started to tour the country till Spring and the reassembly of Maddox's should be round again. But winter on the road proved inclement to Mr. Hunt's nature. A week of frost in early December that had them three days snow-bound and on pinching short commons decided him for less arduous ways of life. He left them for London, his pockets well enough lined by his season's apprenticeship to old One Eye; they had news of him once as a socialist open air speaker in company with some organisation of malcontents of his kidney; once as prominent in an "unemployed" disturbance and in prison for seven days as the price of his activities.

"He will know gaol a longer term ere he has done," was Japhra's comment. "A weak, bad streak in him."

Percival laughed. "Poor old Hunt. More bitter than ever against 'tyrangs' now, Japhra. He's been shaping that way since I first knew him—often made me laugh with his outbursts."

"Best keep clear of that kind," Japhra said. "The stick for such."

They pushed North. Neither had a feeling for roofs or fireside that winter. The tinkering and the Punch and Judy kept them in enough funds scarcely to draw upon the season's profits. Japhra plied him at the one; Percival took chief hand in the other. A tough life, a quiet life, a good life. With only their two selves for company they talked much and read much of the three fighting books that were Japhra's library. Percival was almost sorry when Maddox's was picked up again and Ima rejoined them. He welcomed the second winter when it came; chance fell that it had him scarcely a month alone with Japhra when it saw him leave the van, and homeward bound to Burdon.

Two letters gave him this sudden impulse. Both were from "Post Offic"—one forwarded thence—and seemed to have partnered one another on a long and devious search before finding him. One was from Aunt Maggie. The other he opened first and opened with hands that trembled a little. Well he knew that regular, clear writing! He had only seen it in notes to Rollo, invitations to tea, in the days gone by, but it was as memorized to him as in him every memory of her was graven—Dora's!

His hands trembled that held this the first sign of her since he had left her in the drive at Abbey Royal on that night eighteen months before, and his breath ran quick. The first sign! He had urged her at their parting he might write to her. She had desired he should not. Letters at the French school might only come, it appeared, from parents, or in handwriting authorised by parents, and only to such quarters might be addressed. He had accepted the fate. Nay, well it should be so, he had told her. He would not—could not, for he loved her so!—see her again, be the time never so long, till somehow he had won some place in the world; very well, not even write to her. Their hearts alone should bind them: "For, Dora, you are to be mine. Somehow I shall do it—not see you till I have. You will remember—that is all, remember."

How had she remembered? He broke the seal and held his breath to read.

She wrote from Burdon House in Mount Street: explaining the address as though he had not known Mrs. Espart had taken it on lease at the time of Lord Burdon's death:—

DEAR PERCIVAL,

We returned here yesterday from the South of France, where we have been with Rollo and Lady Burdon. Did you know that Mother has taken Rollo's house here until he wants it and turns us out? I am writing for Rollo. I think you will be distressed to learn that he has been very ill—beginning with pneumonia. But we left him better, and they are following us to London soon. He most urgently desired me to tell you this, and that you must come and see him then. He says that he must see you again; and, indeed, he is forever talking of you. As to that, I must tell you that when I was with him we saw in an illustrated paper some pictures entitled "Life among the Showmen;" and in one, on a tent was to be seen "Gentleman Percival." From what Rollo told us, that was your tent. He was very excited about it; and to me it was very singular to have come upon it like that.

Well, I have written his address on the back of this, and you must certainly write to him or he will think that I have not told you and that I side with Lady Burdon and Mother in estimating that you are "very wild," which I do not.

I address this to your home; but it is hard to know if it will ever reach you.

Yours sincerely,
DORA ESPART.

How had she remembered? No trace of any memory of love was in the lines he carried to his lips and read again and many times again. He reckoned nothing of that. He read what he had expected to find. He read herself, as in the months that separated that magic hour in the drive he had come again to think of her—as one as purely, rarely, chastely different from her sisters as driven snow upon the Downside from snow that thaws along the road; as one that he should never have dared terrify by his rough ardour into that swooning "Oh, Percival, what is it, this?" Realising that moment of his passion, he sometimes writhed in self-reproach to think how violently he must have distressed her: sometimes hoped she had forgotten it—else surely shame of how her delicacy had been ravished at his hands would make her shrink at meeting him again. So this letter that had no hint of memory of love rejoiced and moved him to his depths. Unchanged from his boyish adoration of her, it revealed her, and unchanged he would have her be. Its precise air, its selected words, its stilted phrases, spoke to him as with her very voice—"It was very singular to me;" "It is hard to know:" as icicles broken in the hand! Snow-White-and-Rose-Red—and frozen snow and frozen red!

He was ardent and atremble in the resolve that he must get to London on Rollo's return and make old Rollo the excuse to see her again—touch her, perhaps; speak to her, ah!—then, and not till then, bethought him of his second letter. From Aunt Maggie; and he drew it from his pocket with prick of shame at his neglect of it. He had from time to time written to Aunt Maggie. Her letters were less frequent; easier to write to "Post Offic" than for "Post Offic" to write to him, ever on the move.

Three closely-written sheets came from the envelope. They contained many paragraphs, each of a different date—Aunt Maggie waited, as she explained, until she could be sure of an address to which to post her letter. There was much gossip of a very intimately domestic nature, each piece of news beginning with "I think this will interest you, dear." Before he was through with the letter the recurrence of the phrase, speaking so much devotion, caused a moisture to come to his eyes. "I think this will interest you, dear"—and the matter was that Honor burnt a hole in a new saucepan yesterday. "I think this will interest you, dear"—and "fancy! fourteen letters were posted in the box to-day." "I think this will interest you, dear"—and would he believe it! "one of the ducks hatched out sixteen eggs yesterday."

The more trivial the fact, the more Percival found himself affected. He was touched with the profound pathos of Aunt Maggie's revelation of how he centered each smallest detail of her remote and lonely life; he was rendered instantly responsive to the appeal with which at the end of her letter she cried to him to come home to see her—if only for a night. "This will be the second Christmas that you have been away. The days are, oh! so very, very long for me without my darling boy."

He told Japhra that he must go—not for long, and if for longer than he thought, at least the first of the new year would see him back. They were in Essex. Urgent with this sudden determination that had him, he took train for London on the next morning, and before midday was set down at Liverpool Street Station. Holiday mood seized him now that he had taken holiday. He counted again and again the sixty-five pounds that, to his amazed joy,—he, who till now had never earned a penny!—Japhra paid him for two seasons' wage and share. It seemed a fortune—forced up the holiday spirit as bellows at a forge; and on the way to Waterloo he ridded his burning pockets of a portion of it in clothes and swagger kit-bag for this his holiday, and in presents that brought parcels of many shapes and sizes into his cab—for Aunt Maggie, for Honor, for Mr. Amber, for Mr. Hannaford, for all to whom his heart bounded now that he was to see them again.

III

In these delights he missed his train. Two hours were on his hands before the next, and as he contemplated them a daring thought (so he considered it) came to him. He took a hansom cab and bade the man drive him to Mount Street,—through Mount Street and so back again. He would see where she lived!

"Drive slowly up here," he told the man when the cab turned into the street for which he watched. "Do you know Burdon House?"

It was pointed out ahead of him. "Set down there many a time. Lord Burdon's 'ouse it was. Another party's got it now."

Percival leant back, not to be seen—not daring to be seen!—and stared, his pulses drumming, as he was slowly carried past.

Might there have troubled him some vague, secret feeling of association between himself and that brown, massive front of Burdon House with its broad steps leading to the heavy double doors, with its tall, wrought-iron railings above the area, with its old torch extinguishers on either side the entrance, with its quiet, impassive air that large old houses have, as of guardians that know much and have seen much—brides come and coffins go, birth and death, gay nights and sad, glad hours and sorry—and look to know more and see more? Might he have felt, as he told Aunt Maggie he had felt at Burdon Old Manor, "thinking without thinking, as if some one else were thinking," as he passed those steps where one that he might have called Father often had gaily passed, where one he might have called Mother had gone wearily up and come fainting, dizzily down?

He felt, nor was disturbed, by none of those. He only gazed, gazed as he would pierce them, at all its solemn windows, riveted its every feature on his mind; but only because it was where she must have looked, because it sheltered her where she must be. It was a new setting against which he might envisage her; he only thought of it as that.

CHAPTER XIII

MR. AMBER DOES NOT RECOGNISE

It was in dreams that night that vague, secret influences of his sight of Burdon House came stealing about him—if such they were; he attributed them to the disturbance of an event that greeted him within a few hours of his gay arrival at "Post Offic."

He had announced his coming by telegram. He took Plowman's Ridge on leaving the train at Great Letham, old friend wind greeting him with most boisterous Ha! Ha! Ha! and as he came down the slope two figures broke from the little copse and came fluttering up the Downside towards him—one slight with running tears, and outstretched, eager arms; the other gaunt and grim, uncompromising of visage, but with eyes aglisten.

"Aunt Maggie! Aunt Maggie!"

"My boy! My Percival!"

Her boy's arms went about her: for a space neither moved after that first cry. He only held her—close, close to him; she only clung to him, her face to his, and felt his dear face stop her flowing tears.

He held her from him then at arm's length, the better to gaze at her; and she overcame her foolish tears and told him: "How you have grown! How handsome you have grown!"

And Honor grimly, with grimness spoilt by chokey utterance: "Ah, handsome is as handsome don't make fine birds!"

"You've got it wrong, you frightful old goose!" cried Percival; and there was Honor's bony cheek to be kissed, her bony hug to take.

Then the disturbing even:—

Mr. Amber, Aunt Maggie told him, was dying. He had been told Percival was coming and had begged to see him. There had only been a brief interval of consciousness in the last twenty-four hours; Percival had better go at once.

Percival went immediately. The Old Manor had the deserted aspect he remembered when, as a little boy, he used to seek Mr. Amber in the library; and it was to the library he now was taken. Mr. Amber had been carried there. He knew he was to die. He had begged to die in the apartment he loved—among his books.

There Percival found him. He lay on a bed that had been placed in the centre of the room. He was asleep, breathing with a harsh, unnatural sound. A nurse sent over from Great Letham attended him, and Percival inquired of her: "I am Percival; has he been asking for me?"

She shook her head: "Since this morning only for Lord Burdon. Before that, frequently."

Percival went on one knee by the bedside. The mild old face that he had always known silvery and smiling seemed white as the pillow where it lay, pathetically lined and hollowed. On a sudden the eyes very slowly opened and looked full into Percival's bending above him. Percival experienced a shock of horror at what followed. Burning intelligence flamed into the dim eyes; the blood rushed in a crimson cloud to the white face; the thin form struggled where it lay.

"My lord! my lord!" Mr. Amber whispered; and "lift me—lying down before my lord!"

"Mr. Amber! I am Percival! You remember me!"

The nurse raised him, and with practised hand the pillows also, so that he reclined against them. "It is your friend Percival. Lord Burdon will soon come, perhaps."

He gave her no attention. He smiled at Percival in something of his mild old way. "We are very weak, my lord," he said. "Very weak."

"Mr. Amber! I am Percival! You remember what friends we were. You will get strong, and we will have some more reading together—you remember?"

Mr. Amber still smiling, his eyes closed again. "On the ladders."

"Yes—yes. On the ladders. You remember now—Percival."

Mr. Amber's smile seemed to settle upon his face as though his lips were made so. "Hold my hand, my lord."

He began to slip down in the bed. The nurse eased his position. He seemed back to unconsciousness again, his breathing very laboured. Night had drawn about the room and was held dusky by the candles. There stole about Percival, as he knelt, atmosphere of the memories he had recalled in vain attempt to arouse Mr. Amber's recognition. Again dusk here, and he with mild, old Mr. Amber. Again shadows wreathing about the high ceiling, stealing from the corners. Again a soft thudding on the window-pane, as of some shadow seeking to enter—death? Again the strange feeling of "thinking without thinking as if some one else were thinking"—and on that, worn out perhaps with his long day, perhaps carried by some other agency, he went into a dream-state in which vague, secret influences of his ride through Mount Street came upon him. He thought he was in Mount Street again and come to Burdon House, and that the door opened as he ascended the steps. He found the interior completely familiar to him, and for some reason was frightened and trembled to find it so. He went from familiar room to familiar room, afraid at their familiarity as though it was some wrong thing he was doing, and knew himself searching—searching—searching. What he searched he did not know. He just opened a door, and looked, and closed it and passed on. There were persons in some rooms—once Dora, once Rollo, once Lady Burdon. They stretched hands to him or spoke. He shook his head and told them "I am not looking for you," and closed the doors upon them. He climbed the completely familiar stairs and searched each floor. The fear that attended him suddenly increased. He had a sudden and most eerie feeling that some presence was come about him as he searched. He heard a voice cry: "My son! My son! We have waited for you. Oh, we have waited for you!" Fear changed to a flood of yearning emotion. He tried to cry, "It is you—you I am looking for!" He could not speak, and wrestled for speech; and wrestling, came back to consciousness of his surroundings. He was streaming with perspiration, he found. He saw next that Mr. Amber's eyes were open and looking at him, and heard him say, "Percival!"

Had that been the voice in that frightful dream?

"Mr. Amber! I knew you would know me!"

Recognition was in the eyes, but they were filming.

"Yes, he knows you," the nurse whispered.

Quite firmly, firmer than he had yet spoken: "Hold my hand—my lord," Mr. Amber said, and ended the words and ended life with a little throaty sound.

The nurse disengaged their hands. "But I am so glad he did just recognise you," she said kindly.

III

Old friend wind was in tremendous fettle that night. Percival battled along Plowman's Ridge on his way back and had battled twenty minutes when he cried aloud, venting his grief, and answering the nurse's words, "He didn't recognise me!"

And old friend wind paused to listen; came in tremendous gusts, Ha! Ha! Ha! and hurled the words aloft and tossed and rushed them high along the Ridge.

"Something was wrong with me in there," Percival exclaimed. "Did I speak sense to him? What was happening to me? Was I dreaming? What was it?—oh, damn this wind!"

Ha! Ha! Ha! thundered old friend wind, staggering him anew—Ha! Ha! Ha!

An absolutely irrepressible party, old friend wind.

CHAPTER XIV

DORA REMEMBERS

Percival was not the only one that in this period was disturbed by uneasy dreams, by vague and strange half-thoughts, by "thinking without thinking," as though some other influence were temporarily in possession of the senses. Lady Burdon was thus disturbed; Aunt Maggie, too. But of the three Aunt Maggie only knew the cause. If Lady Burdon, if Percival, had brought their unrest to her for explanation she might have explained it as she was able to explain her own—the "fluttering" that very often came to her in these days of Percival's visit home. She might have told them, as she told herself, that it was occasioned for that the years were closing in now—the prepared doom gathering about them all and they responsive to its nearness as gathering storm gives vague unease, headaches, depression when its emanations fall.

For her own part Aunt Maggie had herself in hand again—was again possessed by the certitude that nothing could go amiss with her plans. It had supported her through all these long years. It had been shaken, but had recovered again, by fear of Percival's affection for Rollo. It tore at her frantically, like a strong horse against the bridle, now that only a few months remained for its release in her revenge's execution. In little less than a year Percival would be twenty-one. She no more minded—relative to her plans—the proof of the fondness still between him and Rollo shown in his leaving her to stay with Rollo in town, than she minded—relative to the same purpose—his determination to be with Japhra again when winter ended. She suffered distress both at the one and the other in that they robbed her of the object of her heart's devotion; she felt no qualm that either would hinder her revenge. "Strange-like?" "Touched-like?" The villagers, when she passed them without seeing them in these days, were more than ever sure of that, poor thing; but she was more than ever sure—lived in the past and in the near, near future and had scenes to watch there.

Rollo's return to town was delayed longer than Dora had supposed in her letter to Percival. It was not till February that his doctors and his mother gave way to his protestations that he would never get fit if he could not go and have a glimpse of old Percival while he had the chance, and then it was only for a week—a passage through town to get some things done and to pick up the Esparts for a spring sojourn in Italy.

Thus Percival was several weeks with Aunt Maggie before he left her for Rollo—and Dora. Pleasant weeks he found them, reclaiming all the old friends (save that one whose grave only was now to be visited) and in their company, and in the new affection that they gave him for his strong young manhood, retasting again the happy, happy time of earlier days. There were jolly teas with the Purdies, brother and sister; plump Mr. Purdie never tired of saying, with quite the most absurd of his shrill, ridiculous chuckles, "Why, you've grown into a regular man and I expected to see a swarthy gipsy with earrings and a red neckcloth!", birdlike little Miss Purdie, more birdlike than ever with her little hops and nods and her "Now fancy you coming to take me to the Great Letham Church Bazaar! I was wanting to go. But you're not to be extravagant, Percival. At Christmas you were dreadful. You don't know the value of money!" And there were almost daily visits to Mr. Hannaford, Stingo with him now till the road was to be taken again, who found Percival a proper full-size marvel now, and blessed his eighteen stun proper if he didn't, whose little 'orse farm was developing amazingly, who displayed it and who discussed it with Percival to the tune of leg-and-cane cracks of almost incredible volume, and who placed at Percival's entire disposal a little riding 'orse, three parts blood and one part fire, that showed him to possess a seat and hands that any little 'orse oughter be proud to carry, "bless my eighteen stun proper if he didn't!" (Crack!)

And there were thoughts of Dora ... who soon must be met and whom to meet he burned (his darling!) and feared (his darling and his goddess!—too rare, too exquisite for him, as tracery of frost upon the window-pane that touch or breath will break or tarnish!). Thus he thought of her; thus to help his thoughts often walked over to closed Abbey Royal; thus never could approach the gates without the thought that if, by some miracle, he met her there he could not dare approach her. He would steal away at her approach, he knew. Watch her if, unseen, he might unseen adore her—mark her perfect beauty, breathless see her breathe; watch her poised to listen to some bird that hymned her coming; watch her stoop to greet some flower's fragrance with her own. Watch the happy grasses take her feet and watch those others, benisoned and scented by the border of her gown; watch the tumbling breezes give her path and only kiss her—see them race along the leaves to give her minstrelsy. Speak to her?—how should he dare?

III

What his condition then when at last in London he came face to face with her? Rollo and Lady Burdon stayed their week at a private hotel—Baxter's in Albemarle Street. He was immediately made their guest (against Lady Burdon's wish, who desired now in the approach of the consummation of her own plans—and Mrs. Espart's—to detach the friendship she had formerly encouraged; but he did not know that). Rollo met him at Waterloo station and took him direct to the hotel. Eager to meet old Rollo again he was touched by the pathetic devotion of Rollo's greeting, touched also at the frail and delicate figure that he presented. The emotions were violently usurped by others when Baxter's was reached and he was taken to the private sitting-room Lady Burdon had engaged.

"Here's mother!" Rollo cried, opening the door.

Here also were Mrs. Espart and Dora.

The elder ladies were seated. Percival greeted them and fancied their manner not very warm. He had a swift recollection of the letter's advice that they joined in estimating him "Very wild"; but while he shook hands, while he exchanged the conventional civilities, his mind, nothing concerned with them, was actively discussing how he should comport himself, what he should see, when he turned to the figure that had stood by the window, facing away from him, when he entered.

"Never in London before—no," he said. "I have passed through once, that is all."

Then he turned.

She had come down the room and was within two paces of him. Her dress was of some dark colour and she wore fine sables, thrown back so that they lay upon her shoulders and came across her arms. A large black hat faintly shadowed the upper part of her face; her left hand was in a muff, and when he turned towards her she had the muff nestled against her throat. She gave the appearance of having watched him while he spoke, reckoning what he was, with her face resting meditatively upon her muff, her tall and slim young figure upright upon her feet.

There was no perceptible pause between his turning to her and their speaking. Yet he had time for a long, long thought of her before he opened his lips. It took his breath. So still she stood, so serene and contemplative her look, that he thought of her, standing there, as some most rich and most rare picture, framed by the soft dusk that London rooms have, and surely framed and set apart from mortal things.

She dropped her muff to her arm's length with a sudden action, just as a portrait might stir to come to life. She raised her head so that the shadow went from her face and revealed her eyes, as a jealous leaf's shade might be stirred to reveal the dark and dew-crowned pansy. She had not removed her gloves and she gave him her small hand—that last he had held cold, trembling and uncovered—gloved in white kid. She spoke and her voice—that last he had heard aswoon—had the high, cold note he thrilled to hear.

"It is pleasant to see you again," she said.

He never could recall in what words he replied—nor if indeed he effected reply.

Conventional words went between them before she and her mother took their departure; conventional words again at a chance meeting on the following day and again when the parties met by arrangement at a matinee. His week drew to a close. As its end neared he began to resist the mute and distant adoration which he had felt must be his part when he had thought of meeting her again and which, without pang, he at first accepted as his part now that they were come together. But when the very hours could be counted that would see her gone from him again he felt that attitude could no longer be endured. Insupportable to pass into the future without a closer sign of her!—insupportable even though the sign proved one that should reward his temerity by sealing her forever from his lips. He nerved himself to the daring—the very opportunity was hard to seek. Rollo, in the slightly selfish habit that belongs to delicate persons accustomed, as he was accustomed, to their own way, was ever desirous of having Percival to himself alone. He saw plenty of Dora at other times, he said (deliberately avoiding a chance of meeting her on one occasion); and when Percival, not daring to do more, made scruples on grounds of mere politeness, "But, bless you, she'll think nothing of it," Rollo said carelessly: "She's made of ice—Dora. I like her all right, you know. But she's not keen on anything. She's got no more feeling than—well, ice," and he laughed and dismissed the subject.

Had she not? It was Percival's to challenge it.

The chance came on the eve of the morrow that was to see his friend's departure for Italy and his own for a farewell to Aunt Maggie and so back to Japhra again. The Esparts came over to dinner at Baxter's hotel—came in response to Lady Burdon's private and urgent request of Mrs. Espart. The week of Percival's visit had tried her sorely. Night by night and every night, as she told Mrs. Espart, she had had that dreadful nightmare of hers again—that girl to whom she cried "I am Lady Burdon," and who answered her: "Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?;" to whom she cried "I hold," and, who answered her, "No, you do not—Nay, I hold."

Aunt Maggie might have explained it. Mrs. Espart laughed outright. "That? Good gracious, I thought you had forgotten that long ago."

"So I had—so I had. I never thought of it again from the day I told you until last Wednesday night—the day Percival came to us. Since then every night..."

She paused before the last words and stopped abruptly after them.

"Well, my dear! You're not putting down to poor Percival what must be the fault of Mr. Baxter's menus, surely?"

Lady Burdon said without conviction: "No—no, I'm not. Still, it began then—and I don't like him now—don't care for Rollo to be so attached to him now—and had words with Rollo about it—and perhaps that was the reason and is the reason. Anyway, do come to dinner to-night—distract my thoughts perhaps—I can't face that nightmare again. It's on my nerves."

Mrs. Espart permitted herself the tiniest yawn, but promised to come; and came, bringing Dora.

So Percival's chance came, or so came, rather, his last opportunity—for he ran it to the final moment. Announcement of the Esparts' carriage brought their evening to an end, and he went down with Rollo to see them off. Baxter's preserved its exclusiveness by preserving its old fashions; the staircase was narrow, so the hall. Mrs. Espart went first, then Rollo. Percival followed Dora.

As she came to the pavement she turned to gather her skirts about her. In the action she looked full at him.

The end?

He said: "Dora—do you ever remember?"

Her skirts seemed to have eluded her fingers and she must make another hold at them. He saw the colour flame where her fair face showed it, swiftly, deeply scarlet in that shade on either cheek. He saw her young breast rise as though that red flood drew and held it—saw her lips part for words, and held his breath to catch her voice.

"I have not forgotten," she whispered.